Lincoln Center Theater is launching a major new initiative to cultivate new audiences and to produce work by emerging playwrights, directors, and designers. Called LCT3, the program will begin in 2008–09 with two productions at the Duke Theater. The productions will be modestly staged, and all tickets will be $20.

The artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, André Bishop, said the goal is to replenish Lincoln Center “with new generations of writers and directors and designers and audiences” and to “broaden the scope and diversity” of the work the theater produces.

The program will be directed by Paige Evans, who until recently was an associate artistic director at Manhattan Theatre Club. The first production, “Clay,” a one-man hip-hop musical written and performed by a 23-year-old actor, Matt Sax, and directed by Eric Rosen, will have a five-week run in October at the Duke. Ms. Evans said the second production would be announced “as soon as we’ve decided what it is.”

In the long term, the goal is to build a 99-seat theater for LCT3, either on or near the campus of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. For the first three seasons, LCT will present its productions off-site.

Mr. Bishop has been considering for several years ways to bring new people into what he considers the artistic family of Lincoln Center Theater, which over the years has included playwrights such as Jon Robin Baitz, Tom Stoppard, and the late Wendy Wasserstein, and directors such as Daniel Sullivan, the late Gerald Gutierrez, and Jack O’Brien. Mr. Bishop said he sees LCT3 as his legacy.

Ms. Evans said she saw the position as “an incredible opportunity.” Asked if she had a staff to read the scripts that will no doubt start pouring in the door from playwrights and agents, she said that “at this point, I’ll be doing it all myself.” She said she was eager to work with downtown theaters and small theaters around the country to share information about up-and-coming artists.

Like many theaters, Lincoln Center Theater has worries about the “graying” of its audience. Mr. Bishop said he was confident that the audience would be replenished, but that it would take time.

“We’re talking about something that is going to take a number of years,” he said. In the long-term, “the writers and directors that we do in LCT3 will be done [in the main theaters, the Mitzi E. Newhouse and the Vivian Beaumont,] and the audiences whom we cultivate at LCT3, who will be single-ticket buyers, will become” Lincoln Center members.