At the end of this piece you’ll find a lightly annotated group of references to several of the above-mentioned articles on theatre, in the NYT, the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere, along with a couple that touch on especially vexing recent incidents in the broader culture, with links where handy. I recommend these articles, and meanwhile will note here that the most commonly cited symptoms of the theatre malady are: loss of audience, including the last gasps of the subscription system of ticket sales; rising costs (including pressure for increased compensation of all personnel) in relation to earned income; “donor fatigue” and the shifting away of foundation support to other social causes; and a resulting epidemic of theatre closures, a reduction in the number and size of productions, and heavy layoffs of artistic, technical, and administrative staff. The most frequent attributions of cause: the pandemic and its complications (notably, the simple breaking of the theatre-going habit, along with a continuing reluctance to risk crowded venues, particularly among older devotees); the ease and convenience of home entertainment, aided by the advent of streaming; at least in some cities, a perception of heightened danger in downtown areas and of less reliable public transportation. Barely mentioned by the authors of the articles or the professional interviewees who are their primary sources, but cited anecdotally by audience members interviewed and much more than anecdotally in letters to the editor and online reader comments: the didactic, “preachily political” (read: “DEI-influenced”) nature of so much of the programming—which in turn means plays that have been chosen for their sociopolitical approvability rather than their artistic quality (or, just as likely, that have mistaken one for the other in the minds of those who do the choosing, who seem to have lost any sense of the distinction). Without for a moment disputing the relevance of the other factors cited, I would insist that the pressures exerted by the DEI campaigners constitute a major, not a minor, factor in the flight of audience.

Conspicuously missing from the NYT theatre-calamity coverage, though touched on in one or two of the ripostes cited below, are four intimately related topics. They are, first, the yawning absence of the classics from programming (and the same heavy-handed reinterpretation of them that we see in opera—to make them toe the “relevance” line—whenever they do pop up); second, the raison-d’être of non-profit status to begin with, that is, the very basis for allotting publicly accountable monies, either via direct subvention or tax-forgiven grants and donations, for the use of selected initiatives in the arts; third, the confusion in the public awareness of that status with the nominally for-profit commercial entertainment sector, and between the live performing arts and the technologically reproduced ones; and fourth, a crisis of leadership, impossible to generalize about but documentable in individual cases, and decidedly real: the generations of visionary founders and their immediate descendants in both our regional theatre and opera sectors is gone and, leaving aside the localized cases of wreckage due to mismanagement and incompetence, what artistically qualified person in his or her right mind, apart from an already committed social justice activist, would step into a leadership position in the current environment? It’s hard enough to identify and attract such talent in the best of times. Revisiting these topics in the light of recent developments would require an article well beyond the scope of this one, so I’ll end my theatre-dedicated remarks with bits of personal experience I find illustrative: