After 45 years, Carole Rothman plans to step down from her perch atop Second Stage. 

Which mean now is as good a time as any to glean patterns in how she programmed the institution’s Broadway home at the Hayes since 2018, and what her producing tried to add to the Great White Way ecosystem. Trends are always imperfect, but I’ve noticed three noteworthy strands:

Uno: Lots of comedies, a relative rarity compared to the Serious Straight Dramas that usually dominate The Main Stem.

Dos: Imported off-Broadway plays — even from other companies — that failed to meet not-nonprofit commercial demands in their initial runs.

Tres: 2018’s Straight White Men, 2023’s The Thanksgiving Play, and this season’s Appropriate = three plays by nonwhite writers, populated by white characters.