NEW YORK, NY.- On Saturday night, Zack Winokur stood at the top row of the amphitheater of Little Island. Hundreds of people had taken their seats for the first performance of the park’s summer season, but he didn’t feel like joining them. “I’m just going to pace,” he said.

If Winokur, Little Island’s producing artistic director, was restless, it was for good reason. The park, a cluster of tulip-shaped structures that support rolling hills above the Hudson River, had been open since 2021, and its amphitheater had been used plenty of times before.

But Saturday’s performance, the premiere of Twyla Tharp’s “How Long Blues,” was a milestone for Little Island, and for New York City: the opening, or rather rebooting, of an institution dedicated solely to commissioning and supporting artists, with Winokur’s curatorial vision and the extremely deep pockets of billionaire mogul Barry Diller.

Outdoors, with a thrust stage, Little Island’s theater is subject to the elements and open to onlookers, who can watch performances, for free, from the winding paths of the park. (Tickets for amphitheater seats are $25.) The only real barrier to entry, Winokur said, is the West Side Highway.

What really sets the theater apart, though, is its programming of world premiere after world premiere by top-shelf artists. Behind that is Winokur, 35, a Juilliard-trained dancer-turned-director who was a founder of the essential, increasingly visible collective American Modern Opera Company, or AMOC. Now, with Little Island, he is at the vanguard of his generation’s artistic leaders, with a New York stage to call his own.

The financial support that Diller has pledged to Little Island’s programming, millions of dollars with no end in sight, is the kind that most artistic leaders only dream of. Winokur does not have to spend his days courting fundraisers or securing residencies; instead, he can provide money and space, like a producer.

“I’m thinking of this being a service and utility to artists,” he said.

He is a relative latecomer to Little Island’s staff, though he did, with members of AMOC, present music by Julius Eastman there in 2021. Diller, who paid for the development and construction of the park, had always wanted it to include a performing arts program, but despite the advice of his friend Scott Rudin, the producing titan of Broadway and film (who retreated from the spotlight after accusations of bullying three years ago), he didn’t hire an artistic director immediately.

“Retrospectively, I think Barry was more right than I was,” said Rudin, who, since Little Island’s conception a decade ago, has advised on its programming. “I was on the bandwagon of doing it all at once, and he said, ‘No, we need to be a park.’”

That changed last year, when Winokur was hired.

Diller heard about him from Rudin, who took notice of Winokur when a show he directed, an adaptation of Langston Hughes’ poem “The Black Clown,” came to New York in 2019. (It starred bass-baritone Davóne Tines, who will collaborate with Winokur again on “Robeson” at Little Island later this month.)

Rudin and Winokur began to discuss a future for “The Black Clown,” and reunited when Rudin brought him on to organize shows for NY Pops Up, a government-supported initiative for live performances during the pandemic. When the time came to hire someone at Little Island, Winokur was an obvious choice.

“I thought Little Island would be a great thing for him,” Rudin said. “He has a very interesting mix of generosity and ambition, and when you look at the people who have led arts institutions successfully, they’ve always had that.”

Winokur started last June with a lofty, but also punishing, mandate: to plan an entire season of premieres to start just a year later. “It’s completely psychotic,” he said, “that we’re here and doing this much stuff.” Diller, though, has been delighted by the lineup. “He has exceeded expectations,” he said of Winokur, “which weren’t low.”

Little Island is managed from the flagship building of Diane von Furstenberg, Diller’s wife, in the meatpacking district. Winokur’s office is decorated with sticky notes that map out the park’s current and future seasons of programming.

Winokur maintains his leadership role at AMOC, and his work is now broadly entangled with that collective and Little Island. When it came time to plan the 2024 season at the park, he reached out to some of the company’s artists, but also to an array of people who were available and interested in turning around something quickly.

Tharp came onboard early. Winokur said he felt it was important to provide space for dance, a chronically impoverished art form. And he thought that it would be valuable to learn from “the most experienced dance maker on the planet,” who, crucially, had experience with site-specific work.

From there, he wanted to go “really high and really low” with programming. He was also interested in trying things he hadn’t before, and in commissioning artists who would want to take advantage of the theater’s unusual environment, such as choreographer Pam Tanowitz. She created the evening-length work “Day for Night,” and will also appear at the Glade, a smaller stage nearby that will be used for a series of free performances.

Tanowitz said she was intrigued by the possibility of incorporating nature and other parts of the island, and by the night-and-day duality provided by the sunset over the Hudson. And, during the planning process, Winokur was “a great collaborator,” she said.

“He’s able to hear what an artist is saying and then articulate it and be able to help with that idea,” Tanowitz said. “He’s there to support, and not tell what he thinks.”

Winokur is a hands-on leader, who thinks like an artist even when acting as a producer, and he thrills at seeing and talking about art. His conversations with Tanowitz are similar to those he’s had with other Little Island artists, especially about seasons to come. Future projects, though, will be different, if only because they will have the added element of further productions at other theaters and in other cities.

“We’re in it,” Diller said of Little Island’s ambitions. “It’s not curing cancer, but it’s curing lots of other things that are really important.” He may not have much to offer in the way of curing cancer, he added, but in the often underfunded, overlooked world of performing arts, he and his family foundation can “enrich the cultural good.”

At “How Long Blues” on Saturday, there was already evidence that plans for Little Island were bearing fruit. Winokur felt good, a half-hour before curtain, as he watched ushers help people enter the theater, and concession stands attract long lines. When the performance began, he lingered at a standing-room rail while Tharp sat nearby with another of the show’s creators, T Bone Burnett.

Casual spectators lined the paths that offered a view of the theater, and many of them stayed for the entire show. The weather cooperated, as did the city, with neither a helicopter overhead nor a passing party boat distracting too much from the music and choreography.

Audience members were quick to give a standing ovation; people who had watched from the park were just as enthusiastic in their applause.

The evening, Rudin later said, came off like a proof of concept. Once the theater emptied, Winokur thought about whether he felt happy with the results.

“Yeah, I am,” he said, with high-pitched enthusiasm. Then he darted down the steps of the theater and knelt next to Tharp, eager to hear from her and get back to work.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.