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      Hitting Theater Hard: The Loss of Subscribers Who Went to Everything

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      The subscription model, in which theatergoers buy a season’s worth of shows at a time, had long been waning, but it fell off a cliff during the pandemic.As a group of stagehands assembled train cars for the set of “Murder on the Orient Express,” Ken Martin looked grimly at his email. His first year as artistic director at the Clarence Brown Theater in Knoxville, Tenn., was coming to an end, and the theater had missed its income goals by several hundred thousand dollars, largely because it had lost about half its subscribers since the start of the pandemic.“I’ve already had to tear up one show, because of a combination of cost and I don’t think it’s going to sell,” he said. “I’m in the same boat as a lot of theater companies: How do I get the audience back, and once I get them in the door, how do I keep them for the next show?”The nonprofit theater world’s industrywide crisis, which has led to closings, layoffs and a reduction in the number of shows being staged, is being exacerbated by a steep drop in the number of people who buy theater subscriptions, in which they pay upfront to see most or all of a season’s shows. The once-lucrative subscription model had been waning for years, but it has fallen off a cliff since the pandemic struck.It is happening across the nation. Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater had 13,566 subscribers last season, down from 19,770 before the pandemic. In Atlanta, the Alliance Theater ended last season with 3,208, down from a prepandemic 5,086, while Northlight Theater, in Skokie, Ill., is at about 3,200, down from 5,700.Theaters are losing people like Joanne Guerriero, 61, who dropped her subscription to Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., after realizing she only liked some of the productions there, and would rather be more selective about when and where she saw shows.“We haven’t missed it,” she said, “which is unfortunate, I suppose, for them.”Subscribers were long the lifeblood of many performing arts organizations — a reliable income stream, and a guarantee that many seats would be filled. The pandemic hastened their disappearance for a number of reasons, according to interviews with theater executives around the country and theatergoers who let their subscriptions lapse. Many longtime subscribers simply got out of the habit while theaters were closed. Others grew to appreciate the ease and flexibility of streamed entertainment at home. Some found the recent programming too didactic. And the slow return to offices meant fewer people were commuting into the downtown areas where regional theaters are often located.Facing a precipitous post-pandemic drop in subscriptions, the Clarence Brown Theater is trying to appeal to new subscribers with a populist lineup of shows this season.Jessica Tezak for The New York TimesMany artistic leaders believe the change is permanent.“The strategic conversation is no longer ‘What version of a membership brochure is going to bring in more members,’ but how do we replace that revenue, and replenish the relationship with audiences,” said Jeremy Blocker, the executive director of New York Theater Workshop, an Off Broadway nonprofit that has seen its average number of members (its term for subscribers) drop by 50 percent since before the pandemic.Why do subscribers matter?“No. 1, it reduces your cost of marketing hugely — you’re selling three or five tickets for the cost of one,” said Michael M. Kaiser, the chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. “No. 2, you get the cash up front, which helps fund the rehearsal period and the producing period. And No. 3, subscriptions give you artistic flexibility — if people are willing to buy all the shows, some subset of the total can be less familiar and more challenging, but if you don’t have subscribers, every production is sold on its own merits, and that makes taking artistic risk much more difficult.”There’s also a strong connection between subscriptions and contributions. “Most donors are subscribers,” said Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill, the producing artistic director of Capital Repertory Theater in Albany, N.Y., “so there’s a cycle here.”Theaters are simultaneously trying to retain — or reclaim — subscribers, and also reduce their dependence on them. Many are experimenting with ways to make subscriptions more flexible, or more attractive, but also seeing an upside in the need to find new patrons.“For some theaters, a reliance on an existing homogeneous group of patrons has really shaped the work they’re doing,” said Erica Ezold, managing director of People’s Light, a nonprofit theater in Malvern, Pa. “Ultimately it’s going to be really positive to be not as reliant on subscriber income and have greater diversity in our audiences.”