Nicki Hunter Didn’t Get the Internship at Manhattan Theatre Club—Twice. Now She’s Running It.

The first two times Nicki Hunter applied to Manhattan Theatre Club, she didn’t get the internship. Not enough experience. Come back when you’re ready. 16 years later, she’s running the place.

On December 1, 2025, Hunter became Artistic Director of Manhattan Theatre Club, succeeding Lynne Meadow, who led the company for more than five decades. She now oversees MTC’s three stages—two off-Broadway at New York City Center and the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway—alongside Executive Director Chris Jennings.

Hunter didn’t arrive at the Broadway institution chasing a title. “I don’t think I really had an idea of what I wanted to be,” she says. “But I knew where I wanted to be.” From the start, she wanted to be in the room where theater was happening, surrounded by the artists and collaborators who give it its spark.

She grew up just outside Boston, where theater entered her life early. “The bug bit me in first grade,” she says, remembering an after-school community program called Kid Stock. It was informal and playful: magic shows one week, a musical the next, all thrown together by kids barely old enough to know what they were doing. “My passion for theater really started there,” she says.

By high school, she dove into school productions—auditioning, working backstage and designing costumes. Like many theater kids, she jokes, she was “cut from all the sports teams just by trying out for them,” and happily found her place elsewhere. She played Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, joined the Greek chorus in Antigone and appeared in the ensembles of Footloose and Damn Yankees. But she’s quick to add, with a laugh, “I’m not a good singer.”

At Lehigh University, Hunter intended to major in theater but resisted the idea of a conservatory program. “I knew I wanted to just have a liberal arts education—immerse myself and learn about the world,” she says. She also added a business minor, initially treating it as a backup plan. "If it all goes to...," she remembers thinking, before laughing, "...I’ll just follow my business path." Halfway through college, something clicked—her theater and business interests could live alongside one another.

As she read and fell in love with more plays, one phrase kept appearing on the script title pages: “Originally produced by Manhattan Theatre Club.” Clearly, this was where great theater was being made. When she discovered the company’s internship program, she jumped at the chance to apply.

She didn’t get it.

“They said, ‘You don’t have enough experience,’” she recalls. “‘Go work in New York somewhere else and then come back to us.’” Instead, she landed an internship at the Summer Play Festival at The Public Theater, a now-defunct program that functioned as a kind of all-hands-on-deck training ground. “I was heating up the props and then running to do the spot op and then sewing a costume and then going back to the spot op,” she says. “It was a catch-all, which was great.”

After graduation from Lehigh, she applied again for a summer internship. Again, she didn’t get it.

This time, she followed up. Were there any openings? Well, kind of. She was offered an internship in special events within the development department—an internship that technically didn’t need to exist. “There were no special events that summer,” she says. “They weren’t planning on hiring an intern.”  But a foot in the door is still a foot in the door. “I’ll take it!”

Once inside MTC, Hunter learned the rhythms of the building and the unspoken rules. “I made myself present,” she says, “but not annoyingly so. It’s a fine line.” A turning point came when she filled in for the assistant to longtime Managing Director Barry Grove. The temporary role placed her near Artistic Director Lynne Meadow’s office—and on her radar. “They took a look at me and said, ‘Wow, this girl’s really stepping in and getting it quickly,’” Hunter says.

After a stint at Binder Casting—where she worked on open calls for The Lion King—MTC called again. There was an opening to be Meadows’ assistant. “We think you should apply,” they told her. She did and got the job. “I’ve been working here ever since,” she says. “That was 16 years ago.”

The rise within the company was slow and steady: four years as Assistant to the Artistic Director, two as Artistic Associate, four as Line Producer, four as Artistic Producer and two as Associate Artistic Director.

On December 1, 2025, she took the top job.

Today, Hunter and Executive Director Chris Jennings lead the institution Meadow and Grove shaped for more than five decades. It’s a generational shift at one of New York’s most stable nonprofit institutions—but one built on continuity. “If she was stagnant, if this company was stagnant, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” Hunter says of Meadow. “That’s a huge testament to her vision.”

There’s also a generational shift—Hunter is a Millennial; Meadow is a Baby Boomer. They compare notes—sometimes literally—on how they absorb culture, from social media feeds to the morning paper. Meadow will call to say a review looks great in print; Hunter will send along something that’s circulating online. What unites them is a shared belief in staying alert to the world. “I always want to be listening,” Hunter says. “I always want to be paying attention to the world and having a finger on what audiences are hungry for.”

At Manhattan Theatre Club, that awareness extends to all three of its stages—two off-Broadway at New York City Center and the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway. Hunter is clear that she doesn’t see them as a hierarchy. “I don’t want to look at our Stage 1 or Stage 2 space or our Broadway space as stepping stones,” she says. “It is three amazing theaters that are having equal quality.”

Historically, some of MTC’s biggest successes did move from smaller rooms to larger ones—classic triumphs like Proof, Doubt and Love! Valour! Compassion! followed that path—but Hunter is careful not to frame that as the goal. “I’m not interested in finding a hit and sitting back,” she says. “I’m interested in infusing this city with great work.”

Her relationship to Manhattan Theatre Club as an audience member predates her professional one. The first show she ever saw at the company was David Harrower’s Blackbird. “I walked in and thought, "This is amazing." The play—a stark, two-person confrontation between a man and the woman he abused as a child—reshaped her sense of what kind of risks the company could take, and what audiences might be ready to meet.

That belief has carried into the way she thinks about programming today. She’s proud of recent MTC stagings she’d helped guide like Choir Boy, Ruined, Eureka Day and points to Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding as a recent moment when different audiences came together in a shared experience. “We invited our subscribers into a hair-braiding shop,” she says, “and there was this beautiful community in our theater of subscribers and new ticket buyers and new audiences.”

With the current hit Bug, Tracy Letts’ volatile psychological thriller starring Carrie Coon, she’s seen that same openness extend into darker territory. “People are willing to go on that ride with us,” Hunter says. For her, that willingness confirms something she’s believed since the first time she sat in an MTC audience: that this is a place where challenging stories belong—and where audiences are ready to lean in.

Also on MTC's immediate docket are Ngozi Anyanwu's off-Broadway hit The Monsters, about sibling MMA fighters (running through March 22) and the next Broadway offering, David Lindsay Abaire's The Balusters, about a squabbling neighborhood association (starting March 31).

Beyond work, Hunter’s life is full. She lives in Hoboken with her partner Mike Schwab and their two sons, Peter and Wesley, ages five and three. “Outside of MTC, I’m pretty locked in with them,” she says. Her days now include opening nights and board meetings alongside soccer games and taekwondo. The increased visibility of the job is something she’s still adjusting to. “I find my comfort is in the office meeting with artists,” she says. But she’s also embraced the responsibility to speak for the institution she loves.

“I just want people to come to MTC,” she says. After 16 years inside the building, she knows exactly why they should.