LA’s Regional Theaters Struggle To Get Back To Pre-Pandemic Stability

Last week, the Center Theatre Group (CTG) announced it was putting a pause on programming at the Mark Taper Forum, citing increasing production costs and significantly reduced ticket revenue.

It’s big news for L.A.’s theater community, with some companies struggling to get back to pre-pandemic stability.

“It gives you pause, in terms of the vulnerability in the current moment that we’re living in,” said Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, artistic co-director at Pasadena’s A Noise Within.

Rodriguez-Elliott said audiences have not bounced back to pre-pandemic numbers at ANW, but she is seeing people attend performances who are first-time theatergoers.

She said she hopes the news of the CTG programming pause will create greater awareness around the struggles L.A.’s regional theaters are facing.

“If you believe in theater, support the art: buy a membership, buy a subscription, buy tickets,” Rodriguez-Elliott said.

A national survey of some 100 theaters found that more than 60% were budgeting for a deficit this fiscal year.

Rodriguez-Elliott says ANW is working to make going to the theater more of an event, with pre- and post show activities that allow patrons to engage more with the art.

Ellen Geer, artistic director at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon said she was saddened to hear about the CTG cuts. “Think of all the L.A. artists who won’t get work,” she said.

So far this year, turnout for WGTB’s production of Macbeth has been strong, Geer said. That may have something to do with Geer working to keep ticket prices low ($10-$48) and the fact that their outdoor theater was one of the only tickets in town during the worst of the pandemic.

For he part, Rodriguez-Elliott at ANW hopes more people will relearn their love for live performances that may have been chilled during the pandemic.

“I think that once you’re in community, you realize what you’re missing: That shared humanity that we get to experience when we come and gather around a great story,” she said.

Searching for loyalty 

Megan Pressman, CTG’s director and CEO, joined LAist’s AirTalk to discuss this challenging moment for theater — and how CTG is looking to overcome it.

Pressman said CTG has not been able to re-emerge fully from the pandemic’s dampening effects. For many months, people were hesitant to return to crowded indoor spaces, and many people’s habits no longer align with the traditional membership model, she said.

People these days are less likely to commit to a subscription for an entire season; instead, they choose just the specific shows they have heard about before, Pressman said.

“We need folks to be with us for that whole journey,” Pressman says. “That is how you can show loyalty to these cultural institutions and give us a chance to be able to put on shows you haven't heard about, to take bigger risks.”

Facing the self-curating society

Danny Feldman is the managing artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse. He said the birth of regional theater in much of the United States came in the 1960s, when performing artists started to leave New York City, trading the commercialism of Broadway for the opportunity to start theater companies around the country.

But in recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in audience habits have compounded the stresses that the regional theater business model has always faced, he said. Production costs are rising, while ticket sales and donations have not recovered from the hit they took during pandemic shutdowns.

Feldman said that the struggles of the subscription model reflect broader cultural shifts, like people’s freedom to design their own experiences. For example, Apple Music and other on-demand platforms allow you to purchase a specific song you like, rather than try out the entire album.

“We are now a self-curating society,” Feldman says. “In the past, you would look at an artistic leader of a theater and say, ‘I trust the quality and the brand of the theater. And I may not like everything, but I'm gonna go on an adventure.’”

The reluctance to commit manifests in other ways too, Feldman said. Buying a subscription means blocking out specific days on your calendar weeks or months in advance, but these days, people like to keep their schedules more open and buy theater tickets a few days before the show.

All of this, according to Feldman, has led to smaller audiences.

“We're having a real perfect storm of exorbitant costs,” Feldman says. “Costs are flying up in labor, but also materials, and as well as media costs, [along with a] decline of audiences, who, in my assessment of it, have just fallen out of the habit of going to the theater.”

And this is a great loss not only for theatergoers, but also for performing artists, since these spaces for employment and visibility are becoming rarer, according to Snehal Desai, CTG’s incoming artistic director.

The pause in programming led to an outpouring of support from the community — a reaction that, according to Desai, was both heartbreaking and inspiring.

“There are so few opportunities and so few platforms that anytime you take a space like the Taper out of the equation, even for a short period of time, it has an impact,” Desai said.

Feldman said that getting back into the habit of going to the theater will be important, but he feels that people still see the value of it in our current moment, when gathering spaces have declined in favor of private experiences, like scrolling on our phones.

“Our theaters and our performing arts organizations are uniquely situated to bring folks together to turn off their solo brains and to experience things collectively,” Feldman said. “I think we are the antidote to a lot of what's going on now.”