“I’m in the same boat as a lot of theater companies: How do I get the audience back, and once I get them in the door, how do I keep them for the next show?” said Ken Martin, artistic director of the Clarence Brown Theater.Jessica Tezak for The New York TimesProgramming is clearly on the mind of lapsed subscribers around the country. Even as subscriptions have fallen sharply at regional nonprofits whose mission is to develop new voices and present noncommercial work, they have remained steadier at venues that present touring Broadway shows with highly recognizable titles.“There’s so much going on with the ‘ought-to-see-this-because-you’re-going-to-be-taught-a-lesson’ stuff, and I’m OK with that, but part of me thinks we’re going a little overboard, and I need to have some fun,” said Melissa Ortuno, 61, of Queens. She describes herself as a frequent theatergoer — she has already seen 17 shows this year — but finds herself now preferring to purchase tickets for individual shows, rather than subscriptions. “I want to take a shot, but I don’t want to be dictated to. And this way I can buy what I want.”But there are other reasons subscribers have stepped away, including age. “We’re all old, that’s the problem,” said Happy Shipley, 77, of Erwinna, Pa., who decided to renew her subscription at the Bucks County Playhouse, but sees others making a different choice. “Many of them don’t stay up late anymore; they’re anxious about parking, walking, crime, public transportation, increased need of restrooms, you name it.”Arts administrators say that many people who were previously frequent theatergoers remain fans of the art form, but now attend less frequently, a phenomenon confirmed in interviews with supersubscribers — culture vultures who had multiple subscriptions — who say they are scaling back.Lisa-Karyn Davidoff, 63, of Manhattan, subscribed to 10 theaters before the pandemic; now she is far more choosy, citing a combination of health concerns and reassessed priorities. “If there’s a great cast or something I can’t miss,” she said, “I will go.” Rena Tobey, a 64-year-old New Yorker, had at least 12 theater subscriptions before the pandemic, and now has none, citing an ongoing concern about catching Covid in crowds, a new appreciation for television and streaming, and a sense that theaters are programming shows for people other than her. “For many years, I’ve pushed my boundaries, and I’m just at a point where I don’t want to do it anymore.”And Jeanne Ryan Wolfson, a 67-year-old from Rockville, Md., who had four performing arts subscriptions prepandemic, is just finding she likes an à la carte approach to ticket purchasing; she kept two of her previous subscriptions, dropped two, and added a new one. “I was paying a lot of money for the subscriptions, and some of the productions within those packages were a bit disappointing or might not have the wow factor I was looking for,” she said. “I think what I want to do is pick and choose.”Martin said the Knoxville theater’s staff has spent much of the summer discussing the drop in subscriber numbers — the theater had about 3,000 before the pandemic, but 1,500 last season — and hired a marketing firm to study the situation.Now he is picking productions carefully. He has set aside his dream of staging William Congreve’s “The Way of the World,” worried that the Restoration comedy wouldn’t find an audience. This season he’s starting with “Murder on the Orient Express,” which should do well, followed by a war horse — the annual production of “A Christmas Carol” — and “The Giver,” which Martin hopes will appeal to younger audiences because it was adapted from a popular young adult novel.The Clarence Brown Theater, like about a dozen other professional theaters around the country, is affiliated with a university (the University of Tennessee) which provides it with some financial support.Jessica Tezak for The New York TimesThen comes “Kinky Boots,” the kind of uplifting musical comedy many of today’s audiences seem to want. (“Kinky Boots,” with a plot that involves drag queens, also makes a statement for a theater in Tennessee, where lawmakers have attempted to restrict drag shows.) There will be more adventurous productions, but in a smaller theater: “The Moors” by Jen Silverman, and “Anon(ymous)” by Naomi Iizuka.But selling tickets show by show, instead of as a package, is challenging and expensive.“It takes three times as much money, time and effort to bring in someone new,” said Tom Cervone, the theater’s managing director. He said the theater is trying everything it can — print advertising, public radio sponsorships, social media posts, plus appearances at local street fairs and festivals where the theater’s staff will hand out brochures and swag (branded train whistles to promote “Murder on the Orient Express,” for example) while trying to persuade passers-by to come see a show.The theater, which is on the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee, is less dependent than some on ticket revenue, because, like a number of other regional nonprofits, it is affiliated with a university that subsidizes its operations. Still, the money it earns from ticket sales is essential to balancing the budget.“It’s been scary some days,” Cervone said, “like, where is everybody?” More

