From the Green into the Limelight
Dartmouth set Broadway producer Lucas Katler ’15 on his path to success—and now he’s clearing that path for students to come
“When people are afraid of it, that’s usually when they call me,” Lucas Katler ’15 says with a shrug.
He’s cultivated a reputation for taking artistic risks, for embracing the weird and uncomfortable, for making dreams come true. In other words, exactly what you want in a producer.
Katler is a Tony Award-winning producer, with credits on Broadway, off-Broadway, off off-Broadway, and so on. He runs his own production company in New York City, has big plans for opening a new, innovative theater space in Bushwick, and, you guessed it, got his humble start in the wings of the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
“I tried desperately to escape theater—just in the effort of being a freshman in college and feeling the need to reinvent myself—but I ended up leaning in,” he says. “I met some of my closest friends, with whom I’m still friends and collaborators today, through the Dartmouth theater department.”
And thus, it began. A double major in history and Italian, modified with theater, Katler took advantage of everything Dartmouth had to offer, embodying the intersectionality of a liberal arts education.
“My senior thesis is a great representation of my different intellectual interests. I adapted an Italian play and then directed and produced it—and just liked producing best,” he says.
Since his project spanned two departments, Katler had two advisors: Associate Professor of French and Italian Nancy Canepa and Associate Professor of Theater Jamie Horton. He met weekly with Professor Canepa to talk through pages together, getting crucial guidance and feedback on the accuracy of the adaptation. Then, Katler turned to Professor Horton to ideate the proper space to bring the piece to life, and all the necessary players in the department to make the production possible. He secured a modest amount of funding from the College, permission to use the Hop garage, and got to work. The entire process, start to finish, was his first taste of what he’d be doing for the rest of his life.
What is a producer?
(In Luke’s words)
“The director is the creative lead of a project, whereas the producer is the business lead of a project. The producer’s responsibility is to get the rights to a script or a piece of intellectual property, find the money to make it happen, and then hire the team around it.
“Producers provide the foundational support for creative folks to enact their vision. A lot of it is finances, a lot of it is business planning, and a lot of it is high-level strategy to develop how a new work goes from script to stage.”
Lucas Katler Productions has participated in several multi-million-dollar Broadway productions, including Merrily We Roll Along and POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, as well as much smaller productions, such as, most recently, Jewish Plot—a piece that solicited such an emotional response from some audience members that Katler considers it his greatest work.
“To a non-theater person, the Tony is the big achievement. But I would say, since I mostly just raised money for the project, it’s not my biggest artistic feat,” Katler explains.
“Jewish Plot was one of Vulture’s top 10 plays of the year, and it was a tiny, off off-Broadway show that was going up against Broadway juggernauts—but the quality was there. People weren’t bored. It made people angry enough to leave, which was probably my proudest achievement to date.”
Moving Forward and Giving Back
Katler is always on the prowl for his next project, the next thing that’s going to turn the New York City theater scene on its head—and that’s where interns come in.
“Sitting in my inbox right now, I have one, two, three…14 scripts I just haven’t read. So, it’s really useful for me to have a smart person who cares about theater vetting those for me and telling me what’s worth my attention.”
Katler has interns evaluating scripts, attending readings, and even going to the New York Public Library to dig up old magazine spreads for marketing campaigns. The interns do it all.
And it’s a symbiotic relationship—Katler gets fresh insights from young people and fresh eyes on the work that crosses his desk, and the students get a glimpse into the professional theater space. “It is an extremely valuable opportunity for interns to work for independent producers, just to get a lay of the land in terms of how theater-making works in New York,” explains Katler. “My interns have really loved working with me, and I treat interns like a thought partner in a lot of ways.”
He has hired three interns from Dartmouth so far, and is in talks with the Center for Career Design to formalize an internship pipeline to lower the barrier of entry.
The Center for Career Design is focused on opening doors for students by connecting them with the accomplished alumni who came before them. “We’re trying to bolster the amount of support and opportunity we offer to students,” says Liz Foster, associate director for alumni and family partnership and outreach. “Getting alumni and families more involved is part of the ‘how.’”
The center offers support to professionals like Katler who can use the manpower and who want to give opportunities for growth and exploration to students in their footsteps. It offers funding to support internships—of which Katler took advantage as a student himself—and continues to launch new programs for experiential learning opportunities, from project-based internships to spring immersion programs.
And those programs can have a profound impact. While Katler’s senior thesis sealed his fate as a producer, there were other moments from his Dartmouth experience that shaped his path—most notably, the “Off the Green” program. Organized by the theater department, the program took students to New York City and introduced them to panelists from different artistic vocations: a nonprofit theater with theater professionals, a media conglomerate with three corporate arts professionals, and a keynote speech from Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks ’67 H’99. “I am always pushing for this program when I speak to someone in career development, because it was just such a meaningful experience,” Katler remarks.
Providing internship opportunities proves to be the perfect opportunity for Katler to give back to his Dartmouth community—and to lean into the arts community he calls home.
“Being a theater kid is such a helpful shortcut for community,” he says, “and so much of my life is invested in the arts. It would have been really hard not to continue on that path.”
For more information about the work the Dartmouth Center for Career Design is doing to support current students, visit https://careerdesign.dartmouth.edu/channels/alumni/.
To learn more about Katler’s incredible career thus far, read his feature in the July/August 2022 issue in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.