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Brigid Bergin: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin in for Alison Stewart. It's safe to say that the not-for-profit theater scene is in full crisis mode. That's according to a new article from New York Times theater reporter Michael Paulson. He recently interviewed directors and programmers of 72 top regional theaters around the country outside of the Broadway bubble. From those conversations, it's estimated that next year these theaters plan to produce 20% fewer shows than the last full season before the pandemic. Even in our own city, The Public Theater where Hamilton first debuted, had to recently cut 19% of their workforce.

What's the reason for this sudden crisis? Where did all the money go, and what are the implications for the role of local non-profit arts organizations in local communities going forward? We're going to try to answer some of those questions and take your calls with New York Times reporter Michael Paulson now, who wrote the article, A Crisis in America's Theaters Leaves Prestigious Stages Dark. Hey, Michael, welcome to All Of It on WNYC.

Michael Paulson: Thanks so much.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Help us report this story. Are you a fan of going to a non-profit theater in your local community, or maybe you're an actor or director of a non-profit theater or work with one in some capacity in our listening area? What struggles are you facing? Call us or text us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Or you can reach us on social media @AllOfItWNYC.

Are you someone who went to a lot of local theater before the pandemic and maybe you're not going now as often, or perhaps you were a donor that has directed your gifts elsewhere? What prompted those decisions? Again, the number 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Or maybe you could tell us, what does local non-profit theater mean to you and your community? No, Broadway doesn't count. Or maybe you're involved in a different kind of non-profit arts organization and are facing similar economic struggles right now? We want to hear about all of it. What do you think needs to change? The number's 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Michael, let's start the overall crisis. One artistic director of a theater in Atlanta was quoted in your story saying that this might be the biggest crisis non-profit theaters have ever faced. Arts non-profits have always run on a pretty slim budget, a tight ship. Broadly speaking, what do you think is this specific moment causing so many to sound such an alarm about the health of non-profit theater?

Michael Paulson: It's an excellent question. We're seeing costs rising and revenue falling, and that's a really problematic formula for all these institutions. Of course, there are these macro factors that you're well aware of. We've just been through this pandemic and most theaters were closed for at least a year and a half. We've been living through an inflationary economy and then there are consequences to those events on the audience front. A lot of people haven't come back. A lot of people have, but not as many as were present before the pandemic for a variety of reasons. We can talk about that at length but audience numbers are down.

Costs are up, not only because of inflation, but because of some of the equity and fairness concerns that arose in the summer of 2020, which has led to a conclusion that too many people were being underpaid in the theater world, that too many people were being treated as if this was a world in which passion was sufficient. Salaries have been rising, and that's bringing costs up as well.

Brigid Bergin: Before we get into some of the different factors that you explored in your piece, I think when we think about some of these bigger economic themes that we have been dealing with over the past few years, it's hard to process the fact that some of the reports that we're seeing this summer about the US economy are actually pretty good that maybe the economy isn't as weak as we previously thought, a lot of spending on consumer goods and travel. Is this just a time lag issue, or how does this play into the fact that non-profit theaters are still in their own economic crisis?

Michael Paulson: Yes. In a way, there is this delayed effect on theaters, and that's caused largely because you remember that early in the pandemic the federal government in particular set aside a huge amount of money for performing arts in the US. The US has historically been among the least supportive of Western governments of the arts. At the height of the pandemic, there was this Shuttered Venues Operators Grant program that set aside billions of dollars for the performing arts in the US and it made a huge difference, kept many organizations afloat, but that money is now running out, and so there's a delayed reckoning for a lot of these organizations.

That explains why this is happening now, even as the economy sort of stabilizes. One of the effects of it is that we're now seeing a large number of theaters going under. This seems like every month there's another three or four that fail, most of them small to mid-sized all over the country. There's real signs that this is having a real impact.

Brigid Bergin: Well, we want to bring some of our listeners into this conversation to talk about how people are experiencing this. Michael in Brooklyn, thanks for calling All Of It. Welcome to WNYC.

