Today, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis announced that it has a projected $2.5M budget shortfall and is canceling two productions as a result. The company is also asking for its supporters to help it meet that shortfall by the end of the year.
“The theatre is at an inflection point, and we need to raise $2.5M through ticket sales and philanthropy by the end of 2023 to continue to produce works in the second half of our season,” said Managing Director Danny Williams in a statement. “The St. Louis community has sustained us for nearly six decades, and now more than ever, we need them to invest in our future.”
Speaking to the RFT, Williams called the financial challenges a “polycrisis” because there are multiple causes, which include the pandemic, a shift in how people buy tickets and the loss of support from some longtime funders.
“We've been hit with a lot at once,” he says, explaining that he’d been working with the Rep’s board of directors for the last five months to figure out a way forward.
Williams says that theater audiences no longer purchase season subscriptions like they used to, instead preferring to purchase tickets a la carte. It was a national trend even before the pandemic, and while the Rep has been affected less than some, it was still impacted. That’s meant that while some shows did very well financially — Murder on the Orient Express, for example — others suffered. The critically acclaimed Lehman Brothers Trilogy was one of the latter.
Audiences seem to be preferring familiar shows, which speaks to the Rep’s decision to cancel The Lion and The Greatest Love for Whitney: A Tribute to Whitney Houston and replace A Christmas Carol with It’s a Wonderful Life.
But the Rep’s financial woes don’t stem from ticket sales alone.
“We were very much affected by local corporations like Centene pulling out of the funding space,” Williams says. “We were receiving upwards of almost $100,000 a year from Centene. And so when that funding goes away, when the Arts and Education Council is not funding us the way it used to, when other corporations are changing their funding priorities, we saw a compounding effect on donations, and donations that used to be very consistent and very reliable now, all of a sudden, not be reliable anymore.”
(There might be some reason for that declining support. Earlier this year, the Arts and Education Council of Greater St. Louis put its building up for sale, citing low occupancy, and CEO Lyah LeFlore-Ituen left quietly as the Council pushed back its annual awards from January 30 to April 17.)
The Rep’s annual 990 return shows the theater sustained net losses the last two years — $1,187,265 in 2021 and $871,517 in 2022. At the end of 2022, it had net assets of over $6 million.
Williams says that today’s announcement is about calling “folks into action” and “instilling a sense of urgency.”
“My hope is that we are able to raise enough money to finish the season and get the next season on sale and continue with a new artistic director that we hope will be starting sometime in early 2024,” he says, adding that he’s focused on getting the 57-year-old organization to year 60 and beyond.
Earlier this year, Artistic Director Hana Sharif left for a position at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Williams says that it was a dream job and that her departure did not have to do with the budget situation. Williams says that a national search for her replacement is in the works.
Despite the fact that it’s early days, Williams is feeling hopeful, saying he’s already had some people increase their gifts or give one-time support since a campaign, Rally for the Rep, was announced.
“I want people to remember that arts organizations are living, breathing things and that they survive off of the support and the buy-in of the community,” he says. “We need that buy-in and support more than ever.”
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