Theater of War, Part 1

 

Theater of War Productions is a “social impact” theater company, co-founded in 2009 by Bryan Doerries and Phyllis Kaufman, who served as producing director from 2009 to 2016.  Doerries (pronounced DOOR-eez) is the company’s current artistic director.  (The date of Theater of War’s founding is reported variously in other sources, with years earlier than 2009, but that is the year ToW puts on its website (Home - Theater of War).

Theater of War presents unstaged dramatic readings to create community-specific projects that “address pressing public health and social issues,” according to their website.  In the beginning, they addressed soldiers and veterans, but they have expanded their audience focus and have presented readings for nurses, corrections officers, public health workers, and even convicts.

The readings are performed by casts that include well-known professional actors such as Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright, Adam Driver, Jesse Eisenberg, Paul Giamatti, Jake Gyllenhaal, Alfred Molina, Samira Wiley, Jay O. Sanders, Frankie Faison, and David Strathairn.  Many of these prominent film, television, and stage performers have done several ToW projects.

The pros form the core of the readings’ casts, but they are joined by members of the target community, including senior officials and administrators.  At first, the texts were exclusively classic Greek tragedies, such as Ajax (442 or 441 BCE), Oedipus the King (429-420 BCE), and Antigone (441 BCE) by Sophocles (497/496-406/405 BCE) and Aeschylus’ (525/524-456 BCE) Prometheus Bound (ca. 430 BCE).  Sometimes this included non-dramatic texts, such as readings from The Iliad.

Soon Theater of War began using more modern classics, such as in their current project, Norwegian playwright and theater director Henrik Ibsen’s (1828-1906) An Enemy of the People (1882).  ToW will also use contemporary dramas for the right project. 

Doerries has a background and training in the classics and stage directing.  He’s also a writer and translator, and he composes the translations and adaptations of the texts used for ToW’s readings.  In his biographical sketch on the Theater of War website, Doerries calls himself ”an evangelist for ancient stories and their relevance to our lives today.”

The readings are designed to confront social issues highlighted in the plays.  (Ibsen’s Enemy, as you’ll read, is a 19th-century drama at whose center is a controversy that greatly resembles the COVID pandemic, with a central character who can be seen as an avatar of Dr. Anthony Fauci.)  The readings are followed by town hall-style panel discussions which are intended to draw out “raw and personal reactions” to the themes of the plays.  

“The guided discussions underscore how the plays resonate with contemporary audiences,” states the ToW website, “and invite audience members to share their perspectives and experiences, . . . helping to break down stigmas, foster empathy, compassion, and a deeper understanding of complex issues.”

[I’ve selected two articles that report on the work of Theater of War.  The first is the transcript of a segment from the PBS News Hour and focuses on the production of An Enemy of the People.  The second is a review of Brian Doerries’s book describing and explaining the work of his troupe, The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today.

[There is a surfeit of coverage of ToW’s work over the decade-and-a-half of its existence.  I’ll be posting a few more pieces dealing with different plays and communities.  The next post will be published on Tuesday, 25 June.]

*  *  *  *
“THEATER ADAPTS ‘AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE’
TO ADDRESS PUBLIC HEALTH AFTER THE PANDEMIC”
by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport 

[Correspondent Jeffrey Brown’s report on Bryan Doerries’s Theater of War project was aired on PBS News Hour on 7 June 2024. (Note that the broadcast has recently changed its name slightly.)]

Geoff Bennett [PBS News Hour Co-Anchor]: Actors, experts and community members are turning to a classic play to address contemporary trauma and tensions from the pandemic.

Jeffrey Brown has this look as part of our new series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy. It’s part of our ongoing arts and culture coverage, Canvas.

Actor [Jay O. Sanders, in reading from stage]: Yesterday, you said that the water supply was contaminated by impurities in the soil.

David Strathairn, Actor [in reading]: Yes, exactly. The source is undoubtedly the toxic swamp up in Mildale.

Jeffrey Brown: A major health crisis has been discovered. The water in a local spa is contaminated. Lives and the economy are threatened. The public must be told, or should it?

Actor [in reading]: We must bury it for the good of the people.

Jeffrey Brown: Who decides, and who decides what actions, if any, to take? At stake, public health and democracy itself.

Bryan Doerries, Artistic Director, Theater of War Productions: This play is about a public health catastrophe that was in the late 19th century, in 1882. It’s made up, but it could be today.

And it creates the context where we can talk about not just what just happened over the last four years, but how do we ensure that it doesn’t happen again?

Let’s do the first couple pages.

Jeffrey Brown: Bryan Doerries is founder and artistic director of Theater of War Productions, which turns to ancient and classic plays to explore and spur discussion of contemporary issues and trauma.

Actress [in reading]: He has the thousand-yard stare.

Jeffrey Brown: We watched in 2010 as he used Greek tragedy that still speaks to the rise in suicide rates in today’s military, presented at a base.

And, in 2016, in a Missouri community torn apart after the killing of a young Black man, Michael Brown, in “Antigone in Ferguson.”

Actress [in reading]: Because there is nothing shameful in loyalty to a brother!

Bryan Doerries: I see it as a form of mediation. These ancient texts that we perform or the texts of the classical plays we perform create a kind of vocabulary for people to talk about hard things.

Protesters [“plants” in audience]: No more shots! No more shots!

Jeffrey Brown: Now a pandemic that took well over a million lives in the U.S. alone, uncertain, at times chaotic government responses, masks weaponized, public health officials threatened.

Frankie Faison, Actor [in reading]: Concoct all those conspiracies you can think of.

Jeffrey Brown: Here seen through the lens of an enduring 19th century play, “An Enemy of the People” by Henrik Ibsen about a doctor named Thomas Stockmann who wants to protect his community . . .

[The book on An Enemy of the People (Norwegian: En folkefiende): The play was published on 28 November 1882. Its reception was mixed, unsurprisingly, as Stockmann’s harsh remarks about political parties offended all the reviewers, who belonged to one or another party.  

[The first English translation (originally rendered as An Enemy of Society) was made in 1888 by Eleanor Marx-Aveling (1855-98), a daughter of Karl Marx (1818-83) and an influential socialist activist in her own right. Arthur Miller (1915-2005) made a popular adaptation in 1950 which was performed on Broadway in 1950-51. A film version based on Miller’s adaptation came out in 1978 with Steve McQueen (1930-80) as Stockmann. For Theater of War, Doerries created his own adaptation based on the Miller text.

[Enemy was first performed in Christiania (now Oslo) on 13 January 1883. It was quickly taken up by theaters in Denmark and Sweden, and then around Western Europe, eventually playing at the Moscow Art Theater in 1900. The play’s London première was on 14 June 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre, with Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917) as Stockmann, in a production that later went on tour to the United States, playing in New York City at Abbey’s Theatre at Broadway and 38th Street in what’s now Manhattan’s Garment District in April 1895.

