John Schreiber has spent the better part of 50 years as a producer, most of it backstage, at thousands of events. He likes it there.
Saturday night, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s Spotlight Gala, he stepped out from the wings, receiving a long ovation.
“You all have touched a place in my heart that I didn’t know existed,” he told the crowd.
The gala, which honored Schreiber with its Founders Award as he prepares to step down as CEO on July 1, 2027, raised a record $3.6 million (and counting).
Co-chairs Charlie Lowrey and Mindy Cohen also announced that the John Schreiber Social Impact Fund, which will permanently fund NJPAC’s arts education, community engagement and arts-and-wellbeing programs, has now reached $75 million toward its $100 million goal. Leon and Toby Cooperman launched the fund last year with $50 million.
But the night belonged to Schreiber, and he used his time to tell the story of how he got there.
“I’m standing center stage to say thank you to all of you for the privilege,” he said.
***
In 2011, Schreiber was working in the movie business in Los Angeles, producing social action campaigns for films such as “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Waiting for Superman.” His family was in Montclair. Every week, he flew to the office in Beverly Hills and flew back for the weekend.
He loved the work. But he felt like a displaced person.
“Kids need a father seven days a week, not two,” he said.
He had spent the first 30 years of his career producing jazz, blues, folk, comedy and literary events, and he had always wanted to get back to that work. So, when he read in The New
York Times that Larry Goldman was retiring after 22 years as NJPAC’s founding leader, he asked a friend to get him an interview.
“I got the interview. Then something amazing happened. I got the job,” he said. “I was surprised. I wasn’t the obvious choice. I’d never run a nonprofit.”
Even more, he admitted that his knowledge of Newark was near zero.
“But when I showed up for work in June 2011, I understood immediately that I’d come home,” he said. “I fell in love with this city and the folks who were here.”
Newark took a little longer, he joked.
“Newark didn’t know me then, and our city can sometimes present a stern face that shields a warm heart,” he said. “Guess what? I got welcomed.”
***
As he always does, Schreiber spread the credit for NJPAC’s success around.
And as he always does, he thanks the four people who first imagined NJPAC 40 years ago — Gov. Tom Kean, Ray Chambers, former Newark Mayor Sharpe James and Larry Goldman.
On Saturday night, he went even further, thanking the city’s elders who gave a new arrival civic history lessons; to his family; and to his staff, whom he called “the best in the business.”
Everything NJPAC has done on his watch, from education and community engagement to Lionsgate Newark and the Cooperman Family Arts Education and Community Center, he said, “happens because of you.”
The speakers before him returned the praise.
Kean, who introduced Baraka, said that when NJPAC’s founders first imagined an arts center for Newark, they never thought about how hard it would be to run. Schreiber, he said, has needed political skills, business skills and now construction skills, and NJPAC has become “so much more than we ever dreamed.”
Baraka recalled Schreiber coming to his office and asking who could replace him.
“I wanted to throw him out,” Baraka said.
The mayor called the night bittersweet.
“Sweet because we get to celebrate an incredible person — bitter because I don’t know who the hell is going to come here afterwards,” he said.
***
Schreiber urged the room to stick with NJPAC as it heads into its next 30 years.
And he closed with a message that went beyond the arts center.
“We find ourselves at a uniquely challenging time in the life of our democracy, but I do not fret for our beloved community,” he said. “Together, we have the grit, the determination, the creativity and the kindness to help each other.
“Newark has so much to teach the nation. Let’s continue to show them.”
