Bernard Gersten, who helped turn two of New York’s nonprofit theater companies into powerhouse producers and presenters of award-winning plays and musicals, died April 27 at his home in Manhattan. He was 97.

Mr. Gersten was Joseph Papp’s top deputy at the New York Shakespeare Festival for 18 years in the 1960s and ‘70s, a time when the two worked together to build the Delacorte Theater in Central Park for free summer productions of Shakespeare, and to turn the old Astor Library on Lafayette Street in the East Village into the Public Theater.

Subsequently, Mr. Gersten worked for Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios and the Radio City Music Hall. Then in 1985, Lincoln Center’s board chose Mr. Gersten as executive producer. In his first three years, he oversaw more than 20 plays and 2,100 performances. During his tenure, Lincoln Center Theater produced more than 120 shows, many winning Tony and Drama Desk awards.

In 2010, on the 25th anniversary of his joining Lincoln Center Theater, Mr. Gersten reflected on the nature of theater as having four elements: a building, artists, money, and an audience. “How you mix them, how you adjust them, how you administer them is the secret of success or failure,” he said.