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NEW HAVEN, Conn. — For more than 55 years, the highly regarded Long Wharf Theatre made its home in a converted warehouse in an old food terminal near New Haven Harbor. Then one day last year, with rent payments an escalating burden, the company became homeless.

Is a legacy theater company without its theater still a company? It’s a proposition that Long Wharf’s artistic director, Jacob G. Padrón, has been testing — an “itinerant” theater model — and the rest of the anxiety-ridden theater world is watching closely. Still reeling from the pandemic, many of the country’s nonprofit theaters of various sizes are in deep financial trouble, in what is rapidly turning into the most severe crisis in the 70-year history of the regional theater movement.

“It’s happening more and more and more, and it’s going to be an epidemic,” said Michael M. Kaiser, former president of the Kennedy Center and now chairman of the <a href="http://www.devosinstitute.net/" target=_blank>DeVos Institute of Arts Management</a> at the University of Maryland. “I’ve always believed that we were heading for a time that we were going to lose a whole lot of midsized cultural organizations. And I still believe that’s true.”

Evidence of the turmoil mounts day by day, as companies from California to New York announce major cutbacks in their offerings — or shut down altogether. The theater world was further rocked recently when one of the nation’s largest companies, the Los Angeles-based Center Theatre Group, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-06-15/center-theatre-group-programming-pause-staff-layoffs-turmoil" target="_blank">said it would “pause”</a> programming in one of its theaters, the Mark Taper Forum. That followed the <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/18/oregon-shakespeare-festival-financial-troubles-analysis/" target="_blank">upheaval at Oregon Shakespeare Festival,</a> another industry mainstay, which said last month it needed an emergency infusion of $7.5 million or its 2023 season could not go on. The urgent effort came after a similar plea, in April, for which OSF raised $2.5 million.

The cutbacks and closings have been so regular of late that a document circulates among leaders of the field, listing recent “permanent closures” — such as <a href="https://triadstage.org/" target=_blank>Triad Stage</a> in North Carolina, <a href="https://www.southernrep.com/" target=_blank>Southern Repertory Theatre</a> in New Orleans, New Ohio Theatre in New York — and staff and program downsizings. In June, off-Broadway’s <a href="https://publictheater.org/" target=_blank>Public Theater</a> eliminated its Under the Radar Festival, which set an industry standard for avant-garde and international plays. To save money, even august companies such as Arena Stage — working with what its leaders call <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2023/04/25/hana-sharif-molly-arena-stage/" target=_blank>“deficit planning”</a> — are reducing the number of plays they produce.

And just last week, Chicago’s 35-year-old <a href="https://lookingglasstheatre.org/event/through-the-looking-glass/?gclid=CjwKCAjwqZSlBhBwEiwAfoZUIItTGvTjy2ANaVvmfOEgQb2kHvish_Fl3qiWxEkXzAutYanaFnSsNhoCyEwQAvD_BwE" target="_blank">Lookingglass Theatre Company</a>, debut theater for Tony-winning director Mary Zimmerman’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/metamorphoses-a-delightfully-fluid-way-to-experience-roman-mythology/2013/02/19/1320131c-7ada-11e2-9c27-fdd594ea6286_story.html" target="_blank">“Metamorphoses,” </a>declared that it was <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/6/30/23780217/lookingglass-theatre-announces-pause-in-operations-staff-layoffs-in-wake-of-weakening-revenue" target="_blank">ceasing operations</a> until late next spring. As regional theaters often are the seeding ground for both new-play development and work that eventually goes to Broadway, every “pause” can have consequences down the road.

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The crisis is a perfect storm of bad economic and demographic trends, exacerbated by a change in cultural habits during the pandemic. Experts in theater management say that 25 percent to 30 percent of theater audiences have not returned since the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/theater-fall-preview/2021/09/09/46df6b72-0a6d-11ec-9781-07796ffb56fe_story.html" target=_blank>pandemic shutdown of March 2020</a> that lasted until late 2021. Retrenchment has continued, they say, not so much out of lingering fears of getting sick, but because theater simply receded as a priority as other pastimes filled the gap. Streaming entertainment at home, for example, has proved a durable substitute for the time and expense of theater.

No one cause completely explains the situation, but many theaters have been slow to respond to changes in the marketplace. Billions in federal aid — including the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/theaters-covid-relief-fund-delay/2021/03/21/8e66140a-898a-11eb-82bc-e58213caa38e_story.html" target=_blank>$15 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program</a> approved in 2020 — kept theaters afloat during the shutdown. But that cushion was temporary. The money was largely spent, observers say, but problems from before the pandemic, such as a continual decline in season subscriptions, have not been adequately addressed.

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The confluence has theater business professionals issuing dire warnings.

“By this time next year, I think the industry will shrink by half,” said Amy Wratchford, who has been managing director of theaters in Virginia and is now president of the <a href="https://www.wratchfordgroup.com/" target=_blank>Wratchford Group</a>, an arts management consultancy.

