reopened the Taper after nearly two years of pandemic closures, expressed sympathy for CTG’s leaders and noted that the theater industry was in trouble long before COVID-19. He singled out the subscriber model — in which theaters rely on a core base of fans to subsidize shows before they are staged — as a system of support that failed years ago.
“Budgeting for Uncertainty,” a Theatre Communications Group survey of 99 member theaters this year, found that 62% were budgeting for a deficit, up from 30% in 2022 and 10% in 2021. With three theaters and almost 1,000 seats to sell, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival operates on a budget that hovers around $40 million. Between March and June 2020, the company laid off 90% of its 500-person full-time and seasonal staff; it’s still operating with only about half of its pre-pandemic staffing. The company has cut back its annual programming from 10 shows to only five. Those productions, however, are selling so Yu said she is “cautiously optimistic.
Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, said companies had spent the last three years improvising, hoping for a return to normal. Last month, Eustis made the “agonizing” decision that the Public would not produce its Under the Radar festival next year, and it laid off the festival’s producer, Mark Russell. Since 2005, Under the Radar had been home to some of theater’s most experimental work, and its loss has been lamented internationally.
The emptying out of urban cores as workers went remote, and the rise of streaming entertainment at home, are affecting live theaters in ways that nobody quite imagined, said Kevin Moriarty, executive director of Dallas Theater Center.
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