McCarter’s 2008 IN-Festival is over. Between The Mad 7 and the free events, 929 people attended this year’s IN-Festival (for the entire festival, there were only 76 seats that weren’t reserved). This feels extraordinary, even though an equally successful show in either of our two primary theaters might have sat upwards of 14 times that number. Without huge budgets or tons of advertising, our patrons showed their great desire to attend riskier, newer and often unfinished work. At one of the free events, I sat next to a young man in his 20’s who was attending McCarter for the very first time—and who said he’d like to come back and see something on the mainstage soon.

In general, I’m interested in what it means for a large institutional theater like McCarter to try to produce work on a smaller scale (and I mean that in terms of advertising, production values, salaries, etc). Jaime at Surplus (who attended this year’s IN-Festival to hear singer/songwriter Susan Werner) has a really interesting blog post about Lincoln Center Theater’s new program for emerging artists, LCT3. Jaime astutely identifies LCT3 as a close cousin to some of the efforts by other institutional theaters to form a space for the presentation of riskier work or emerging artists—such as Steppenwolf’s First Look Repertory Program or the Roundabout Theatre’s Roundabout Underground—although I believe she places too much emphasis on who had the idea first (as though we are just cribbing from each other) and not enough the cultural and historical trends that have influenced many theater companies at once to develop “third theaters” (I’m using that term instead of the term “second stage” because in each of these examples, and at McCarter, there already are at least two primary stages). Below, I’m going to explore some of these trends and some of the conversations that have been going on at not-for-profits, on the blogosphere and in bars across the country. In general, the analysis is about institutional theaters in general, I think McCarter is different than the average theater in a lot of key ways, which maybe I’ll get into in a future post. And just so we’re clear, this is all just my musings and ramblings, and doesn’t represent McCarter’s institutional musings and ramblings or the musings and ramblings of McCarter’s leadership.

Depending on whether or not the person you ask is a jerk, the Regional Theater Movement started with either Margo Jones in 1947, or Tyrone Guthrie in 1963 (I’ll let you guess which answer the jerk would give). In the 45-61 years since then, many of the regional theaters have grown tremendously. What was at the beginning of movement of scrappy theaters pulling themselves up by their bootstraps has become a map dominated by theatrical juggernauts like Center Theatre Group, the Goodman, the Guthrie, Arena Stage, A.R.T., etc. These theaters have gone from founder-driven theaters (with founders like Zelda Fichandler, Tyrone Guthrie, etc.) to “institutional theaters” that have a series of artistic directors but maintain a certain growth and trajectory despite these leadership shifts. My point is that 25 or even 15 years ago, America wasn’t dotted with behemoth theaters with hundreds of thousands of patrons. For backup to this point, check out last Sunday’s New York Times. This is a new model, the natural growth of the Regional Theater Movement.

The problem with running a gargantuan theater is that you have to sustain a gargantuan theater. The statistics I present in this paragraph are mostly from TCG’s Theater Facts, and are representative of the field as a whole, rather than McCarter specifically. TCG estimated that between 2002-2006, the average expenses (adjusted for inflation) of its member theaters increased by 6.2%, while attendance declined by 8%. Regional theaters have come to rely upon the subscription model (a single ticket’s marketing expense is on average 70% more than that of a subscription ticket) even though subscription sales have decreased by as much as 9% between 2002-2006. They’ve also learned how to solicit gifts from wealthy individuals, corporations and foundations or to raise money through their education programs (which return an average of 154% on their investment). In general (and there are exceptions here), these income sources are not particularly inclined toward emerging voices, emerging artists, or risky work. You can’t produce the kind of scrappy and edgy work you might like if doing so means you risk losing your subscribers, corporations or education programs (after all, you’ve got a gargantuan theater to sustain). And so while many of these theaters were founded to produce new plays and sustain communities of artists, they have now grown so large that their mission no longer jibes with their economic realities.

Solo Performer Mike Daisey

That doesn’t make artistic leaders very happy. And, naturally, it doesn’t make emerging artists very happy either. A lot of people (and institutions) are responding. Recently, Mike Daisey, a solo performer, asked the question: “has theater failed America?” He prompted a great discussion in the theatrical blogosphere about the role of the institution in the American Theatre. See some interesting posts on that subject at The Playgoer and on Scott Walter’s blog. At the same time, several of the institutional theaters have realized that emerging artists are often getting stuck in a “new play development treadmill,” offered countless readings and workshops and never getting their work actually produced. McCarter’s response to this national trend is our IN-Festival, a public performance component of our New Play Development initiative (an initiative that has always been production-oriented). I can’t put words in other peoples’ mouths, but I get the sense that Steppenwolf, the Roundabout, and Lincoln Center were all going for the same thing as well. Here now are four models for something relatively new—a major institutional theater carving out a small venue for experimental work, work by emerging artists, and other works that might not fit on the mainstage. In other words, diversifying the ways in which the theaters present work, so that they are at once the major cultural institution they have become and the scrappy little theater they once were.

Is this good for artists? I believe that it is. Whether at the Roundabout Underground, LCT3, the First Look Series or the IN-Festival, artists get a full, public production of their work. The artist gets to gain from the expertise that these established institutions have in producing theater, and the production gets the recognition and attention afforded by its association with a major not-for-profit, building up an audience and increasing word-of-mouth so that eventually the production will be able to attract the audiences needed to sustain a full mainstage run. The artists get to learn from having a public production, yet be sheltered from some of the critical and economic realities of having their work produced on the mainstage. They are able to take greater risks—which means they are also given permission to fail. The theater gets to stretch its own boundaries, challenge and cultivate its audiences and stewards and produce work essential to its mission.

Okay, your turn. What do you think? Post a comment below.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.