Regional theaters offer ways to beat the post-pandemic blues

Everyone who enters Barter Theatre in southwestern Virginia is met and welcomed by Katy Brown, the producing artistic director.

It’s a simple touch but a telling one for the 90-yearold theater in Abingdon that has forged a very human connection with its 8,000 residents. Barter Theatre is not just a theater; it’s their theater.

“You can feel the ownership from the people that are here,” Brown says. “Really being a part of your community in that way is vital to the future of regional theater.”

Barter — a scrappy venue with roots in the Depression when patrons bartered goods for seats — may offer a roadmap as regional theaters struggle to reconnect with lagging post-pandemic audiences.

Theatresquared in Fayetteville, Ark., has made itself a draw no matter what’s on stage. Its gorgeous, 50,000-square-foot new home combines two theaters, an open-all-day bar and café and community spaces. Some 16,000 people came through without a theater ticket last year.

“Not only are the doors open all day, you don’t have to have paid money to walk through them,” says former executive director Martin Miller, who this summer began leading the Mccarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey.

“It makes the case that we are custodians of a public asset, not guardians. We are not the gatekeepers. We’re the ones holding the doors open.”

Miller says theaters have to find a way for the community to care deeply about their regional theater. That means being welcoming, whether it’s an open door or an arm outstretched.

“This is not a world of if you build it, they will come,” he said. “This is a world of constant renewed invitation and a sense of gratitude that extends in both directions.”

Lessons from other regional theaters — like embracing digital ways to connect, hosting events like LGBTQ Nights, rethinking the traditional calendar and even reconfiguring theater lobbies — could help.

“The theater companies that are succeeding have taken the time during COVID to ask themselves how they stay relevant once they reopen,” said Joshua Borenstein, who leads the arts consulting nonprofit Odyssey Associates and lectures on theater management at Yale. “It’s going to take a lot of creativity and a lot of risk.”

Across the country, nonprofit theaters are suffering. Chicago’s

Lookingglass Theatre has announced a yearlong pause in new productions and laid off half its staff. The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles has also halted productions for the rest of the 2023-24 season, and the influential Steppenwolf Theatre is shedding staff as its subscription base lags. New York’s Public Theater has put its highly influential Under the Radar Festival on hold.

Some theaters have simply closed for good, like Triad Stage in North Carolina, Southern Repertory Theatre in

New Orleans and New Ohio Theatre in New

York. They all have been struggling with reduced donations and severely depressed ticket sales. Even Broadway isn’t immune, with last season getting back 83% of its audience.

Data collected by Theatre Communications Group shows a sharp increase in the number of theaters’ projected budget deficits: In fiscal year 2021, just 10% of theatres projected deficits, for fiscal year 2023 that number is 60%. Inflation isn’t helping, pushing up costs for labor and materials.

While other sectors of the arts have rebounded, the worry is that theater audiences have changed their behavior, now seeming to prefer streaming nightly entertainment from the couch.