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      The Metropolitan Opera Guild Will Wind Down Amid Financial Woes

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      The organization, founded in 1935 to support the opera house, will lay off 20 employees and stop publishing Opera News as a stand-alone monthly magazine.The Metropolitan Opera Guild, a nonprofit that supports the storied opera house and publishes the magazine Opera News, will wind down its operations and lay off its staff this fall in the face of financial troubles, the organization announced on Tuesday.The guild, which was founded by Eleanor Robson Belmont in 1935 to help the Met survive a funding shortfall caused by the Great Depression, has supported the company and its education programs ever since, bringing thousands of schoolchildren to dress rehearsals each year and working to promote interest in opera through the publication of Opera News, which became one of the leading classical music publications in the United States.Opera News will end its run as a stand-alone monthly magazine. The Met and the guild said it would continue in a different format, under new editorial direction, as part of a new section in Opera magazine, a British publication, focused on the United States that will bear the Opera News logo. The magazine will be sent to guild members and Opera News subscribers in the United States.Opera News, which became one of the leading classical music magazines in the United States, will cease publication as a stand-alone magazine. The British publication Opera magazine will increase its coverage of the Met and opera in the United States, and will be sent to Guild members and Opera News subscribers.Opera News“We greatly appreciate the valuable efforts of our employees over the years, but it is no longer economically viable for us to continue in our current form,” Winthrop Rutherfurd Jr., the Guild’s chairman, and Richard J. Miller Jr., its president, said in a statement.The guild will be reclassified as a supporting organization under the Met; it will no longer operate as an independent nonprofit. The guild said that it would provide severance to its 20 employees, and that it expects the Met to hire some of them. Its board members will be offered positions on the Met’s board.Under the guild’s membership program, patrons pay $85 or more per year for benefits including subscriptions to Opera News, access to dress rehearsals and advance ticket sales.The guild, like the broader opera industry, has faced serious financial pressures in recent years. It draws much of its revenue from its roughly 28,000 members. But contributions and grants have fallen in recent years: they totaled $8.1 million in 2021, compared with $9.1 million a decade earlier. And to some extent the Met and the guild found themselves competing for support from the same opera lovers.The Met, grappling with its own financial woes as it works to recover from the pandemic, said it would continue some of the guild’s offerings, including the program that brings schoolchildren into the opera house to watch dress rehearsals.Guild events including the annual Opera News awards and luncheons at the Waldorf Astoria, such as this one in 2006, will be discontinued. Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesUnder Peter Gelb, who became the Met’s general manager in 2006, the company has expanded its oversight of the guild. Gelb said in an interview that the changes came after several months of discussions. He said the problems facing the guild reflected the “difficulties for nonprofit performing arts companies,” including the Met.“It’s the same pressure that, on a large scale, the Met feels,” he said. “We tried to find a way forward that would enable some of the programs of the guild to continue, even if the guild in its current structure would not continue.”The partnership with Opera magazine that will replace Opera News — which began publication in 1936 and has a circulation of about 43,000 — will start in December. The Met will not have editorial input but will provide a share of fees paid by guild members to help offset the magazine’s production costs, as it did with Opera News. Opera magazine named Rebecca Paller its U.S. editor; since 2003, Opera News has been led by F. Paul Driscoll.John Allison, the editor and publisher of Opera, vowed in a statement to preserve the “rich editorial history” of Opera News. He said in an interview that he hoped to engage former Opera News writers when possible.“Coverage of opera at the Met and throughout the United States will continue to be just as comprehensive as guild members and Opera News subscribers have grown accustomed to over the years,” he said.Opera fans reacted with concern to news of the guild’s demise on Tuesday, saying that it was another sign that the art form was struggling.Posy Ryan, a guild member, said that she was “very surprised and deeply saddened” by the changes, including the end of the stand-alone Opera News.“It’s an institution that will be missed,” she said. “For me, it was an introduction to so many young American singers. I’d see a feature, a review and then research them on YouTube. I’ll miss that.” More

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      Nonprofit Theaters Are in Crisis. A Times Reporter Spoke With 72 of Them

