Critics grumbled when he and his board rejected a proposal by the foundation's resident theater company to occupy one of the more intimate theaters in favor of housing the popular schlock show Tony n'Tina's Wedding there.
"We could have never done this without Lee," said Rusty Young, chief executive of the theater foundation.
She joined the Board of Trustees of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Foundation, Inc., in 1973, serving for 38 years.
She said the board was considering merging the foundation into the theater, a move that she said might require the approval of the state attorney general.
One was Mr. Springsteen, who has a long association with the Count Basie, and whose wife, Patty Scialfa, sits on the theater foundation's board of directors.
In 1999, Mr. Rangel was forced out as chairman of the Apollo Theater foundation after the state attorney general's office charged that the board had failed to collect more than $4 million owed to the theater by a company controlled by his ally Mr. Sutton.
The foundation holds popular theater camps each summer.
The Public was one of three theaters to receive $700,000 each from the foundation, along with Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.
While the foundations of the Theater (as it was known) remained, the walls themselves did not.
The U.S. has a better approach: our tax policy encourages diverse private support, by individuals and foundations, of music, theater, dance and the visual arts.
Ms. Yoo, who had been working as co-artistic director for two years, will need to stabilize the economic and physical foundations of the theater, which she estimated will have a $2 million budget for the coming season.