Michael: Thank you so much. I was a producing director of a pretty prominent regional theater in the Berkshires and an artistic director of a theater in Western New York. I've been sidetracked because I'm also a fundraiser in the not-for-profit sector and I've been pulled into advancement and development positions. I couldn't wait to get back to being an artistic director and then the pandemic happened, and I thank God I never got that position because I would be crushed in seeing all these jobs lost and trying to rebuild audiences. The truth is, we did a terrible job in the last couple of decades in developing new audiences.

Outside of major cities, people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s in the theater were just not present. I would say that from the stage, I said, "Here is our challenge. Look around the theater right now. See the number of people who are here who are not under the age of 50. This is our difficult challenge." The pandemic wiped out. People are not yearning to go back into theaters because they don't miss it in the way that they should.

Brigid Bergin: Michael, are you still doing the fundraising work now?

Michael: Yes, but I'm in the arts ed space in Brooklyn, and I am determined to find the new, new, new audiences and get in front of kids because in my borough, which I adore so much, which is arts-rich, there are vast majorities of kids who have never seen a live performance at all. That's completely unacceptable.

Brigid Bergin: Michael, thank you so much for that call. A lot of interesting points raised there by Michael. Any reactions to the call?

Michael Paulson: Michael, yes, as you say, he makes a lot of good points. The pandemic is sometimes described as the great accelerator. It sort of accelerated trends that were already underway, and definitely, some theaters and other performing arts organizations began the pandemic in a weak position, particularly from the vantage point of audiences. The audiences were skewed older. Theaters indeed had not done a great job at bringing younger people in.

That has caused a lot of pain now as a lot of older theatergoers have not returned because of either health concerns or because they've actually died or because they're simply no longer able to get to theaters. There's a lot of work to be done in developing new audiences, and I'm glad to hear that Michael is working on that.

Brigid Bergin: Yes, doing that work in Brooklyn. I want to read a text that we received. The listener Alex wrote, "I work at a non-profit theater in New Jersey. There are countless reasons theater is struggling. Audiences are definitely more selective about where they spend their money. We lost a lot of experienced workers during the pandemic to other industries. Material travel and housing costs are up. There isn't the same government investment as many Western countries have." A lot of the themes that you wrote about and that you talked about, Michael, in that text.

I want to go back to your article for a moment. You spoke to dozens of non-profit directors around the country. We've heard a lot of themes from our listeners that parallel, I think, some of what you had, but did anything stand out to you in particular among the concerns that they raised about the industry?

Michael Paulson: One of the concerns that the person from New Jersey who texted you flagged is an exodus of certain kinds of workers from the field during the pandemic. I think that's important to note. Particularly people like carpenters and electricians and even stage managers, when they were unemployed for a long period of time, they started looking around and realized that they could make more money and have more family-friendly hours and have more dependable work in other industries. It's proved really hard to lure those folks back. That's become a challenge for theaters and it has driven up costs.

One of the things that did strike me is how this is all affecting programming and how this intersects with the discussion going on about what kind of art is produced. One thing that's happening is that the number of people who subscribe to theaters is going down. That means more and more shows have to be sold as single tickets. One of the effects that that has is it means it discourages risky work. Subscribers sign on at the beginning of a season with the understanding that, "I'm going to see everything at this particular theater because I believe in this institution and I trust their judgment."

Single-ticket buyers are motivated by a particular title. They're much more likely to be like, "What am I going to do this weekend? What am I going to do next week? What am I going to do tonight?" They're much more drawn to titles or artists who they already know. There's some tension there that sort of disincentivizes theaters from programming work that might be risky or challenging. That's a challenge for a field that is looking to discover new voices, new ideas, new themes.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. We've hit on this idea of declining attendance from a couple of different perspectives, but I was wondering if you could give it some scale. How significant of a decline are we talking about at this point?