[A current Broadway production, unrelated to the Theater of War readings, opened at the Circle in the Square Theatre in the Times Square district on 18 March 2024 (for a limited run until 23 June), adapted by Amy Herzog and directed by Sam Gold, with Jeremy Strong as Dr. Stockmann and Michael Imperioli as his brother, the mayor. The production received five Tony nominations (including for Best Revival of a Play) and won one (Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for Strong).

[Ibsen wrote An Enemy of the People in response to the harsh criticism with which Ghosts (1881) had been received, but the plot of Enemy had its origin in two actual incidents. Alfred Meissner (German: Meißner; 1822-85), a young Austrian poet whom Ibsen knew in Munich, had told him how, when his father, Eduard (1785-1868), had been a medical officer at the Bohemian spa of Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic) in the 1830s, there was an outbreak of cholera which the doctor felt it his duty to make known publicly. As a result, the season was ruined and the citizens of Teplitz became so enraged that they stoned the doctor’s house and forced him to flee the town.

[Then there had been the case in Norway of a pharmacist named Harald Thaulow (1815-81). For nearly 10 years, Thaulow had heatedly attacked the Christiania Steam Kitchens, ostensibly a charitable organization to feed the city’s poor while actually a profit­making scheme riddled with graft, for neglecting their duty toward the impoverished. He had delivered a violent speech on the subject in 1874 during Ibsen’s visit to Norway, and on 23 February 1881, only a fortnight before he died, Thaulow attempted to read a prepared speech at the annual meeting of the Steam Kitchens.

[The chairman of the meeting tried to prevent Thaulow from speaking, and eventually the public forced him, amid commotion, to withdraw. Ibsen read a report of this meeting in the Aftenposten (Oslo’s daily newspaper, regarded as the paper of record for Norway) of 24 February, just at the time when his indignation at the reception of Ghosts (1881) was reaching its climax.]

David Strathairn [in reading]: They will all have my back if things get ugly.

Jeffrey Brown: . . . but who in the process reveals his own biases and flaws and becomes both hero and enemy.

It was presented recently in what Doerries referred to as a temple of experts, the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., in reading [sic] by top actors, including David Strathairn . . .

David Strathairn [in reading]: This might just do nobody any good.

Jeffrey Brown: . . . known for such films as “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which brought an Oscar nomination for best actor [as legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow (1908-65)] . . .

David Strathairn [in a film clip]: That’s Jason Bourne.

Jeffrey Brown: . . . and for the blockbuster Bourne movies, here playing Dr. Stockmann.

David Strathairn: He’s a hero. He’s — he could be a civic servant, civil servant, a doctor, and do no harm, and that’s what he’s trying not to do.

Jeffrey Brown: You’re calling him a hero, but then, in the play, many see him as . . .

David Strathairn: As an enemy.

Jeffrey Brown: As an enemy.

David Strathairn: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: Did that resonate for the way you see things today?

David Strathairn: Yeah. Yeah, in a word. I mean, yeah. I mean, there’s so many more issues than just him being an enemy. It’s about the press, the media . . .

Frankie Faison, Actor: The money.

David Strathairn: The money.

Frankie Faison: Politics.

David Strathairn: The politics of the situation, which are — it goes without saying how present those things are in our lives today.

Frankie Faison [clip from The Wire]: The Barksdale case was a successful prosecution.

Jeffrey Brown: Like Strathairn, actor Frankie Faison, best known from “The Wire” and the Hannibal Lecter films, has joined many Theater of War projects over the years.

Frankie Faison: I got a chance to work with amazing actors and amazing texts, I mean, scripts that are just brilliant. You got a chance to exercise that vocal thing without any pressure. You don’t have to worry about critics being on top of us, and you do this. It’s a sharing.

And we share this information. And then, through that sharing, it opens up a conversation with the audience that just blows our mind.

Jeffrey Brown: This audience included many in the public health community, several of whom took part in the performance from the audience, including Professor Jeffrey Kahn . . .

Jeffrey Kahn, Johns Hopkins University [in reading]: If you’re talking about me . . .

Jeffrey Brown: . . . director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, here playing a drunken citizen.

Jeffrey Kahn: I don’t think we all appreciated that public health professionals would be attacked for their views. That’s never happened in our lifetime.

Dr. Vivian Pinn, Director, NIH [National Institutes of Health] Office of Research on Women’s Health: Yes, that’s right.

Jeffrey Kahn: But here’s Ibsen, who wrote a play in 1882, writing about exactly that.

Jeffrey Brown: But there’s a twist. Here, the health experts play average citizens angry about the upheaval to their lives that the doctor is proposing.

Jeffrey Kahn: We are taking the position of shouting down the experts. So it’s a bit of a turning of the tables.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes, how does that feel?

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Kahn: It feels uncomfortable. I think that’s exactly the point.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Dr. Vivian Pinn: Yes.

Jeffrey Kahn: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: Dr. Vivian Pinn, the first full-time director of the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, has been through such battles.

To her, Dr. Stockmann was right in his science, but wrong in his interaction with the community, insulting the townspeople for not recognizing his expertise or following his demands.

David Strathairn [in reading]: How in God’s name can it ever be right for the wise to be ruled over by fools?

(Booing from “audience”)

Dr. Vivian Pinn: I was really kind of concerned when I was reading the script for this play at some of Dr. Stockmann’s comments about the lower class, the poor, the dirty, and I was thinking, yikes, what we’re really focusing on today in public health is being able to interact with the community, get the community involved in what we’re doing.

Jeffrey Brown: Still, she says, the tension hits home.

Dr. Vivian Pinn: Yes, he’s not right in everything he says, but, gee whiz, don’t you want to listen to the truth?

Jeffrey Brown: Such questions were then taken up by panel members, an emergency services paramedic lieutenant.

Man [from stage in panel discussion with audience]: During the pandemic, which this play resonates so deeply with, there was such certainty in the way people spoke that they planted the seeds of the automatic response when people speak from such certainty of, how do you know what you’re talking about? I know I didn’t know what I was seeing.

I saw it in [the] front line. I was going to, on 13 — average, 10 to 13 cardiac arrests a day. I didn’t know what was going on. How do they know?

Jeffrey Brown: Former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins.

Dr. Francis Collins, Former Director, National Institutes of Health [in panel discussion]: I’m always looking to find a hero. I always feel like there ought to be one. I didn’t find one in this play.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: A local business owner.

Woman [in panel discussion]: But how do you gain back the trust of officials and government and people that are in charge that you wanted to — that you believed in the beginning.

Jeffrey Brown: And members of the audience.

Woman [from audience]: As much as we want a hero, heroes do not monopolize truth, capital T. They may have a slice of truth.

Man [from audience]: Full disclosure, I’m a Catholic priest. This idea of learning how to trust each other again, which means learning how to love each other again, and recognizing that that is going to involve humility, of people recognizing they’re wrong.

