American Theatre Crisis (Part I)

In the last few months, American theaters have faced a number of heartbreaking closures, layoffs, emergency fundraising pushes, cancelled seasons, and cut programs. This has affected theaters that [The Feast] staff and artists have loved, worked at, and admired. We’re grieving these losses.

Some of the factors affecting the field as a whole are affecting us and some aren’t. Pandemic relief funding drying up has hit us just as hard as other theaters. On the other hand, in a moment when ticket sales are slow nationally, our 2022-2023 season was our best-attended of all time. This is an incredible gift. To everyone who saw a show, donated to make our work possible, or made art with us, we thank you profusely. Particularly in this moment, we don’t take it for granted for an instant. 

That being said, theatre always operates on razor-thin margins. We aren’t immune to field-wide trends of decreasing ticket sales and donations alongside rising inflation. We’re paying close attention to these changes to the ecosystem so we can respond intelligently. We’re really passionate about this.

We want to be in dialogue with you about this, because it’s clear that the old way of doing things is broken. This crisis can open possibilities for new models, but not through naïve hope. We need everyone’s participation—whether it be your butt in the audience, your recurring donation, your thoughtful advocacy and engagement—to transform the way we make theater in this crisis.

The reflections below lay out some of the heartaches, inspirations, and strongly held opinions we hold in response to this crisis. In Part II of this Project Notes, Creative Producer Dedra Woods will share her reflections on the crisis—along with some more links and resources from our whole team.

We’re grateful to be part of this conversation with you, we’re grateful to make theatre with you, and we look forward to shaping the future of this vulnerable but essential art form alongside you.

Warmly,

[The Feast] Staff

(Ryan, Ellen, Dedra, and Jesse)

Notes

The Big Picture of the American Theatre Crisis

If you’re looking for big-picture explainer on this crisis, this piece from American Theatre Magazine will lay it out for you. It also points to what kind of theatre is succeeding in this moment—which frankly gives me hope for [The Feast]. The piece argues that audiences are looking not just for shows, but for “events” and, in the words of departing Soho Rep Artistic Director Sarah Benson, “People want to see ambitious work and things they haven’t seen before. They want to be challenged.” We’ve been increasingly using the language of “theatrical event” to describe our work. Further, by moving away from traditional seasons toward a project-based producing model, we’re already laying the foundations for making this kind of theatre. —Jesse Roth, Communications Manager

Pay for Art not Buildings

This article is about Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, OR, canceling their upcoming season due to financial instability and budget shortfalls. The sentence I want to talk about is…

“The decision comes at an otherwise auspicious time for the company, as construction is underway on what’s projected to be its $30 million new home.”

Of course this is not an auspicious time for the company! They don’t have enough resources to make art, the substance of a theatre company’s mission!

Buildings aren’t silver bullets and signs of success. We gotta stop hoarding resources through capital campaign earmarks. Arts spaces are useless if they’re not populated with cultural workers. The real work is choosing wages over spaces. 
This is not meant specifically as a take-down of Artists Rep. Capital campaigns take years to plan and launch; I’m sure when this one began circumstances were different, and reasons and intentions were good. 

Instead, this is a critique of a whole system that equates professionalism, prestige, and effectiveness with comfortable buildings.

I’m begging any government agencies and private funders who may be listening to invest first in the boring, un-sexy work of creating fairly compensated jobs for artists so they can stay in the field. I’m begging media to get smarter about how you cover this. I’m begging arts leaders to fight and fundraise for your people before you invest in a shiny new space. This will mean hard trade-offs! Reject that capital project money—I know it’s most of what’s available, but now you’re a real estate company managing a rental space. Start the tricky, long-term project of shifting the mindset of your donors and audiences to get on board with these priorities.

This is not just a small-organization idea that companies naturally must outgrow as they “professionalize”! Companies with much longer histories and larger budgets than [The Feast] are doing this in inventive, principled ways. Soho Rep’s venue is kind of a fringe-y, tiny sh*thole—which I say with loving admiration, because their Project Number One (which started in the depths of 2020) puts artists on staff with $50k salaries and health insurance. Long Warf Theatre gave up their historic building all together in favor of a more responsive, itinerant, partnership-based producing model. It’s all possible! —Ellen Abram, Executive Director

Grieving the Theatres that Raised Us

This crisis has killed off or brutally hit some of the theaters that “raised me” in Chicago. Sideshow Theatre—whose Stupid Fucking Bird makes me smile just to think about and whose No More Sad Things broke my heart—has shuttered. Lookingglass Theatre (who has not closed, but has laid off staff and paused production) produced a Moby Dick that was one of the most exquisitely designed works I’ve ever seen. Finally, The New Coordinates, which gave me my directing debut, also closed its doors. I’m so sad these theaters are gone or badly injured, while treasuring the ways they inspired me and cultivated me as an artist. —Jesse Roth, Communications Manager