Wratchford added that “donor fatigue” — a reluctance by some financial supporters to continue to shore up struggling institutions — has been settling in. (Unlike commercial Broadway shows, whose investors optimally expect a profit, the nation’s regional theaters operate on a nonprofit basis, deriving income from ticket sales, grants from philanthropies and donations from individuals.)

“What we’ve got,” she said, “is a disconnect between theater and the people who fund it.”

Kaiser, whose institute counsels hundreds of arts organizations across the country, believes that some theaters, motivated by honorable concerns about social and racial justice, pivoted in their programming too abruptly after the shutdown.

He called the move “a change of perspective in what stories they want to tell without necessarily bringing their audiences or their donors or their boards along with them, in a way that makes clear as to why this is important and how to participate and how to watch. And as a result, I think we’re seeing some serious loss of audience and board support and donor support.”

Although a few companies folded in the wake of the pandemic, it was Long Wharf’s announcement in February 2022 of a radical new direction that was the industry’s real wake-up call. A strong artistic force for decades, Long Wharf has championed such playwrights as David Rabe and Margaret Edson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/28/movies/theater-review-for-a-scholar-near-death-a-dose-of-deconstruction.html" target=_blank>“Wit,”</a> which got a crucial early boost at Long Wharf. But time and declining attendance caught up with the organization: By the point at which Padrón and Kit Ingui became artistic director and managing director in 2019, its 400-seat main stage theater was typically less than half filled, and the building was desperately in need of upgrades.

“When I got here, financial challenges were already in existence for Long Wharf over the course of more than a decade,” Ingui said in an interview in the downtown office suite that now serves as company headquarters. “There were severe deficits.”

With an operating budget of about $4 million, and facing increases that would put annual rent at about $500,000, something drastic had to be done. “The board recognized that the building and the expense and the operations were not sustainable,” Padrón said. “It just wasn’t good anymore.

“So we had to figure out a different way,” he added. “We know that it is such a risk. But we also know that great things don’t come without taking risks.”

The “great thing” Padrón had in mind was potentially exciting but also deeply upsetting to some longtime Long Wharf patrons: giving up the building and finding spaces for productions in and around New Haven. The Yale-trained Padrón, 43, a California native who grew up on shows at Luis Valdez’s storied <a href="https://elteatrocampesino.com/about-luis/" target=_blank>El Teatro Campesino</a>, founded for farmworkers, is part of a generation of younger theater leaders more committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. He envisioned Long Wharf expanding its reach to underserved communities.

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That has meant offerings such as “Black Trans Women at the Center,” a multiyear digital festival of new work, and “I AM: Muslim/American,” a film by Aaliyah Miller and Halima Flynn that Long Wharf has taken for talkback sessions across Connecticut. The itinerant era also birthed a concert reading in September of the Broadway musical “Jelly’s Last Jam” in a space in the city’s Dixwell neighborhood.

There is no shortage of potential sites for the company’s projects — the staff has toured more than 60 in the area. This fall, actress Kathleen Chalfant will perform Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” in private homes in the New Haven area. And while the new team has been able to erase the company’s deficit, the unknown is whether Long Wharf can hold on to its position as a strong cultural influence and attract the new audiences it seeks.

The company’s board of directors is solidly behind the gamble.

“We had to make some kind of decision, were we going to stay or leave the financial model? That subscription model is absolutely failing,” said board chair Nancy Alexander, herself a consultant to nonprofit organizations. “And so the financial model, which was based largely on that, was starting to crumble. But the really positive and very important factor was our desire to make theater for everyone.”

The hope for some struggling companies is that reducing programming for a time — and thus the pressure on the budget — will allow them to re-energize. Meghan Pressman, Centre Theatre Group’s managing director and chief executive, said pausing work in the Mark Taper allows time for “a restructuring, a rebalancing,” as a new artistic director, <a href="https://www.centertheatregroup.org/news-and-blogs/news/2023/april/center-theatre-group-announces-new-artistic-director/" target=_blank>Snehal Desai</a>, takes over this summer. (The company is still presenting musicals in its larger Ahmanson Theatre.)

Pressman acknowledges that the industry came up short in the effort to lure audiences back after the pandemic. “We bet big on the past year and half,” she said, adding that perhaps a public airing of theater’s dire straits will let reluctant theatergoers know how desperately they are needed to return.

“That is one of the only positive outcomes out of this really distressing moment,” Pressman said. “If it throws a spotlight on the struggle over what is happening, then I am proud to be of service.”

Pulitzer Prize, spot news reporting (team), 1992

Good for the Money: My Fight to Pay Back America

Yale University, BA in English

Peter Marks was The Washington Post's chief theater critic from 2002 to 2023. He left The Post in 2024. Previously, he worked for nine years at the New York Times, on the culture, metropolitan and national desks, and spent about four years as its off-Broadway drama critic.

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