David Gersten, influential Off-Broadway press agent and producer, has died

The late David Gersten (Courtesy Photo)

David Gersten, influential Off-Broadway press agent and producer, has died

David Gersten, a theatrical press agent, producer, and champion of New York’s Off-Broadway and cabaret stages whose boutique firm helped shape the public profile of scores of shows and nightclubs, died on Monday, April 6, after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. He was vice president of the Association of Theatrical Press Agents & Managers (ATPAM; IATSE Local 18032), and had been a member of the union since 1997 and a board member since 2001, also serving as a pension fund trustee and Off-Broadway steward.

Over more than three decades on and around Broadway, Gersten worked as a press representative, marketing consultant, and producer, representing shows on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and on national tours. His full-service boutique firm, David Gersten & Associates, founded in 2000, provided publicity and marketing for a wide range of commercial and nonprofit clients.

Gersten liked to say that he learned from the best, and he did: Early in his career, he worked with Broadway producers Alexander H. Cohen and David Merrick. Among the Broadway productions he most liked to recall were the American premieres of Noël Coward’s “Waiting in the Wings,” starring Lauren Bacall and Rosemary Harris; the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “The Herbal Bed”; and “Taking Sides,” starring Ed Harris and Daniel Massey. He also worked on “Canciones de Mi Padre” with Linda Ronstadt; Avery Brooks in “Paul Robeson”; “Kenny Loggins: On Broadway”; the Georgian State Dance Company; “Stardust,” the last show at the Biltmore Theater before it became home to the Manhattan Theater Club; “Late Nite Comic,” the last show at the Ritz, now the Walter Kerr; and the gala 6,000th performance of “A Chorus Line.”

Off-Broadway, Gersten’s name became attached to hundreds of productions, from world premieres by emerging writers to revivals of classics and intimate solo turns by actors known from stage and screen. His credits included the long-running musical “Altar Boyz” (five years Off-Broadway); “Birds of Paradise” by Winnie Holzman, directed by Arthur Laurents; the New York premieres of “Shear Madness,” “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” starring and choreographed by Robert Fairchild, and the international hit “Potted Potter — The Unauthorized Harry Experience — A Parody.” He handled revivals of Jonathan Larson’s “tick, tick … BOOM!,” Stephen Sondheim’s “Marry Me a Little,” “Blues in the Night” starring Carol Woods, “Godspell” (directed by its original star, Don Scardino), Carl Reiner’s “Enter Laughing: The Musical,” and “Romance/Romance” (winner of four Outer Critics Circle Awards). He also represented, among many others, “Late Nite Catechism” (eight years Off-Broadway); “Roulette” starring Anna Paquin; “Mademoiselle Colombe” starring Tammy Grimes; “Naked Boys Singing!” and the hit “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding,” which ran 24 years. On the road, he worked on national tours of “The Music Man,” starring Patrick Cassidy and Shirley Jones; “Saturday Night Fever”; “Man of La Mancha”; and “Sophisticated Ladies,” billed as the first Russian-American co-production.

In the nonprofit theater, Gersten was a persistent and vocal advocate. Among the many companies he represented were En Garde Arts, for the premiere of Jonathan Larson’s “J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation”; the Ensemble Studio Theatre, INTAR, Keen Company, Mint Theater Company, National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theater, Red Bull Theater, Michael Imperioli’s Studio Dante, and the Summer Shorts Festival. At Summer Shorts, he helped usher in world premieres by writers including Christopher Durang, Marian Fontana, Nancy Giles, Lucas Hnath, Tina Howe, William Inge, Albert Innaurato, Neil LaBute, Warren Leight, Terrence McNally, José Rivera, Paul Rudnick, Will Scheffer, Paul Weitz, and Alan Zweibel.