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      Michael Paulson spoke with producers and artistic directors at nonprofit theaters across the country about the crisis their industry is facing.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Michael Paulson, who has covered theater for The New York Times for eight years, knew the situation was bad at the country’s nonprofit regional theaters, which had yet to regain their prepandemic audiences.But in recent months, the shock waves have gotten bigger: One of the nation’s largest companies, Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, said it would pause production on one of its three stages and lay off 10 percent of its staff. The Lookingglass, an anchor of Chicago’s theater scene, halted production for the rest of the year. Then this month, New York’s prestigious Public Theater cut nearly one in five of its jobs.“We’ve seen an increase in the number of closings, and it felt like this is real and serious and important for readers to know about,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview.That observation formed the basis for an article by Mr. Paulson that appeared on the front page of Monday’s newspaper. To document the crisis at America’s regional theaters, he spoke with the leaders of 72 top-tier companies across the country.Here, Mr. Paulson reflects on the reasons for the upheaval, on the most promising solutions being proposed and on the balancing act he juggles between the demands of daily news reporting and investigative projects. This conversation has been edited.How many of the issues that challenge nonprofit theaters stem from the pandemic?The pandemic was an accelerant. But the issues at the heart of this crisis — the aging of the audience, the growing role of streaming media in people’s entertainment diets, the decline in subscriptions as the way consumers plan their theatergoing — were underway before it. The economic situation combined with this inflationary moment proved unsurvivable for a number of theaters and damaging for many more.Are these challenges unique to theaters, or are they true of the nonprofit arts sector in general?Theater has some particular vulnerabilities — it’s a niche art form, and a lot of nonprofits pride themselves on developing new work, which means a show sometimes has a title or is by an artist that audiences don’t yet know. A bunch of people told me audiences want to be sure they’re going to have a good time before they set aside the time and the money, and that often means going to something that’s already established, versus something that is just being introduced to the world.Seventy-two interviews is a lot for one article. Do you envision this piece being the first in a series?I do have a tendency to be an overreporter, but I wanted to be confident that what we were reporting reflected a national pattern and wasn’t just an extrapolation from a handful of worst-case scenarios. I expect that a lot of my time this year is going to be spent thinking and writing about the economic challenges facing theaters in America.How do you balance the demands of daily news reporting with bigger-picture projects?I’m probably going to be doing fewer features about individual shows, while I focus on more of these stories about the health of the field, but I still want to write occasional pieces about artists and works of art. I think a mix of stories is what keeps a reporter sane.Do you anticipate doing a lot of that reporting in person?I hope so. A couple of days ago, I went to see “Evita” at American Repertory Theater outside of Boston, and over the weekend I went to see a play called “tiny father” at Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. On Thursday, I saw a production of “Fun Home” at the Studio Theater in Washington, D.C. I’m trying, to the extent I can, to see things outside New York. We need to pay more attention to nonprofit theaters and theaters outside New York — because there are real challenges in those places we need to be telling our readers about.What was the most surprising thing you learned while reporting this article?I was struck by how many theaters are now doing coproductions. It’s pretty dramatic: The Shakespeare Theater Company in D.C. had one coproduction out of six shows before the pandemic, and now at least five out of six will be coproductions this coming season. There’s also a lot of experimentation with collaboration, which is heartening. Theaters that once saw themselves either as competitors or just strangers are much more interested in finding ways to help one another.Your article touches on a number of potential solutions. Which seem most promising?There’s a coalition forming of theaters in Connecticut that is talking about whether the theaters might be able to share set-building functions. Those kinds of approaches might have promise. A lot of theaters are talking about the possibility of either more government assistance or for more foundations to take seriously the challenges facing this field. There’s a shared sense that box-office revenue, which has never been enough to sustain these organizations, is not going to be a primary part of the solution.How will we see an effect on Broadway, which depends on nonprofit theaters to develop material and support artists?The situation means less work for artists, actors, writers, directors and designers. Fewer shows are being staged, and those shows are often smaller and have shorter runs, which is a challenge both for the people who are already established in the field and the people who are seeking to enter it. There’s just less work to go around. More

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      New York’s Public Theater Lays Off 19 Percent of Its Staff