Woman [from audience]: I was struck by the absence of an independent press in this play. A free press is essential to a democratic society.

Jeffrey Brown: Ultimately, just as in real life, the public health crisis in the play becomes a test of democracy itself.

In fact, says Bryan Doerries:

Bryan Doerries: I think the core critique is in the public health. It’s, can this kind of democracy work?

Jeffrey Brown: Right.

Bryan Doerries: And we’re entering 2024 with a giant crowd scene with people screaming at a stage and chanting vile things at someone who’s trying to help them, who then chants vile things back at them.

Seems like an appropriate place to start this election year and to be framing conversations.

Jeffrey Brown: Following the National Academy of Sciences performance, Theater of War Productions took “An Enemy of the People” to audiences in rural Ohio, next stop outdoors in New York’s Times Square on June 12.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in Washington, D.C 

[In his more than 30-year career with the News Hour, Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe. 

[As arts correspondent, Brown has profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists.  Among his signature works at the News Hour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the News Hour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Producer of CANVAS at PBS News Hour.]

*  *  *  *
“‘THE THEATER OF WAR,’ BY BRYAN DOERRIES”
Reviewed by James Shapiro 

[In 2015, Doerries wrote a book about his classic theater work with various groups.  He entitled his volume the same as his project, The Theater of War.  Below is the New York Times review, published on 2 October 2015, of the book.]

The theater of ancient Greece was many things: a literary competition; a Dionysian religious rite; a place where citizens gathered to see plays that explored pressing social and political concerns; and through its portrayal of human suffering, a site of collective catharsis.

It is the last of these, especially the therapeutic potential of catharsis, that most interests Bryan Doerries. Trained as a classicist and theater director, and scarred by witnessing the suffering and death of his girlfriend and his father, Doerries sought in these old plays methods of dealing with unhealed wounds. “The Theater of War” recounts these and other experiences that led him to found a company that shares its name with his book. A catalyst for Doerries was the struggles of veterans who had returned home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Persuading the United States military that post-traumatic stress might be ameliorated by exposing troops to the words of classical dramatists could not have been an easy sell, though it probably helped to say that Sophocles’ plays had been written by a retired general. The stakes were high when in 2008 Doerries and his actors were at last given permission to perform scenes from Sophocles’ “Ajax” and “Philoctetes” [409 BCE], in his own translations, for 400 Marines, some of whom had brought along their spouses. (Doerries’s renderings of these and other plays are now available in a paperback volume from Vintage.) The postproduction discussion went on for over three hours before Doerries cut things off, and his account of the responses to the trauma experienced by two soldiers who fought in the Trojan War — the suicidal Ajax and the injured and abandoned Philoctetes — makes clear why the Department of Defense soon approved a hundred additional performances.

Over time Doerries managed to recruit dozens of star performers, including Adam Driver, Paul Giamatti, Frances McDormand, David Strathairn and Jesse Eisenberg, to provide energetic table readings of key scenes — “Vocal cords were shredded. Spit flew” — that preceded and prompted the often fraught public discussions.

What began on military bases gradually spread to scores of American communities where people were hurting and theater could make a difference. Doerries’s next choice, Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Bound,” whose protagonist endures “extreme incarceration,” was, Doerries believed, well suited for American prisons (though wardens proved even harder to persuade of the value of such performances than the generals had been). It would lead Doerries to prisons across the land and eventually to a performance before the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay. If this chapter is less satisfying it’s probably because of the more tenuous connection between the strange and episodic play and the issue Doerries is keen to explore. I’m less sure than he that the tragedy is essentially about “discipline and power,” nor am I persuaded that the suffering of the god Prometheus, punished for giving fire to humanity, is all that similar to the experience of the thousands of convicts in America enduring solitary confinement. Doerries was on stronger ground with his next choice, Sophocles’ “The Women of Trachis” [ca. 450-425 BCE], about the assisted suicide of Heracles, where the play’s ethical dilemmas speak with greater immediacy to contemporary concerns.

It was in the aftermath of a 2011 performance of “The Women of Trachis” before an audience of mostly senior citizens in Falmouth, Mass., that it would dawn on Doerries — it’s the anagnorisis [the moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery] of his own drama — that all his work on Greek tragedy had been to one end, “surrounding myself with people who wanted to face the darkness together and tell their stories,” so that “hope can be found in tragedy.” His moment of recognition serves as a fitting climax to an impressive and accomplished journey.

THE THEATER OF WAR: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today
By Bryan Doerries
284 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95.

[James Shapiro teaches English at Columbia University.  His most recent book is The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.

[Vintage has published three books of play texts in Bryan Doerries’s adaptations.  The ones that were released when this review was published in the New York Times were Sophocles: Philoctetes: A New Translation (12 August 2014) and All That You’ve Seen Here Is God: New Versions of Four Greek Tragedies Sophocles’ Ajax, Philoctetes, Women of Trachis; Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (1 September 2015).  These two volumes were joined on 26 October 2021 by Oedipus Trilogy: New Versions of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.]

Harry Potter at Hoboken High School

 

[On the local evening newscast, News 4 New York at 11, of 14 May 2024 on WNBC, Channel 4 in New York City, I watched an account by reporter Checkey Beckford of the selection of Hoboken High School to be the first in the United States to present the high school version of the current Broadway hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  

[What I heard in the report interested me enough to do a little more checking.  Below is the result of my reading, and I think you’ll also find the story engaging.

[As most readers of Rick On Theater will know, I’m an avid supporter of arts in our schools, both as an activity and as an academic subject.  (I have taught both middle and high school theater, as well as college and even a few guest appearances in elementary classes.  I’ve also directed middle and high school productions and served as advisor to a high school theater group.)

[Past posts on ROT concerning theater and arts in schools (some of which cross over into another frequent topic I blog on: the censorship of artistic expression/the First Amendment and the arts) include “Degrading the Arts,” posted on 13 August 2009; “The Relation of Theater to Other Disciplines,” 21 July 2011; “Arts & Music Education,” 21 March 2014; “Arts in Schools,” 18 November 2015; “Musical Theater Programs for Kids,” 18 May 2018; “Music Theater Programs for Kids,” 5 February 2023; “Censorship on School Stages,” 30 July 2023; and “‘The Courage to Produce: A Conversation on High School Censorship,’” 21 April 2024.]

In November 2023, Broadway Licensing Global, the New York City-based rights-holder for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the current stage hit on Broadway and London’s West End, announced that the high school edition of the play is available for licensing (License Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (licensecursedchild.com)).  BLG held a contest, dubbed Wands at the Ready, to select the first schools in the United States to present the play. 

Entrants were asked to describe why their school or community is the most “magical” place to produce the début of the play in a U.S. state or territory.  High schools participating in the competition “should think of ‘magical’ as demonstrating how their school or drama program shows a passion for commitment to the arts, student inclusion and diversity,” the Broadway Licensing website suggested, “and ways they plan to promote the production within their communities.”

