Unlike Broadway, which has seen a rebound, theater attendance as a whole has not returned to pre-pandemic levels while costs of producing are rising due to inflation as well as labor shortages.
Nonprofit leaders across the country are sounding the alarm bell as theaters near a point of financial crisis.
Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles sounded an early alarm, as one of the country’s largest nonprofit theater organizations, when it announced in June that it would be pausing programming at the Mark Taper Forum, its smallest theater known for promoting new work, starting next season and laying off 10 percent of staff across the organization. The Public Theater in New York, another giant among nonprofits, followed shortly thereafter, announcing in July that it would cut 19 percent of staff, after having already paused its Under the Radar festival, featuring experimental work.
oh, no- now how are we going to see the lie that is the “Laramie Project” or the anti-men “Vagina Monologues”….hey theatre people- bring back Shakespeare, or the ancient Greek dramas, and maybe people will come out.