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      The institution, a titan among nonprofit theaters, is suffering from the combined effects of falling revenue and rising costs plaguing the arts world.The Public Theater, one of the nation’s most prestigious and successful nonprofit theaters, laid off 19 percent of its staff on Thursday as a financial crisis sweeps across the field.The move, which cost about 50 people their jobs, followed a 13 percent layoff at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a 10 percent layoff at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles.The Public, headquartered in Lower Manhattan and presenting work primarily Off Broadway, is by almost any measure a titan among nonprofit theaters — the birthplace of “A Chorus Line” and “Hamilton,” the originator and presenter of Free Shakespeare in the Park, and a creative anchor for some of the nation’s most influential dramatists.But the theater, like many others, is suffering from the combined effects of falling revenue and rising costs.“The economic headwinds that are attacking the American theater are attacking us, too,” Oskar Eustis, the theater’s artistic director, said in an interview. “Our audience is down by about 30 percent, we have expenses up anywhere from 30 to 45 percent, and we have kept our donor base, but it’s static. Put that all together, and you get budget shortfalls — big budget shortfalls.”Eustis said the Public would not shutter any programs beyond its previous decision to put its Under the Radar Festival, an annual program of experimental work, on indefinite hiatus.But Eustis said the Public would need to reduce the amount of theater it is staging in the short term — its next season, he said, will feature five shows at its Astor Place building, down from 11 in the last full season before the coronavirus pandemic. The traditional Shakespeare in the Park program will also not take place next year because its home, the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, will be undergoing a long-planned renovation, but Eustis said the company is seeking a way to present some Shakespeare at an alternate location (or locations) next summer.The theater’s executive director, Patrick Willingham, said the cuts would be spread across the company’s operations. “It’s a pullback in every department at every level,” he said.The Public currently has about 246 full-time positions, Willingham said. The company had a previous round of layoffs in 2021 as it tried to rebound following the pandemic closure of theaters, and it also had staff furloughs at the height of the pandemic. Willingham said this week’s layoffs were not a surprise to the staff because the need for spending cuts had been discussed internally for some time. “We’ve been really transparent with the employees over the course of this year,” he said. “We’ve been really clear that we were going to have to make reductions.”Willingham said the Public’s annual budget during the next fiscal year will be around $50 million, down from about $60 million before the coronavirus pandemic. He added that, thanks to federal pandemic relief funds and royalties from “Hamilton,” the theater is hoping it will not have a budget deficit during its current fiscal year, which ends next month, or the following fiscal year. “We’re making decisions that are actually trying to get ahead of what we’re seeing as this nationwide trend,” Willingham said, “so that we can get to a sustainable model we can rely on year after year.”Eustis, who is among the best-compensated artistic directors in the field, said he will cut his own pay by an unspecified amount — “I will be taking a significant reduction in salary,” he said — but that “nobody else would or should” have a salary reduction.He added that the Public remains committed to its Public Works program, in which amateur performers join professionals to put on musical pageants adapted from classic works, and its mobile unit, which presents Shakespeare in a variety of locations in and around the city, including at prisons and community centers.Eustis called the cuts “absolutely necessary to secure the Public’s security and future,” but also “tremendously sad and difficult.” However, at a time when some theaters are closing as a result of financial problems, Eustis said the Public is in no such danger.“This is not an existential crisis,” he said. “We are taking moves that mean that the Public’s existence and future will not be threatened. The Public will be here, and performing its mission, long past the time you and I are here.” More

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      Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Paula Vogel Are Broadway Bound

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      Second Stage, a nonprofit with a focus on living American dramatists, said it will present works by the playwrights on Broadway this season.Second Stage, a nonprofit theater that focuses on work by living American writers, said it will present a well-known piece by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and a new work by Paula Vogel on Broadway this season.This fall, the company plans to stage “Appropriate,” Jacobs-Jenkins’s play about a family gathering in Arkansas disrupted by the discovery of a photo album filled with disturbing images.The play was staged in 2014 at the Signature Theater Company, an Off Broadway nonprofit. Ben Brantley, then The Times’s chief theater critic, praised it as “remarkable and devious.”The new production, which is to begin performances in November and open in December at the Helen Hayes Theater, is to be directed by Lila Neugebauer (“The Waverly Gallery”). Jacobs-Jenkins, a 2016 recipient of the so-called “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, is a two-time Pulitzer finalist, for “Gloria” and “Everybody,” and is also the author of “The Comeuppance,” now running at the Signature Theater in Manhattan. “Appropriate” will be the first play he has written to be staged on Broadway, although he contributed material to a recent Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth.”Next spring, Second Stage plans to present a new play, not yet titled, by Vogel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “How I Learned to Drive.” That play, to begin performances in March and open in April at the Hayes, is to be directed by Tina Landau, and is a family drama set in suburban Washington in 1962. Vogel is also the author of “Indecent,” which was produced on Broadway in 2017.Second Stage said that this fall it would also present an Off Broadway production of Jen Silverman’s new play, “Spain,” which is set in 1936, and concerns two filmmakers making a K.G.B.-backed movie about the Spanish Civil War. The production is to be directed by Tyne Rafaeli and to run at the Tony Kiser Theater beginning in November. More