The competition ran until December 2023 and the performances would be staged between 15 October and 10 November 2024.  In February 2024, BLG announced that 29 schools from across the country had been selected to stage Cursed Child.  The locales stretched from Connecticut and Florida to California and Alaska—even a school in Puerto Rico gained the right to present the play. 

There was a school in New York, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Delaware . . . but none in New Jersey.  So how did Hoboken High School in Hudson County get the honor of being the first U.S. school to perform the play?  Well, the answer turns out to be quite simple. 

Hoboken High, along with one other secondary school in the United Kingdom, was chosen for a developmental pilot run of the new version of the play outside the Wands at the Ready competition.  Broadway Licensing went through a month of extensive searching and assessing of the applications of numerous schools to select Hoboken High School in the North Jersey region of the state (directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan), and Riverside School in Barking, a town in East London (Barking Riverside is a development within Barking).  

Riverside School, a state school, which is much like our public schools in that it’s tax-supported, presented its production of the play last 20-23 March.  Both schools selected are public or state institutions because BLG wanted to see that the script can be realized under a budget that isn’t supplemented by private endowments or subsidies. 

(The Wands at the Ready competition was open to all schools in the United States and its territories, including charter, private, and arts schools.  After the competition and the productions of the 29 chosen schools this fall, licenses will be available or all amateur productions.  Interested groups should check the BLG website to keep abreast of releases and updates regarding licensing

(The 29 schools from the Wands at the Ready competition still got to call their production “the first,” explained BLG and Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, the professional play’s producers, irrespective of the pilot productions preceding them.  It was sort of like the Artist’s Proof of a print or lithograph not being counted in the official numbered run of the artwork—or, more appropriate, perhaps, the preview performances of a Broadway show that aren’t counted in the official length of the production’s run.)

Sometime in May 2023, Danielle Miller, the Fine and Performing Arts Supervisor for middle and high school on the Hoboken Board of Education, received an e-mail from BLG asking if the school was interested in being the U.S. pilot for the trial.  Evidently, she said yes.

The Hoboken Public School District has a very active theater program.  The district has three full-time, certified theater teachers and, says Miller in the WNBC news report, every student from kindergarten to 12th grade “gets a theater education.”

The district puts on an annual District Musical—this year, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is characterized as a “play with music” but isn’t a musical, was performed instead of the musical—and all students in the district, from ages 5 to 18, are eligible to participate.  High schoolers play the adult characters (such as Harry, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, and other characters from the seven novels) and middle schoolers the other leads (Harry’s and Draco’s sons, and Ron’s daughters, for instance); creating the props and sets are the jobs of 6th to 12th graders.  

It was this diversity, equity, and inclusion that attracted BLG to Hoboken High as a potential pilot for Cursed Child.  Sean Cercone, founder and CEO of BLG, said that Hoboken was chosen for the North American pilot because “It’s the most diverse, loving, creative community we could have found, and it was right in our own backyard.”  The Hoboken community, including local businesses and residents, “really embraces the arts,” said Cercone.

As Miller is avid to point out, “Many of the most involved students, many who do the best in their classes, are all involved in theater.  It just teaches students to feel comfortable with who they are, to discover more things about themselves . . . .”  I’m not sure how much this means to the corporate rights-holders, but it’s a major point in my arguments for keeping the arts, including theater, in the schools.

The pilot productions were essential to ensure that each participating school could effectively convey the magic of the show within their budgetary and technical constraints.  Developed by the work’s original creative team, the school edition includes solutions that make the professional production’s high-tech wizardry possible regardless of a school’s budget size.

The pilot program was intended to set a high standard to reveal lessons for future productions in analogous circumstances.  Cercone said that “it was critical to us that we identify schools with facilities and resources most similar to the greatest number of schools worldwide.”  He continued, “These pilot productions are a learning process for us, to ensure that any school, regardless of its resources or budget, can produce this show with success.” 

Before I get to the High School Edition and Hoboken High’s production, let me run down the facts of the original play.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was written by playwright Jack Thorne (Let The Right One In, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, 2015; Christmas Carol, Broadway, 2019; King Kong musical, Broadway, 2020; also films and streaming) from an original story he wrote with J. K. Rowling and John Tiffany (who also directed the stage adaptation; Off-Broadway: Once, 2011; Broadway: Once, 2012; Macbeth, 2013; Glass Menagerie, 2013).  

The story’s set 19 years after the events of the 2007 novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last in Rowling‘s series about the young wizard.  (It’s essentially a sequel, since Deathly Hallows ends with an epilogue that’s set 19 years after the events of the episode showing Harry dropping his sons Albus and James off at the train for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.)  According to CNET, a computer website that’s affiliated with CBS International, the play “is officially the eighth story” in the Potter series.

The play follows Albus Potter and his friendship with Scorpius Malfoy, the son of Harry’s rival, Draco, in their first year at Hogwarts.  This friendship sparks a new journey for the older generation of the novels and their progeny—with the power to change the past and future forever.  There are spells, a race through time, and an epic battle to stop mysterious forces, all while the future of the Wizarding World hangs in the balance.

The world première production (which is still running) opened at the Palace Theatre in London’s West End on 30 July 2016.  It received 11 nominations for Laurence Olivier Awards in 2017 and won a record-breaking nine, including for Best New Play.  The Broadway production opened at the Lyric Theatre on 22 April 2018 and received 10 Tony Award nominations that year and won six, including Best Play.

The play was originally presented in two parts which theatergoers could attend in the afternoon and evening of the same day, or over two evenings.   After the pandemic shut-down, the Broadway production was restaged as a single, 3½-hour show in November 2021. 

In 2022, productions in San Francisco (December 2019-September 2022), Melbourne (February 2019-July 2023), Toronto (June 2022-July 2023), and Tokyo (in Japanese; July 2022-Present) also adopted the one-part format, and the German-language version in Hamburg (December 2021-Present) followed in 2023.  The West End production alone continues to play the original two-part version.

(Three upcoming productions have also been announced: Chicago, September 2024-February 2025; Los Angeles, February-June 2025; and Washington, D.C., July 2025-TBA.)

For the one-part version of Cursed Child, over 1½ hours of content was cut.  Also, while it’s not explicitly stated, Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy definitely exhibit romantic interest in each other, and other character relationships have been altered.  These changes have been incorporated in the two-part version of the play as well.

The high school edition of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was announced in September 2023.  According to the Broadway Licensing website:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child High School Edition is a special adaptation of the beloved worldwide hit.  Tailored for high school and secondary school theatre productions, it provides young actors the opportunity to play Harry, Hermione [Granger], Ron [Weasley], and all of their favorite characters on their very own stage and bring the wizarding world to life for their communities.  Your students will be empowered to conjure the magic through their own creativity, making it a truly exciting and engaging experience for students and audiences alike.