Michael Paulson: Sure. A number of theaters have told me that they lost half of their subscribers during the pandemic, 50%, so that's huge. Now they are trying to make some of that up with single-ticket buyers, but it's harder. Single-ticket buyers are costlier to woo. It costs more to market to them. We're talking audiences down anywhere from 20% to 40%, I would say. There are related challenges. Theaters also depend heavily on philanthropy. For many non-profits, that's the bulk of their budget because these institutions tend to have fairly small houses.

The philanthropic world is changing as well. A lot of institutional givers, I'm thinking about foundations, have shifted their priorities away from the arts toward social services and social justice. That has become a challenge for arts organizations as well.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, this is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with Michael Paulson, the theater reporter for the New York Times, about his recent article, A Crisis in America’s Theaters Leaves Prestigious Stages Dark, and we want you to be part of this conversation. Are you a fan of non-profit theater? Maybe you are an actor, director, or you've worked in non-profit theater in some capacity. We want to hear about the challenges you are facing. Help us report this story.

Maybe you are one of those people who used to give, a donor to non-profit theater but you made a choice to give elsewhere. What prompted that decision? Or are you involved in another non-profit arts organization? Does this conversation really resonate with you? Do you feel like some of the same issues that non-profit theaters are experiencing are also the issues that you are experiencing? Give us a call. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Or reach us on social media @AllOfItWNYC.

Michael, let's go back to this idea of programming, as you mentioned. When a non-profit theater isn't able to do experimental programming to find new voices and new actors, it's part of what we experience for those of us who maybe only go to Broadway also experience, right? Isn't this where some of the new talent in new work first begins?

Michael Paulson: Absolutely. This is where new voices are nurtured and where some of the riskiest work in theater happens. Broadway is a primarily commercial environment, and the bulk of the audience is tourists. It tends to skew toward mass-market entertainment, a lot of adaptations of films and shows developed out of pop music catalogs, and so on. There's some adventurous work on Broadway as well, but it's not primarily how we think about that world.

The non-profit theater world tends to do a lot more programming of plays and work that is new and a little bit more challenging. This climate is testing that. This big conversation might be too generous to describe what's happening, but I think a lot of artistic directors are thinking about, "What kinds of programming do I have to plan to get people in the door? How do I resolve the tension between doing consistently populist easy material and the way that I see my mission?"

Brigid Bergin: Sure.

Michael Paulson: Different people are answering those questions differently.

Brigid Bergin: I want to get a couple--

Michael Paulson: [crosstalk] you alluded at the beginning just to the idea that there's less theater being done in America, which is one of the things that I kind of concluded after talking to a lot of theaters, and there's also less work for artists. Fewer shows mean fewer jobs. It's fewer productions. Also, a lot of the productions that are happening now are smaller because it's less expensive. That means less work for actors and designers and directors and writers-

Brigid Bergin: I want to bring--

Michael Paulson: -and everyone. Go ahead.

Brigid Bergin: Sorry, I just stepped on you there, Michael. We have some eager listeners who want to share some of their experiences that reflect what you've been reporting. Let's go to Lorraine in Eatontown, New Jersey. Lorraine, thanks for calling All Of It.

Lorraine: Hey, hey, thanks for doing this. What a great show. I've been an actor in community theater now for, ooh, about 25 years. I'm in Monmouth County, and so listeners will be familiar with Two River Theater. It's much bigger than the company I work with. The company I work with, however, is devoted, dedicated to African American playwrights and plays. First of all, New Jersey has lost just about all of its Black theaters. Crossroads is something else now. That's just going to leave a hole because there're just not enough theaters.

True, the attendance is off. People are still kind of freaked about COVID and don't want to sit inside close to each other. I love community theater. I would love to get paid, but that's not really what you do [laughs] with community theater, and Black theater is really slutty. I'm doing something coming up, The Crucible, that's not Black theater.

Brigid Bergin: Lorraine, thank you so much for your call. I think we're going to have to leave it there. I have been speaking with Michael Paulson, theater reporter for the New York Times. We've been talking about the financial crisis facing non-profit theaters and unpacking his recent article, A Crisis in America's Theaters Leaves Prestigious Stages Dark. Michael, thank you so much for joining me.

Michael Paulson: Thank you.

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