Gersten’s reach extended into New York’s club and cabaret world, where he was a founding member of the Manhattan Association of Clubs & Cabarets. He helped relaunch the Windows on the World restaurant after the 1993 bombing and represented it until its destruction on September 11, 2001, and also handled Rainbow & Stars and the Rainbow Room, Michael’s Pub (for more than two decades), the Café Carlyle and Bemelmans Bar, the Oak Room at the Algonquin, the Ballroom, Freddy’s, and Roseland. His client list in those rooms read like a who’s who of late-20th-century jazz, pop, comedy, and Broadway: Mel Tormé (16 years), Rosemary Clooney (12 years), Peggy Lee, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca (for the 40th anniversary of “Your Show of Shows”), Kaye Ballard, Laurie Beechman and Sam Harris, Ruth Brown, Betty Buckley, David Carroll, Nell Carter, Vic Damone, Tony Danza, Christine Ebersole, Marianne Faithfull, Savion Glover, Lesley Gore, Ellen Greene, Rupert Holmes, Jack Jones, Larry Kert and Carol Lawrence, Darlene Love, Patti LuPone, Maureen McGovern, Lonette McKee, Mark Murphy, Anthony Newley, Anita O’Day, Helen Reddy, Joan Rivers, Mickey Rooney, Helen Schneider, Sylvia Syms, Tommy Tune and the Manhattan Rhythm Kings, Leslie Uggams, Margaret Whiting, Julie Wilson — and, for more than 20 years, Woody Allen with the Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band.

Beyond theaters and clubs, Gersten provided publicity and strategic consulting to clients including the Actors Studio, David Merrick Arts Foundation, Frank Loesser family (Jo Sullivan Loesser, Hannah Loesser, Emily Loesser, and Don Stephenson), League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers’ annual Lortel Awards, and Lucille Lortel Foundation, as well as art exhibitions by Hilary Knight, Francesco Scavullo, Patrick McMullen, and Rosie O’Donnell.

As a producer, Gersten presented the New York premieres of “Tea at Five,” with Kate Mulgrew as Katharine Hepburn (also in West Palm Beach and San Francisco); “Dr. Sex”; “Bash’d — The Gay Rap Opera”; “Shear Madness”; and “My First Time.” He produced the new cast recording of Sondheim’s “Marry Me a Little” for Ghostlight Records and was involved in the Broadway productions of “13 the Musical”; David Mamet’s “A Life in the Theatre,” starring Patrick Stewart and T. R. Knight; “The Addams Family,” starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth; “Blithe Spirit,” starring Angela Lansbury, Christine Ebersole, and Rupert Everett; “Impressionism,” with Joan Allen, Jeremy Irons, and Marsha Mason; “It’s Only a Play,” with Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing, Nathan Lane, and Megan Mullally; the Tony Award-winning musical “Kinky Boots” (on Broadway, on tour, and in Australia); “Speed-the-Plow,” with Jeremy Piven, Raúl Esparza, and Elisabeth Moss; Will Ferrell’s solo show “You’re Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush”; and “Altar Boyz” in its New York Musical Theatre Festival bow, Off-Broadway run and two national tours. 

For nonprofit organizations, Gersten produced benefits and galas for the National Alzheimer’s Foundation’s Rita Hayworth Gala, God’s Love We Deliver, the People With AIDS Coalition, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the Actors Fund, and the Hetrick-Martin Institute.

Gersten served as a member of the Off-Broadway League for many years and was a founding member and vice president of the Off-Broadway Alliance. He recently became one of the owners of the newly renovated Ninth Avenue Saloon, a theater district mainstay for more than 40 years and one of the city’s oldest LGBTQ+ bars. A native New Yorker, he kept a summer home on Fire Island, where he volunteered as a firefighter and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He was a graduate of New York University and studied labor law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers.

The cabaret singer Mary Cleere Haran once described him in a line he cherished: “My darling press agent who puts Sidney Falco to shame.”

Donations in Gersten’s memory may be made to organizations he supported, including the Cherry Grove Fire Department, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the Entertainment Community Fund, or nonprofit theaters.