In Memory: Barbara Hauptman, Age 78

Barbara Hauptman of Rye, NY and Williamstown, MA passed away on August 24th from complications of a fall suffered in March. She was 78 years old.

She was the daughter of George Washington Barbat and Ruth (Patterson) Barbat and was born in Dallas, TX in 1946. She attended the University of Texas in Austin and the Yale School of Drama. Immediately upon graduation from Yale in 1973, she moved to New York City and embarked on a remarkably varied career in the arts. She began by working with director Vinette Carroll and puppeteer Bil Baird, and during the summers managed the Williamstown Theatre Festival under Nikos Psacharopoulos.

She then began working at the New York State Council of the Arts under Kitty Carlisle Hart, assessing the artistic quality of grants recipients throughout New York State, creating a financial bridge critical to the success of many institutions still around today: Playwrights Horizon and Syracuse Stage among them.

She then moved from the evaluation and grant process back to direct management. She managed the Twyla Tharp Dance Company for several years, including her first Broadway production, Twyla Tharp Dance, in 1981. During that same period she helped Carole Rothman and Robyn Goodman found the Second Stage Theatre Company and served as its first Chairman of the Board.

She then started a stint as operations manager for the Theatre Development Fund. In this role, among other things, she managed the half-price TKTS booth in Times Square.

She then shifted careers to television when she was approached to manage the four soap operas produced by Proctor and Gamble. Leaning into her own artistic impulses, she left that position to begin writing soap operas for two of them: As the World Turns and Another World. It was in this period that she moved from New York City to Dutchess County. Completing her stint in soap opera writing, she then began managing a theater, the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie, NY, transforming the space into an innovative theater venue with substantial outreach to young audiences and the introduction of more modern theatrical forms to traditional audiences. During this period she also served as a journalist, writing arts reviews for the newspapers of Dutchess County.

In 1994 she returned to New York and the modern dance world to manage the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. After returning that company to financial health, she returned to the theatre to serve as Executive director of what is now SDCS, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the national union for stage directors and choreographers. She held this position for 12 years and was a Tony voter for 20 years.

She retired from this post in 2007 and intended to retire, but was asked to teach Arts Management at SUNY Purchase which she did for another 7 years before finally retiring in 2017. Along the way she also taught Arts Management in courses, lectures and workshops at Yale, NYU, Emerson, Sarah Lawrence and SUNY/New Paltz.

She did all this while raising her daughter, Sarah, now Sarah Takats, and maintaining a household through three marriages: to the playwright William Hauptman, attorney David Hagstrom, and, for the last 29 years, to economist Jonathan Falk, who brought her to Rye in 1994.

In Rye, she was active as a watercolor painter studying under Brigitte Loritz at the Rye Arts Center, an enthusiastic volunteer at the Rye Presbyterian Church Thrift Shop and devoted gardener and member of the Little Garden Club of Rye. She was also a regular and ardent patron and bon vivant at The Town Dock, which she survived by only a few months.

She is survived by Jonathan and Sarah, as well as Sarah’s husband Sean Takats and two beloved grandchildren.

There will be a Celebration of Life at the Yale Club of New York City on October 24th by invitation only. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the arts organization of your choice in her memory. If you need a suggestion, donations to the Theatre Development Fund in her memory would be appropriate.