The Rowling Library, which isn’t affiliated with the Harry Potter author or any individual or company that’s engaged in the publishing or producing of the Potter books or films, asserts that “the high school version of the production has been condensed compared to its professional counterparts and incorporates innovative special effects adaptable to any school environment, irrespective of its lighting, sound, or stage infrastructure.”

I specifically went in search of some comment from BGL or the play’s producers regarding the school version’s adult or potentially controversial content, particularly the suggestion that Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy might be headed for a romantic relationship.  (It’s the subject of much Internet chatter, and the production’s been accused of “queerbaiting,” a marketing ploy in which creators hint at same-sex romance or other LGBTQ+ themes to entice an LGBTQ-friendly audience without explicitly depicting them.)

It was my experience, when choosing and staging middle and high school plays, that one of the first questions the principals and, most often, vice-principals asked in order to approve my selection was, ‘Is there any sex in it?’  Alongside religion, even the suggestion of sexual content was the topic that most likely would set off some parents.  The schools in which I worked were generally pretty liberal culturally, so I can’t but assume that the same concern would obtain in all the schools on BLG’s list.

I’d have expected there to have been some statement of assurance regarding controversial material in the script, but there was very little, and most of what I found was suggestive without being definitive and clear.  For instance, the Broadway Licensing site states that the school edition of the play is “tailored for high school theatre productions” without specifying what that addresses. 

The character description for Albus says that he “forms a close friendship with Scorpius Malfoy,” but leaves the implication ambiguous.  (There’s no parallel statement about Albus in Scorpius’s character profile.)

The high school version requires 16 men, 14 women, and 4 actors who may be any gender.  The play runs from 1½ to 2 hours (in contrast to the 3½ hours of the Broadway production.)  The script is adjusted for the standard stage lighting and sound capacities of typical public school theaters and auditoriums.  A perusal copy of the script is available for $20 from the license-holder (check their website, above).

(Broadway Licensing clearly states on its site that there are no restrictions on casting, including cross-gender casting: “Any student of any gender identity, race, etc. can play any role so long as the roles stay as written.”  See the FAQ’s on the webpage indicated above.)

Once Hoboken High was chosen, as revealed at a special event on 7 September 2023, Miller and her colleague, Jessica Fasolino, the Board of Ed’s Fine and Performing Arts Supervisor for kindergarten through 5th grade, sent out a district-wide announcement of the production schedule and procedures.

There was an audition registration period on the school’s website that ran until 17 November 2023, then the auditions themselves took place, grouped by grade, from 11 to 15 December.  There was even a “Mock Audition Fundraiser” on 9 December “to help prepare your child for the audition process.”  It sounded to me like a theater-games session for any student interested in trying out but who’d never participated before.

Miller reported that 300 to 350 Hoboken District students from kindergarteners to high school seniors auditioned for the play.  Of these, she assembled a cast of over 100 for the production.  This is apparently not uncommon for Hoboken’s inclusive program, and I gather it works for them.

(I’ve never had a cast that large, though I have swelled the companies for my middle school shows, as I imagine many secondary school theater teachers/directors do, but never more than 15% of that number.  My main question for Miller is: where do you put them all back stage?  I’ve never even seen a school theater, even where I did my MFA, whose back-stage area was exceptionally huge.)

Rehearsals started on 16 January 2024, with the final dress on Monday, 13 May.  At that session, Miller had arranged a surprise for the company that I’m sure was an immense thrill: the Broadway cast paid them an unannounced visit!  Following the rehearsal, reported BLG, the pros celebrated on stage with the students, giving high fives and sharing in the excitement.

(One of the benefits BLG and the professional show’s producers touted for selecting Riverside School in London and Hoboken High School in northern New Jersey for the pilot outings of the new adaptation of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was that both schools were in proximity to two important professional productions.  One might suspect they meant that this gave the young cast and potential audiences the opportunity to see the West End and Broadway mountings—but the surprise attendance by the Broadway actors might have been a lagniappe they, like the student actors and crew, hadn’t considered.)

At the same dress rehearsal, Miller invited faculty and theater students from other New Jersey school districts to provide “a platform for sharing experiences and fostering a sense of community among theatre educators and students alike.”  At the end, the guests, who in other circumstances—sports or academic competitions—might be rivals, the visitors’ Gryffindor to Hoboken’s Ravenclaw, stood and cheered their peers.

After a day off on Tuesday, the 14th, the second-ever production of the High School Edition of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the first in the U.S., opened at Hoboken High School on Wednesday, 15 May 2024.  It ran through Sunday, 19 May.  The Hoboken pilot showcase, like its U.K. predecessor, was sold out for all five performances.  In Hoboken, most of the seats were sold by Thursday.

Danielle Miller was the director of the Hoboken High staging of Cursed Child, but she teamed with theater teacher and stage director at the high school, Derek Kinnear, who served as technical director of the production.  Kinnear was responsible for, among other things, the magic and wizardly effects of Hoboken’s Cursed Child.

“Our challenge,” explains Miller, “was to innovate within the constraints of a well-known universe.”  Broadway Licensing repeatedly states that as long as the text is spoken the way it’s written (unless permission to make changes is obtained in writing), schools are allowed, even encouraged, to make adjustments in other aspects of the script, including casting, movement, or effects.  “We had to reimagine sets, costumes, props, and even the choreography of movements in a way that was fresh yet familiar,” Miller added.

The pilot shows were meant to establish the standards for schools around the world that will perform it afterwards.  Miller acknowledged that she and her team were “keenly aware of their responsibility not only to meet the standards associated with the franchise but also to showcase the potential of public school theater programs.”

Kinnear, the TD, observed, “We knew we didn’t want to try to copy the effects done on Broadway.”  So the tech team created “unique magical moments that were feasible within their budget,” and they added “little but precise effects” intended to engage the spectators without exceeding the school’s finances or taxing the team’s capabilities.

For example, Hoboken High’s Cursed Child put student actors into harnesses for flying and produced digital scenic projections.  From the photos I saw online, these effects looked as good and as convincing as any I’ve seen in Broadway and top-line rep company productions. 

“Our goal was to create a sense of wonder that was uniquely ours, without trying to replicate the high-budget effects of Broadway,” the tech director explained.  Kinnear and his techies apparently pulled it off.  Whatever his budget was, it seemed well spent. 

I was hoping that there’d be some kind of report of the performance, from audience members or a local journalist who followed up on all the pre-performance coverage of this singular occurrence.  I kept checking the ’Net after the 15th, but there wasn’t anything to speak of.  The only “after-action” record I found was on one blog, David Barrineau.

