When Ivan Lincoln was a lad growing up on a sugar beet farm near Twin Falls, Idaho, he had neighbors who subscribed to "The New Yorker." These neighbors were a bit of an oddity, Lincoln says. "Everybody else subscribed to 'The Farm Journal."'

At any rate, Lincoln was in the habit of visiting his neighbors and reading their magazines, and that's how he learned of a new play called "Waiting for Godot." He thought absurdist comedy sounded more fascinating than sugar beets.

Thus began a lifetime of fascination with theater. He was only 15 years old and had never been to the theater, but he was intrigued.

Today, when Lincoln retires from the Deseret Morning News, he will have spent 48 years as a journalist, 39 of those years at the News. He began his career at the Twin Falls Times-News, writing PTA and Grange notices and obituaries. He worked at his hometown paper for five years, during which time he wrote his first play review. It was of the local high school musical, and he covered it the way he would have covered a city council meeting, Lincoln recalls.

He then reported for the Ogden Standard-Examiner for three years before coming to the Deseret News as a general assignment writer and copy editor. At the News, Lincoln eventually moved to the newly formed Today section (now the features department), where he designed pages. He became a theater writer and then, in 1990, the paper's main theater critic.

He's been amazed to watch how theater has grown in the state over the past 40 years, he says. Lincoln says he's watched Pioneer Theatre Company become one of the best regional theaters in the country. "It says a lot that they were able to get the rights to 'Les Miserables."'

Lincoln remembers when Salt Lake Acting Company was in Arrow Press Square. He remembers going out to write about a new little theater the Hale family was starting — and talking to Nathan and Ruth Hale while they installed the seats. Lincoln knew Pat Davis and Ralph Rogers when they were at Promised Valley Playhouse. He covered the Utah Shakespeare Festival when it won the Tony Award for Best Regional Theater in 2000.

Over the years, Lincoln says, he's only seen a handful of truly disastrous productions. Early in his career as critic, he tried to warn his readers about one company that billed itself as a "national touring company" of "Phantom of the Opera," because he was suspicious of its credentials before it even got to town. Readers called to thank him for helping them avoid wasting their money.

But for the most part, he tried to not be a vicious critic, he says. "I tried to look for both positives and negatives."