The State of Nonprofit Theater in America Invites New Possibilities

It is fair to say that even before 2020, when live performance was abruptly halted, nonprofit theater in America had a problem. 

Simply put: the cost of human labor in a field that rightfully prioritizes the needs of artists and producers tends to increase faster than ticket income, creating a “cost disease” (a term popularized in the 1960s) in which expenses outpace revenues.

Unsurprisingly, profit-maximizing Broadway productions, by definition, don’t feel this disease most acutely. Instead, it’s the mission-driven regional and local theaters—those that define themselves by and with the communities where they reside—that suffer the most from cost disease. And due to the punishing impacts of the pandemic, the challenges faced by today’s nonprofit theaters have become even more dire, from staff layoffs to season cancellations and even theater closures. 

Cost disease is, of course, a largely financial dilemma, and it says nothing of a lack of cultural competencies needed to build authentic relationships with communities that have been historically excluded from theater ecosystems.

Structural and systemic problems abound. So, where can we find optimism about the state of nonprofit theater in America today?

Stephanie Ybarra, Mellon program officer and former artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage, shares her perspective on what may be an inflection point for nonprofit theaters in America, underscoring how a general state of precarity has catalyzed new visions of a fundamentally different theater landscape.

It seems uniquely difficult to keep nonprofit theaters afloat. Why is it so important to try? 

There are so many different ways into this case-making for nonprofit theaters.  

There's an economic argument to make in which the arts and culture sector exceeds some of the biggest economic engines out there, and theater is a massive piece of that. The sector is not just connected to local economies and ecologies—it’s also one of our country's hugest exports. 

There's also an educational argument. We know we have study upon study that tell us that our young people are more well-rounded and more equipped to meet the needs of society today when they're engaging with the arts. Theater does that by way of collaboration, by way of teamwork, by way of literacy—you name it. 

Then there is the fundamental public good case. Any people who work in the arts believe that they are fundamentally human—and a fundamental public good. We are better when we are examining our humanity through stories. And that's what theater does. 

Is there a good way for nonprofit theaters to combat cost disease? 

Well, I think cost disease will always be there. But here’s how I think of theaters that are mitigating it to the best of their ability: instead of reaching for a kind of elitist structure that privileges the top of the donor pyramid, some theaters are flipping that and looking toward volume of engagement. And I don't only mean just in terms of buying a ticket. It's focused on aggregating small revenue rocks—that grassroots component. As a result, the theaters are looking more like grassroots political fundraising than anything else.  

We’re going to be more and more reliant on contributed dollars to our nonprofit theaters. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I hope it forces a mindset, operational, and curatorial shift that is more oriented to actually serving our entire community so that they are literally and figuratively bought in. 

Let’s get specific. Which organizations are exploring approaches that meet the challenges of the moment? 

One of the straight-up business model shifts is True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta. They're wholly and completely stepping away from the season subscription model. And they’re not stair-stepping away from it—they’re eschewing even the construct of “season” to a degree. Essentially, every time they produce a show, they go out and build that marketing platform from scratch, and they’re going to start banking on a broader institutional brand that will, in turn, help carry the individual products. (It used to be the reverse.) It will allow True Colors to be nimbler in terms of how they're expending their revenue. 

There’s also this brilliant model around advocacy that’s being demonstrated by the Professional Non-Profit Theater Coalition—a historic coalition of nonprofit theaters of all sizes from all 50 states and DC that’s employing grassroots approaches and sophisticated advocacy techniques. Specifically, they’re making regular trips to DC and coordinating their efforts around visiting their lawmakers at a federal level. And they’ve recently written their own bill called the STAGE Act that would provide $1 billion annually for nonprofit theaters over five years. Whether or not the bill passes, it almost doesn't matter because we're so early in our learning about how to effectively advocate for an entire sector that is so diverse. 

Outside of financial structures, how else are nonprofit theaters evolving? 

Well, a fancy new financial approach means nothing if you do not have the organizational culture to support it. And in that way, I think about Mellon's recent grant to Actors Theatre of Louisville. Their executive artistic director Robert Barry Fleming is leading that culture shift and really doing incredible work to try to redefine the theater’s relationship to its immediate community—you’ve got to reconcile and reckon with and name the historic complicity in exclusionary practices. He and the theater are really trying to imagine forward the way the theater can actively and explicitly be contributing to community health and well-being. 

To give another concrete example, there’s the New Native Theatre in Minneapolis, which is a new Mellon grantee. When they're contemplating a rehearsal process, they're not doing cookie-cutter planning. They're understanding that the Indigenous artists with whom they work are coming to the table with values that are specific to their cultures. In this case, that looks like contemplating the importance of familial connections—blood family or chosen family. And the theater is asking, “How do we craft a rehearsal space and schedule that holds that value at the center?” Like, you don’t got family without food. Food must be there. So, how can you center breaking bread together inside of a rehearsal space? I think that's just the internal workings of making a show together that they've radically reoriented to meet their community needs. 

There’s clearly a lot of experimenting and reckoning going on right now. So let’s assume it continues. In the future (say, 10 years from now), what do you think looks different? 

I start by imagining a person who might be culturally curious. They might buy a ticket to a play, but they're frequenting their local theater because they're seeing music there, they're engaged in conversations there, their book club is meeting there. Maybe they're organizing for something and that's the space where they know they can come together. They're engaging with physical space and they’re engaging with the artisans, too. It feels blasphemous to say, but I actually think it's critical for our nonprofit theaters to be able to invite people in to engage with something other than a play. 

When I look at libraries, they're the shining example of the way theaters could think about themselves. Yes, you can still check out a book at a library. But you can also go into a library and sit down and use a computer, too. They haven’t shied away from e-books. They have workshops around resumes. You can even just go in and use the air conditioning and the bathroom. 

But importantly, what makes theaters different from libraries is that libraries are usually part of a municipal structure and theaters are not—theaters are led (and sort of spiritually governed) by artistic pursuit and imaginative pursuit. The art making of theater is historically animated and generated by radical thinkers, by the most marginalized among us. So that's where I think theaters can be a wonderful complement to the other public spheres that currently exist. 

When the next catastrophe happens, or when the next tragedy happens, or when the next giant win happens, I imagine that everybody’s sort of like, “what's happening at our local theater? How do we engage with this moment vis-à-vis our theater artists?” That's what I want, and that will look like a million different things, but it's a mindset I personally am dreaming about and reaching for.