Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Excellence and Financial Crisis in Nonprofit Theatre
Maleah Joi Moon (foreground) and the company of ‘Hell’s Kitchen.’
Nonprofit theatre is so financially sick that a group of Senators have proposed a $1 billion cure called the "Stage Act." I am not completely unsympathetic, mind you, but I am not sure about spending $1 billion annually on it either. Only people sufficiently well off to have disposable income can spend a week or a four days in New York to see a Broadway play anyway. I took my daughter years ago when she thought she wanted to be an actress. We saw Chicago, The Musical. The seats alone set me back about $400. A Broadway tax exempt nonprofit theatre can legitimately charge as much, but that can't possibly be charitable. Its a good thing the University paid for my flight and hotel. Official business, you know.
It's not that people in nonprofit theatre are getting rich or anything. It's just that commercial nonprofit theatres have to charge so much to stay afloat that they necessarily exclude poor and most middle income people most of the time. But Broadway is not really an accurate exemplar. Noncommercial community playhouses, the kind in Nebraska for example, are accessible and great for communities. Even in big cities but especially in small towns where they often conduct classes and host children's performances. I think they would survive even if we let the Broadway nonprofits -- the commercial ones, I mean -- die peacefully. Anyway, by the sound of things below, nonprofit theatre generates higher performance art than anything else. So I suppose nonprofit theatre is worth saving. The bill also calls for a study designed to find long-term solutions:
(a) In General.—Not later than 2 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, in consultation with the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, shall conduct a study on Federal support for the nonprofit arts sectors.
(b) Contents.—In conducting the study under subsection (a), the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities shall consider, and include recommendations regarding, the steps the Federal Government can take to sustain the nonprofit arts sector and bolster the economic impact of that sector for workers, small businesses, and communities, including rural and underserved communities.
(c) Stakeholder Input.—In conducting the study under subsection (a), the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities shall solicit input from stakeholders, including artists, nonprofit arts organizations and employees of nonprofit arts organizations, small businesses, organized labor organizations representing workers in the nonprofit arts sector, and State, local, and Tribal governments.
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about how nonprofit theatre has produced the best plays this year:
Although it has been little remarked-upon, what’s most notable about this season’s crop of Tony Award contenders in major categories is their provenance. All five best-play nominees and all five for best musical were produced or initially produced (or both) at nonprofit theaters—an unusual occurrence. Remarkably, Manhattan Theatre Club presented three of the five candidates for best play: “Prayer for the French Republic,” “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and “Mary Jane”—the last of which was originally produced at another nonprofit, New York Theatre Workshop, which also first presented this season’s front-runner, by a mile, for best musical revival: “Merrily We Roll Along.” “Mother Play” came from Second Stage, while “Stereophonic,” the category’s lone commercial production, began life at Playwrights Horizons.
There are now four nonprofit theaters in the city with Broadway venues. The Roundabout Theatre Company and Lincoln Center Theater have had theirs for decades, with MTC and Second Stage more recently acquiring Broadway spaces. The generally fine quality of this year’s best-play contenders suggests that these companies are an important bulwark keeping Broadway from becoming a shop window for splashy, crowd-seducing musicals. As for the new musicals in the Tony sweepstakes, “Suffs” and “Hell’s Kitchen” started at the Public Theater, while “Illinoise,” “The Outsiders” and “Water for Elephants” were first staged at regional nonprofits. This phenomenon, increasingly pronounced, illustrates how intertwined the nonprofits and Broadway have become—and points to a potential danger sign. The most troubling development in the theater ecosystem since the Covid-19 pandemic has been the financial turmoil faced by nonprofit institutions, which in turn threatens the future pool of potential Broadway productions.
Among the more notable headline-makers in this regard have been the tumult at the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, which laid off roughly 10% of its staff and halted all programming at its major incubator of new work, the Mark Taper Forum (it recently announced plans for a resumption); the reduction of the Public Theater’s staff by an astonishing 19%; and, most recently, the nearly $4 million deficit in one season at the prestigious Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. The announcement that New York’s Second Stage would be giving up its off-Broadway space—where such notable Tony winners as “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Next to Normal” were first seen in New York—was also disheartening. And the problem is likely to get worse before it gets better. If it gets better.
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darryll k. jones
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/nonprofit/2024/06/nonprofit-theatre-dominates-tony-award-nominations-even-in-financial-crisis.html