Chicago Theatre in Crisis?

An impassioned plea from Chris Jones at the Chicago Tribune.

"I view the crisis, frankly, as existential for a beat I’ve covered for some 30 years. Were this a more sensational newspaper, the headline might well have been “is the Chicago theater over?”

in general. 

It's easy enough to get behind the paywall but I am not sure if I am allowed to say how. 

I don't like Chris Jones but he's quite right here. 

Chicago theater needed to change (as did most of the country). Unfortunately, in Chicago, the forces driving the needed change have shown themselves to be unable or unwilling to reshape and rebuild. So there's been a hack and slash and we're left with a bunch of smoldering institutions and no leaders. The activists who claimed to want the responsibility were unable to handle it, didn't realize the scope what they were taking on and decided they didn't want it, or merely used their activism to get jobs in television and at other regional theaters.  And of course a few of the loudest folks demanding resignations over racism, patriarchy, and abuse turned out to be abusers and oppressors themselves.   

I think there's a real chance to rebuild but we'll see what the next few years hold. We've got a bunch of great theater buildings if anyone is looking. 

There is both a major generational shift and a major racial/cultural shift in the American theatre right now. I’m no longer a Chicago Tribune subscriber so I can’t read the article, but I lived and worked in Chicago for several years and have been keeping up with the theatre news there pretty steadily. A well-respected Black theatre director (who I actually went to school with) had his career effectively ended a few days ago when multiple women called him out on social media for sexual harassment and emotional abuse. Meanwhile, Victory Gardens has been a dumpster fire since that fateful summer in 2020, and a lot of the bigwigs like Robert Falls of The Goodman, Barbara Gaines of Chicago Shakespeare, and most of the original Steppenwolf gang have either retired or died. Meanwhile, the rich, white subscriber bases that have kept non-profit regional theatres alive in Chicago and beyond are also literally dying out, so the times they are a-changin’.

Valid.

Longish new article from Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune:

What happened to theater in Chicago?

https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/ct-ent-changing-chicago-theater-20230817-ukb7iwoynjbyvfbscgmu4mhvpi-story.html

Link not paywalled for me, but sometimes others seem to get hit with one.

New report on Chicago performing arts is devastating. All text below is from a Chicago Tribune editorial.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/ct-editorial-chicago-performing-arts-report-revenue-subscribers-donors-20231002-mbulem6wyvebjo7a5j7inuvzqm-story.html

According to the report, which relies on statistics developed by Southern Methodist University’s DataArts research group, dwindling audiences are now a huge problem for local arts organizations. “From 2019 to 2022,” the report says, “Chicago performing arts organizations and museums in the study saw 26% and 29% ... declines in the number of subscribers and members, respectively.”

For Chicago’s justly beloved theaters, the drop over four years in the number of subscribers averaged an eye-popping 39%, which is partly a result of the old-fashioned nature of subscription selling at a time of variable pricing and when people don’t like to make decisions far in advance.

Overall attendance is down a sobering 59% for Chicago’s performing arts. Last year, earned revenue was 46% lower than in 2019. And, as a result of emergency belt-tightening, Chicago theaters had 44% fewer full-time staff and 47% fewer part-time staff last year compared with 2019. That’s a lot of lost jobs, if the report is accurate.

But it’s not just about the number of subscribers or members; it’s also about how much revenue these customers are creating, or rather not creating, for the organization. Across all arts sectors in Chicago, the report notes, revenue dropped a stunning 61% in that four years. For Chicago theaters, it was 65%. That means subscribers and members, even those who are hanging on, now are paying much less. You don’t need an MBA to see that these numbers are not sustainable in the long term."

Updated On: 10/3/23 at 11:50 PM

Well, you are the same age as my parents.  They will only go to the theatre if I buy them tickets, and then you would think I had asked them to go lick a toilet bowl, the way they react. 

RippedMan said: "I will saw when I saw Hamilton here in Chicago it was very much parents bringing their teens to the show because the teens begged them to go, which is promising. But how do you get those teens interested in seeing a show at Lookingglass while they’re in town? Not sure."

Great question.  I've long believed that cities with lots of small theaters doing good work should look for more cross-promotional opportunities.  For a generic example something like "show your Hamilton ticket stub and get a 10% discount at XYZ Lookingglass production."

Obviously a real cross-marketing effort would exploit possible synergies between companies, specific shows, et al.  I still remember a mantra from one of my grad school marketing classes "Meet the audience where its at and provide a compelling incentive for them to try you out."

Not to get that defensive, but TV news and rightwing media have overblown crime in Chicago and elsewhere.  And the other problem in bringing that up is to be accused of being racist, which is happening too often in theater these days anyway. Witness a rental house close to downtown, near mass transit and with a distinguished record of productions (including David Cromer's "Our Town", which right now is getting a black eye from an unfortunate incident regarding the space's titular head and a young activist, which she put on Instagram, caused one tenant to move their show out at the last minute to another space, the other current tenant to stay (but will probably go somewhere else after this season) and pretty much put the venue on an informal theater community blacklist along with two other rental houses. With another formal rental house switching out of the pandemic into what they call "immersive arts with interactive cocktails" and what could be called a not-for-profit running a bar with entertainment, two more houses closed, the remaining rental houses booked for months ahead and rents for storefronts becoming more expensive, it is not a good time for this crap to happen.