The eponymous blogger describes himself as “a Creative Director/Art Director for over two decades.  Most of my career has focused on Arts and Culture advertising, especially Theatre.”  He has a BFA in theater from New York University, and one of his advertising clients was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—the Broadway production, I presume.  Barrineau, who doesn’t seem to have any connection to the school, BLG, or the New York production, posted this reaction of opening night at the Hoboken High show:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Student Edition Premieres

May 15, 2024

The first student production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child premiered at Hoboken High School and it’s ADORABLE!  And the talented cast is so enthusiastic and charming.  The Broadway production is so technically stunning, I couldn’t imagine how they would be able to scale it down for student productions, but — wow!  There was so much creativity that went into the staging.  They even had a student fly on a broom across the stage, which the Broadway production doesn’t even do — maybe they should add it?

On the day after the London production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child premièred, the published text of the play was released.  (Note that the release date, 31 July 2016, corresponds to the birthdays of Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling—her 51st—and Harry, himself—his 36th.)  This is the script of the play, not a novelization, which has not been created.

There are two versions of the published script, released by Arthur A. Levine Books (an imprint of Scholastic Corporation, the U.S. publisher of the Potter novels).  The authorship credits are the same as for the play, itself: written by Jack Thorne from a story by Rowling, John Tiffany, and Thorne.  The first version is now labeled “Special Rehearsal Edition” and is the text of the play’s previews and early performances, and, like them, is in two parts.

A “Definitive Collector’s Edition” was published on 26 July 2017, and incorporated changes that were made in the text.  This edition is closer to the final version of the script as currently performed on stage.

(Note that these publications are the adult versions of the play text.  As of now, there is no commercially available published text of the high school edition.  Perusal copies, which are not complete acting editions—no stage directions, for example—are available for prospective licensees from BGL, and full acting editions will be available to licensees once the contracts have been signed.)

Just as no novel adaptation of the play is being contemplated, there is no film version of Cursed Child in the works at this time.

Rumors of a film adaptation began to circulate almost as soon as the play opened in London.  Warner Bros., the studio that produced all the Harry Potter films (and the related works that followed) has expressed interest in making a Cursed Child movie, especially if they can get the original actors who played the now-adult characters in the eight original films to reprise those roles now as adults—but so far Rowling, who must sign off on any adaptation of her work, has said no.

“[T]o set the record straight once and for all,” says Rowling: “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a stage play, it was conceived and written as a stage play, it was always intended to be a stage play and nothing else, and there are absolutely no plans for it to become a movie, a novel, a puppet show, a cartoon, a comic book series or Cursed Child on Ice.”

Of course, Rowling has said no on previous occasions . . . and later changed her mind.  As Fats Waller often said: “One never knows, do one?”

"Subscriptions Are Dead, Long Live Subscriptions"

by Rosie Brownlow-Calkin

A Supplement to the Regional Theater Series

[As most theatergoers know, the regional repertory theaters in the United States depends heavily on subscriptions for their audiences.  The programs may vary from company to company and even from season to season as marketing tactics change or someone comes up with a new concept, but some kind of subscription plan has been the mainstay for regional theater since the movement began, essentially following World War II. 

[In recent decades, however, theater audiences began to shrivel.  Potential audience members aged and younger people didn’t sign up to replace their elders.  The reasons vary, of course, but the repercussions have been a whittling-away of the base of the rep companies’ principal source of attendees and, thereby, their income base.

[The latest issue, Spring 2024, of the Theatre Communications Groups American Theatre, which has become a quarterly magazine since returning to print after going online during the pandemic shutdown, carried a couple of articles dealing with this and related issues. 

[As part of my ad hoc series on the regional theater in the U.S., focusing on its significance in our culture and the problem it currently faces, I’m republishing Rosie Brownlow-Calkin’s “Subscriptions Are Dead, Long Live Subscriptions!” on Rick On Theater.  The article originally appeared in AT in the spring issue and was posted on the website on 4 June 2024.]

Theatres are taking a hard look at a well-worn patron model, and coming to different conclusions about its usefulness.

When Amy Kaissar wrote her graduate thesis on the topic of nonprofit theatre subscriptions [“Theatre Subscriptions in a Changing World,” MFA thesis, Division of Theatre, School of the Arts, Columbia University, 2005], her basic argument was: They’re not dead; we just haven’t invested in them. Now, 19 years wiser, and after 15 years in leadership positions, Kaissar, the current co-producing director at Bristol Riverside Theatre [BRT] in Bristol, Pa., confessed, “I’m not sure I would 100 percent agree” with her earlier assessment.

The hedging is important here—it’s not that her outlook has done a 180. But so much in the intervening years has complicated her earlier certainty, including, of course, the pandemic lockdown of the past few years, which impacted every aspect of the industry. But even without that bumpy chapter and its even rockier aftermath, the outlook for subscriptions has long been multilayered. Even now, for all the public hand-wringing about the state of the theatre, artistic leaders, audiences, and a quantitative survey of 84 companies from across the U.S. conducted by American Theatre presents a remarkably multifarious picture rather than a uniformly bleak one.

The complexity begins with the very definition of subscriptions. Butts in seats is an easy number to measure (How full is the house? Down about 25-30 percent nationwide, on average), but what makes a subscription a subscription? Trinity Rep in Providence, R.I., and Shotgun Players in Berkeley, Calif., to name two examples, have embraced the flexible models that have gained traction in recent years (pay in advance for a set number of tickets and redeem for the best available seat for any performance on any day in the show’s run), while 4th Wall Theatre Company in Houston and Oregon Contemporary Theatre in Eugene are leaning into what many in the industry refer to as the “standard” or “traditional” model (pay in advance for the same seats on the second Thursday of every run, say). The REV Theatre Co. in Auburn, N.Y., has ditched flex passes entirely.

Road Less Traveled Productions in Buffalo, N.Y., and Dobama Theatre in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, like several others in the survey, are rolling out what they call “memberships,” but nearly all of these differ from flex subscriptions in name only—with the notable exception of Open Stage in Harrisburg, Pa., which offers a pay-by-the-month model patrons can cancel any time (and for the record, Open Stage says it’s doing great—subscriptions are up 296 percent since 2019). Omaha Theater Company has a new rolling membership “similar to museums” that allows patrons to jump in at any point in the calendar year. To add to the variety of the picture, Local Theater Company in Boulder, Colo., produces three shows in a season, while Sierra Rep in Sonora, Calif., produces nine, and both offer subscriptions. You’re hardly comparing apples to apples the way you can with single-ticket purchases.

So broadly speaking—if we can speak broadly at all—what are the trends? Are subscriptions in free fall, and if so, what does that mean for the continuing health of theatres? Are subscriptions still a viable model, for either audiences or companies?

On their face, the numbers aren’t great. Of the 66 companies responding to the survey that offer subscriptions and provided complete data, 42 percent said the numbers are way down, with 30 percent or more of their subscribers gone since the pandemic, and 21 percent of companies said they are somewhat down (between 11 and 29 percent subscriber attrition). This is almost a photonegative of numbers for audience attendance in general: As measured in a previous AT survey, many more companies are down moderately in overall attendance than are down significantly.