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      How the Head of Inside Broadway Spends His Sundays

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      There is usually a matinee in store for Michael Presser, who is the founder of Inside Broadway.More young people might be tuning into the Tony Awards this weekend thanks to the work of Michael Presser, the founder of Inside Broadway, a nonprofit organization that brings Broadway musicals to New York City schools and New York City schoolchildren to Broadway musicals.What started in the early 1980s as a free ticket program for local students to see “Cats” now reaches 75,000 students in 90 schools every year with its own touring productions and educational programs. Current shows in rotation include “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” “Sophisticated Ladies” and “Free to Be … You and Me.”Mr. Presser, 75, lives in Greenwich Village. Though his organization will turn 41 this year, he is not yet done marking its latest milestone birthday. “Since we work on a fiscal year, we’re still 40 until June 30,” he said. “We’re still celebrating.”QUIET FORMALITY I’m not a morning person, so I absolutely love to have quiet around me in the morning. No TV, no radio, and basically I prefer to settle in with the morning papers and spend a good period of time going through the news of the day. I never lie around in pajamas or athletic clothes. I am formal.“I very much enjoy the plants, and I very much enjoy my gardener who takes care of them. I’m not a horticulturalist.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesGREEN SPACE There is a garden connected to my apartment. It’s a lovely place to be on Sunday mornings with the newspapers and tea. I’m not a coffee drinker. I prefer black tea or green tea. Many times when I have guests visit me from outside of New York, they’re fascinated to see a garden in the heart of Manhattan. They assume all New Yorkers live in Times Square. I very much enjoy the plants, and I very much enjoy my gardener who takes care of them. I’m not a horticulturalist.ON THE TELEPHONE I do like to spend a little time in the morning making phone contact with friends and relatives from outside of New York. It’s a very good time to speak with people who are in different time zones. I prefer catching up by phone, because it allows for a more direct and personal exchange. Social media I think tends to be rather superficial.“This particular neighborhood is so rich in history and architecture,” Mr. Presser said of Greenwich Village.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesA GREAT HONOR I take a weekly walk through the neighborhood. This is something I started doing during the pandemic. Back then I was taking these walks daily. Even though I’ve been here a long time, I very much enjoy Greenwich Village. I think sometimes you maybe take for granted your immediate neighborhood. But this particular neighborhood is so rich in history and architecture. It’s a very special area of New York and I actually consider it a great honor to be a longtime resident.Mr. Presser often stops at Murray’s Bagels on Sixth Avenue. “That is lunch.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesPHILLY THROWBACK I always end up stopping for bagels and lox. That’s kind of a Sunday tradition from my childhood in Philadelphia. When I was a boy, one of my uncles used to deliver a bag of bagels and lox to our house every Sunday. It was truly something to look forward to. So I kind of continue it as a fond memory. I’ll stop at Sixth Avenue, Murray’s. I’ll take it home and sit outdoors in the garden. That is lunch.MATINEE Sunday, I feel, is the best day of the week to go to the theater, and I have always loved having a matinee performance to attend. While I do go to many performances during the week, on Sundays I’m well rested and can focus on the performances, something that’s sometimes harder to do during the week. I go to Broadway but also many other kinds of shows, Off Broadway and so on. It’s really wonderful, the wide variety of theater we have here. It’s a good time to sort of take that in. Recently I saw “Kimberly Akimbo” and a brand-new opera at the Metropolitan Opera, “Champion,” and I had a wonderful opportunity to see one of the final performances of “Phantom of the Opera.”“It’s really wonderful, the wide variety of theater we have here.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesTAKE ME OUT Sunday during the baseball season is a great time to get out to Yankee Stadium. I always liked baseball as a child, and then I sort of lost interest in it for a rather long time, and I seem to have rediscovered it again. I think it’s a fascinating game; the strategies, the players that have such unique skills. And during the summertime I think it’s a wonderful experience to be outdoors at a baseball game. Yankee Stadium is a real New York institution. I take the subway. All New Yorkers take the subway.Mr. Presser often meets friends for dinner on Sunday evenings. “We do not discuss politics,” he said. “That’s a firm rule.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesFIRM RULE We have a sort of gang of friends who meet for dinner on Sunday evenings at the Westway Diner in Hell’s Kitchen. It gives us an opportunity to exchange what we’ve been doing this week, particularly about the world of the arts. We have a lot of strong and interesting opinions, and I always encourage everybody to respect other people’s opinions. For instance, we frequently discuss who performed at the opera or what they saw this week. We do not discuss politics. That’s a firm rule. No politics.TRAVEL RESEARCH After dinner, it’s free time, and what I like to do generally is to plan projects and activities and especially travel I’m going to be doing in the coming months. Because I’m not a beach person, I almost always plan travel around major cosmopolitan cities. I can figure out what theater I might like to see and research key people I might like to meet in the local arts community.LATE-NIGHT STACK I’m an evening person. I can stay up late, until 1 a.m. or sometimes later. It gives me some time for personal reading. I am a great fan of the New York Public Library, which I feel is one of the great privileges of living in New York. I always have a stack of books that I’ve gotten from the library. I prefer biographies and history. One of the nice things about the library is you can borrow a book, and if you don’t like it you can send it right back.Sunday Routine readers can follow Inside Broadway on social media at @Inside_Broadway. More

