Theater companies around the country, especially the well-established institutions we take for granted, are in trouble. The journalists who cover them have begun sounding the alarm. “The American theater is on the verge of collapse,” a guest essayist recently wrote inThe New York Times.
Fallout from the pandemic is somewhat responsible as former patrons decide to watch Netflix at home rather than venturing back out. But the seeds were planted years ago as theater’s base audience ages, ticket prices increase and alternatives proliferate.
”There is a struggle to figure out how to get audiences to re-engage with the art form,” says Tina Parker, co-artistic director of Kitchen Dog Theater, which is building a new performance space in the Design District that is expected to be ready by late spring.
”How do you get them excited about live theater? How do you get them off the couch, away from the streamers that aren’t paying me as a SAG actor? How do you get them in the doors and show them that theater is cool? People who appreciate theater are getting older and won’t be around forever. That’s the thing that keeps me up at night. What’s the secret sauce?”
From the Public Theater in New York to Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago to the sprawling Oregon Shakespeare Festival — which asked for $10 million in emergency funding this year — bedrock companies have been forced to lay off large chunks of their staffs.
Festivals have been canceled, productions abandoned, seasons truncated or delayed.
The half-century-old Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn., walked away from its longtime home because of rental costs, going itinerant. Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum has put all shows on hold. Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company has ceased operations until spring. The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, which presented 31 productions in 2017, will host only seven this year.
“By this time next year, I think the industry will shrink by half,” arts management consultant Amy Wratchford predicted inThe Washington Postin July.
Part of the problem is that some of these large companies have grown beyond their current means, having built multivenue campuses that include ancillary services like restaurants and bars.
”The Public is a great institution,” says Bruce DuBose, producing artistic director of Deep Ellum’s Undermain Theatre, which is about to open its 40th season. “But one of the things that has always struck me is, ‘Wow, this is like theater fantasy.’ You can go to four different venues in one building, and it’s got a bar and all these other kinds of enhancements. The same thing with Steppenwolf. That comes with a lot more cost. I don’t agree with the drastic predictions, but I think the people that run the institutions that produce theater will have to rethink how we do that and maybe some of the extravagance will have to go out.”
Though Undermain and other local companies have managed to weather the storm, Dallas is not immune to the trends. In fact, the city’s two longest-running theater troupes have been caught up in the malaise.
Dallas Theater Center, founded in 1959 and winner of the Tony Award for best regional theater in 2017, laid off 43% of its staff earlier this year, including its 10-member acting troupe. It also cut its annual budget by $3 million. Its new season is filled with money-saving co-productions, a one-man show and the crowd-pleasing musical "The Little Mermaid."
Theatre Three, co-founded by the late Dallas theater luminary Jac Alder in 1961, has been operating with a threatening deficit. A combination of factors hit the company: the loss of Alder in 2015 hurt fundraising, construction in and around its performance space at the Quadrangle moved the entrance and created parking confusion, and the pandemic made it impossible to perform indoors for two years. Theatre Three also has to pay $9,000 monthly for rent and utilities.
”When it comes to cost-cutting, when it comes to austerity, we have gone through what those other theaters are experiencing right now earlier,” says Theatre Three artistic director Jeffrey Schmidt.
The company’s answer has been to increase the number of plays in its 2023-24 season to eight and aggressively program popular improv groups in Theatre Too, its second performance space in the basement.
The schedule is full of “draws,” recognizable titles like "Deathtrap", "Pirates of Penzance" and "Misery", says associate artistic director Christie Vela. The season opens with the rockin’ "Lizzie: The Musical", about alleged ax murderer Lizzie Borden. Vela and Schmidt are promoting the season with the optimistic motto “Theatre Three is Killing It.”
Last season’s closing show, "Next to Normal", was the company’s biggest seller of the year, Schmidt says. Theatre Three also has attracted 40 first-time subscribers. Kitchen Dog reports its audience sizes grew over the course of 2022-23, too.
”We’re never going to suddenly see that all of our seats are full,” Schmidt says. “It’s calling people back to the theater one-by-one because of good experiences and good shows. It’s all headed in the right direction. We’re not seeing declining attendance anymore or declining subscriptions. It’s just slow.”
Questions have been raised about the viability of the subscription model that so many theater companies rely on for a substantial share of the revenue that pays for productions. Sales of season passes have fallen in Dallas and elsewhere.
Stage West Theatre in Fort Worth is an exception.
“I have heard for years about how the season ticket model is dead, how no one wants to do it,” says executive producer Dana Schultes. “For this upcoming season, which we haven’t even advertised yet, we are just over $1,000 from meeting our larger-than-ever goal of 700 to 800 subscriptions. We even raised ticket prices to reflect higher costs.”
Whatever the model, the new local season looks promising.
Seeds planted in the development of Dallas playwrights continue to bear fruit as Jonathan Norton ("I Am Delivered’t" at Dallas Theater Center), Erin Malone Turner ("What Fits Inside a Human Heart" at Soul Rep Theatre Company) and Janielle Kastner ("Anne-Tig-Uh-Knee" at Second Thought Theatre) premiere new works.
Meanwhile, Soul Rep’s season opener, "Cadillac Crew", about four civil rights workers wondering whether women’s rights are included in the bargain, is underway through Sept. 30 at the Bath House Cultural Center in a co-production with Echo Theatre.
The company also is collaborating again with Cara Mía Theatre, this season on "Yanga", about an enslaved African prince who led a successful rebellion in Mexico.
Cara Mía’s ambitious three-week Latinidades Festival opens Sept. 29 with "We Have Iré", a bilingual play about Cuban artists traveling to the U.S. and back home. It features Afro-Caribbean music, jazz, dance, spoken word and storytelling.
One of the highlights of Stage West’s season is the dark comedy "POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive", which starts with the president blurting out a four-letter word that turns into a global crisis.
Other shows to look forward to include Duncan Macmillan’s "Every Brilliant Thing" at Dallas Theater Center, the groundbreaking gay drama "The Boys in the Band" at Uptown Players and new artistic director Gustavo Ott’s "Two Kids in the Universe (Lirica)" at Teatro Dallas.
Undermain’s season looks heady, starting with the regional premiere of Star Finch’s "Bondage", set in pre-emancipation times on a small, unnamed Caribbean island. Later this fall, artistic director DuBose stars opposite Tyrees Allen in the Harold Pinter classic "No Man’s Land."
And next month, a few blocks over in Exposition Park, Dallas avant-garde pioneer Matthew Posey’s Ochre House Theater is premiering his latest out-there musical, "Kaput: The Show", with its puppet characters confronting prejudice and privilege.
”People have been disparaging the survival of theater for a long time, but it’s managed to survive all over the world,” DuBose says. “There’s a basic primal need for live performance and for being in the same space with performers. I think that’s ultimately going to bring audiences back to the theater.”
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