But the bright spots are brighter too. More companies are doing well with subscribers than are doing well with overall ticket sales: 20 percent of companies report more than a 10 percent subscriber increase since 2019, and 17 percent have held steady (which we’re defining here as staying within a 10 percent increase or decrease). Comparatively, only 26 percent of companies report steady or increased attendance numbers overall.

So more than a third of companies in our survey said they’ve weathered the pandemic lockdown and are in stable or better shape, subscriber-wise, since reopening. Burning Coal Theatre Company in Raleigh, N.C., for instance, reported subscription growth of 60 percent over the past five years.

“The subscription model is just fine,” said Burning Coal artistic director Jerome Davis. “Young people aren’t crazy about it, but the nice thing about young people is, they don’t stay young for long.”

At Actor’s Express in Atlanta, managing director Alex Scollon said he wonders if the media bias toward well-resourced institutions is the reason there’s been such one-note, sad-sack media coverage about the state of the theatre field. “Often midsize and smaller organizations are left out of these conversations in favor of doom and gloom stories from LORT [League of Resident Theatres, a professional theater association for regional, non-profit companies],” said Scollon, who said that Actor’s Express’s subscription numbers have held steady. “There is a lot that keeps me up these days, but subscription plans are not one of them.”

Added Jen Uphoff Gray, artistic director of Forward Theatre in Madison, Wisc., “Overall, I am feeling exhausted by the messaging that ‘the subscription model is dead,’ which long predated the pandemic. Any such proclamations ignore the wide differences in theatre companies across the country, and the wide variety of audiences we serve.”

Indeed, the notion that the subscription model has been on the wane isn’t supported by the data we gathered. While none of the nine LORT member theatres [of a total of 75 members] that completed our survey have grown their base significantly, and only two have held steady (both in Florida, with its never-ending stream of retirees), half of the surveyed companies said their subscriptions were on the rise in the decade preceding the pandemic, with another quarter holding steady. Though the survey didn’t directly probe whether numbers had rebounded since the slump most companies experienced in 2020 or 2021, several volunteered the news that they are now trending in the right direction.

In sum, it feels premature to make any pronouncements about whether the contraction in audiences post-pandemic-lockdown is also a death knell for the subscription model. The longer-term data doesn’t indicate a gradual or inevitable trend in that direction for the majority of companies.

Still, if you factor in theatres who consider themselves “holding steady” with subscription losses of under 10 percent, nearly two-thirds of our respondents say they’ve lost subscribers in the past five years. Kaissar’s company, Bristol Riverside, is part of this larger group, with subscriptions down 31 percent since the pre-pandemic idyll of 2019. Though they have regained some subscribers from their lowest point over the last few years, Kaissar said she “wouldn’t call it a recovery at all. The diehards are still here, and we have not succeeded in getting new people in.”

Sheldon Post is one of those diehards. He said via email that he’s stuck with BRT for 35 years because of the variety of programming, “a mix of relatively unknown plays, very well-known plays, and ‘different’ takes on familiar plays,” as well as the perks, including “the ability to change our performance date on the rare occasions that we need to,” and a benefit that “enables subscribers to return on another night to see a play again—no charge.”

That seems like a good deal (though the ability to exchange tickets has recently been extended to single-ticket buyers at several companies for free or a nominal fee). So why have so many at BRT flown the coop, and so precipitously? Kaissar was hesitant to make big pronouncements on the subject. “I worry about anyone who claims to understand the actual causes, given the lack of available high-quality research,” she said, but did recall that in conversations with subscribers, “What we hear most consistently is either age-related things, or they moved, or they didn’t like the work we’re doing anymore. They want the work of the previous generation.” She added that, for the record, her company hasn’t pivoted from feel-good musicals to the work of Sarah Kane, but that it has been more focused on attracting Gen X patrons and other recent empty nesters with titles they might recognize, like their upcoming Big The Musical. Viewed through one lens, that may seem like crowd-pleasing programming, but it all depends which crowd you mean: Baby boomers and above were not that movie’s target audience when it came out in 1988.

[According to Wikipedia: “Sarah Kane [1972-99] was an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. She is known for her plays that deal with themes of redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture—both physical and psychological—and death. They are characterised by a poetic intensity, pared-down language, exploration of theatrical form and, in her earlier work, the use of extreme and violent stage action.”  Kane died by suicide at the age of 28.]

Other artistic leaders are in agreement with Kaissar, with many citing a greying of their subscriber base as a reason for declining subscription rates. The near-universal agreement is that subscribers, especially to the “standard” models, tend to be older. In the four years since Covid hit, these audience members are more likely to have passed, moved away, become infirm, or simply gotten more cautious about their health. And for whatever reason, Gen Xers and millennials tend not to make plans far in advance. Said Lauren Halvorsen [dramaturg and writer based in Washington, D.C.] of the popular theatre Substack newsletter Nothing for the Group [newsletter devoted to a conversation about pay equity in the theater], “Theatres do not embrace the spontaneity of younger generations.”

So between the thinning older audience and the last-minute-planning younger audience, it’s no wonder that traditional subscription numbers are not rising. “The word subscription scares people off post-Covid,” said Tracy Mitchell, executive director of Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, N.Y. “The current trend of late purchasing has become a habit. As long as there is a seat available, this is going to plague theatres for quite some time.”

Several survey respondents, like Kaissar, did say that a perceived distaste for “newer” programming contributed to the decline in numbers. Still, for all the right-wing media’s eagerness to blame “woke theatre” for this phenomenon, no respondent reported that this audience aversion had an especially political bent. Joe Miller, a one-time Bristol Riverside subscriber, said he cut the cord because he and his wife were “seeing plays that we’re just not that interested in. We like comedies, we like musicals, and some of these are plays we’ve never heard of before,” adding that he found the theatre’s programming overly heavy on drama of late.

There are countless soft or unique factors at play for subscribers who call it quits. For Lori Boswell in Portland, Ore., it wasn’t about programming but parking. She traded in her subscription to a LORT theatre for one at a non-union company in the suburbs; both make “okay” work, she said, but she was done with what she considers the inconvenience of coming downtown.

One area where there is little agreement: money. On its face, it would seem like an obvious driving factor in subscription trends, because younger people who might replace older subscribers are less likely to have the disposable income necessary for a lump sum upfront payment. Indeed, when we asked for comments on Facebook, the floodgates opened, with reflection after reflection from younger industry folks stating in one way or another that they cannot afford to subscribe. One was Kathryn Huey, former business manager for the Blue Man Group, current general manager of D.C.’s Studio Theatre, who said that subscriptions “are expensive, very true. They were nothing I could dream to do when I was younger.” Perhaps driven by necessity, the current crop of theatregoers “more than ever are looking for a deal, or a way to save,” argued Eric Pugh, director of marketing and communications of Asolo Repertory Theatre in Florida.

[Frequent theatergoers may know the name Blue Man Group, but for others: it’s a performance-art troupe, formed in 1987, known for productions incorporating many varieties of music and art. The performers, known as Blue Men, paint their skin blue, always appear in groups of three, and are mute during shows.

[Washington’s Studio Theatre is a company many of whose productions I’ve seen over the years.  See my many reports on this blog for an impression of their work.]

Chad Bauman, executive director of Milwaukee Rep, maintained that his company has retained its substantial subscriber base during the pandemic in part because they offer cheap subscription packages and avoid last-minute deals for single-ticket buyers that “undermine the value proposition of subscriptions.” Milwaukee Rep is in the minority on this point; at most companies, paying upfront doesn’t save subscribers much money in the long run. A recent AT survey found that subscribers save just $1 per ticket vs. single-ticket buyers, on average.

Even theatres where subscriptions offer real savings, like Bristol Riverside, haven’t seen a boost because of it, making it unclear whether cost is really a meaningful signal or barrier. According to Kaissar, it hasn’t been “a winning message when we’ve gone hard on how cheap it is.” At Amphibian Stage in Fort Worth, Texas, said outgoing artistic director Kathleen Culebro, “Our most popular subscription package is actually not our cheapest.” Numbers would seem to side with Kaissar and Culebro, at least on a macro level; our earlier survey found no clear link between trends in audience attendance and trends in ticket pricing over the past five years.

Whatever the driving force, Kaissar understandably views Bristol Riverside’s decline in subscribers as a big problem. Fewer subscribers means that her marketing budget has ballooned; loyal subscribers need only a single email every year to remind them to re-up, but “my single ticket buyer, I need to advertise to.” Articulating a version of the reasoning that, in the decades since Danny Newman’s groundbreaking book Subscribe Now! [1977 (3rd ed., 1981)‎, Theatre Communications Group] made subscription the dominant model for many performing arts organizations, Kaissar noted that without a significant subscriber bloc ponying up for a whole season in advance, each lesser-known title becomes a massive risk. Without a strong base of subscribers, “I don’t know how we make new work. I don’t know how we push the art form forward. I don’t know how we introduce people to things they don’t know. I don’t know how we support playwrights.”

At Theater Mu in the Twin Cities [located specifically in Saint Paul, Minnesota], the subscription numbers aren’t so hot either, but Lianna McLernon, Mu’s marketing and communications director, and Wesley Mouri, the theatre’s development director, don’t see it as a problem. Mu has lost about half of their subscribers since 2019, but single tickets are up twofold. While McLernon is quick to emphasize that the theatre still does offer subscriptions and “they are important to us and we love our subscribers,” Mouri explained that “being an Asian American theatre company is unique in the sense that the Asian diaspora is the most diverse diaspora that exists.” In practical terms that means that Mu audiences are “very specifically keyed into the specific culture of each show. The Hmong audience is not necessarily going to come see the Kung Fu Zombie show [The Kung Fu Zombies Saga by Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay; 22 July-13 August 2023], which was about Lao experiences.”

There are many ways to measure growth, and Mu’s recent efforts to diversify their offerings outside the East Asian community have meant a massive influx of new audiences. Their audiences tend to be younger and more economically diverse than the typical theatregoer too; Mu offers a Pay As You Are program to every performance of every play, allowing patrons to purchase tickets for as little as $10. Institutional giving to the theatre has also doubled, a rarity in recent years, which helps release the pressure on ticket revenue to foot the bills.

While a theatre like Bristol Riverside sees subscriptions as a way to subsidize risk taking, at a theatre like Mu, the opposite is true. As Mouri and McLernon put it, Mu’s “focus on the diversifying of stories and representation” wouldn’t be possible if they were catering to “the same 200 people.” As Bay Street’s Tracy Mitchell put it, “Subscriptions are valuable for some of us, and not for others.”

While some survey respondents, like Mu, still offer subscriptions but have begun to direct their marketing strategies away from retaining and gaining subscribers, Chicago’s Congo Square Theatre “shifted away from subscriptions completely” to focus on “a radical generosity model to combat high costs associated with theatre,” as artistic director Ericka Ratcliff put it. People’s Light in Malvern, Pa., has focused its efforts on engaging regular attendees who are not subscribers. Though subscribers “can be terrific brand ambassadors for us,” as former managing director Erica Ezold put it, “our overall marketing strategy has shifted from subscribers as the first priority.”

But even most theatres who have lost subscribers have not abandoned the model, at least not for now. Many companies are offering perks, like drink tickets, subscriber-only events, and parking passes, to entice people to subscribe. City Lights Theater Company in San Jose, Calif., is emphasizing the value of community and belonging as a primary benefit to subscriptions, writing tailored welcome emails to each new subscriber.

American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco is focused first on bringing in single-ticket buyers, then on converting them to subscribers; similarly, ZACH Theatre in Austin waits until the first show of each season has closed to roll out one of their packages. Cadence Theatre Company in Richmond, Va., is offering early-bird discounts; Amphibian Stage has launched an under-40 package. Weston Theater Company in Vermont said they’re “streamlining” the subscription process. Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor, Maine, is experimenting with a “three-tiered approach,” including a $20-per-seat package for first-time subscribers and a premium-level “true cost of the ticket” package. TheatreWorks Silicon Valley [Palo Alto, California] is seeing success with smaller packages. Main Street Theater in Houston is rebranding subscriptions as “season tickets,” because “subscriptions is what the monthly charge for streaming is called,” reasoned executive artistic director Rebecca Greene Udden.

Clive Worsley, executive director of Cal Shakes [California Shakespeare Theater] in Orinda, Calif., said he believes that the “days are numbered for the single-entity subscription model,” and thinks the answer lies in “offering membership packages that could get you in the door to multiple locations, like a passport.”

The sheer multiplicity of opinions and data trends is both exhausting and exhilarating. As there is no clear picture on the state of subscriptions, they are a bit of a black box: They can be a financial barrier or a democratic opportunity. They can be flexible or rigid. They can stifle or empower. They can be a massive financial engine, an ancillary benefit, or a distraction. And there is no clear crystal ball about where they’re headed: Many are up, twice as many are down, plenty are recovering. Amid the dizzying variety of approaches, one universal truth is that every company is moving somewhere on this issue; no one is meeting this extraordinary moment by standing still.

As she struggles to figure out what’s driving the drop in subscriptions, Kaissar said, “The model, whether subscriptions or anything else, is outmoded, and we’ve got to get it up to speed, fast. Long term, people clearly want to come together to hear stories; 10 years from now it will look better than it did before.” Pausing on that bit of hopeful thinking, she added, “In the short term, how we get there is terrifying.”

[Rosie Brownlow-Calkin is an Actors' Equity Association actor and assistant professor of theater at the University of Nevada, Reno.  She has written extensively about the economics of the theater industry.]