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      Laura Pels, Devoted Supporter of Nonprofit Theater, Dies at 92

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      She led a foundation that underwrote productions for numerous theater groups, as well as playwrights like Harold Pinter and Arthur Miller.Laura Pels, a leading benefactor of nonprofit theater through the Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater, which has helped a multitude of companies stage plays in New York City and beyond, died on Wednesday at a hospital near her home in Manhattan. She was 92.The cause was complications of Covid-19, her daughter Juliette J. Meeus said.Ms. Pels took control of the foundation that now bears her name in a divorce settlement with the media executive Donald A. Pels.“I decided that I was going to do exactly what I wanted with it: help the theater,” she told Playbill in 1995.She did just that, diligently guiding the foundation from the 1990s until recently.“She was incredibly involved and ‘hands on,’” Hal Witt, the foundation’s former executive director and a member of the board, wrote in an email, adding that Ms. Pels had “read all of the scripts that were submitted for funding.”There were rules: Productions had to be run by accredited nonprofit theaters; a full script, along with a 500-word statement, had to be submitted; and musicals need not apply.Ms. Pels forged relationships with leading playwrights like Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and Harold Pinter, Mr. Witt said, and with artistic directors like André Bishop at Lincoln Center Theater, James Houghton at Signature Theater and Todd Haimes at the Roundabout Theater Company.Mr. Haimes, who saved the Roundabout from bankruptcy (and who died last month at 66), said in 1995 that “as traditional sources of funding are drying up, a person like Laura who will sponsor productions makes a huge difference to nonprofit theaters like ours.”He added, “The fact that Laura is a creative person who can come up with her own projects and yet doesn’t tell us how to run the company is the nicest combination one could ask for in a supporter.”Jack Brister, the foundation’s treasurer, said in an email that during his 20 years with the foundation it had granted more than $5 million to nonprofit theaters in the United States.Josette Jeanne Bernard was born on May 1, 1931, in Saint-Vivien-de-Monségur, a village near Bordeaux, France. Her parents, Raymond and Jeanne Yvette (Dauvignac) Bernard, were schoolteachers.She grew up near Bordeaux and then studied mime and acting in Paris, before she decided that the stage was not for her. (Her daughter Juliette said her mother changed her name to Laura in her 20s because she disliked Josette.)At 25, she moved to London to study English and met Adolphe Meeus, a translator for the United Nations. They married in 1956.After living for a time in Ethiopia, the couple moved to New York City and divorced in the mid-1960s.She married Mr. Pels in 1965. A communications executive, he took control of Lin Broadcasting in 1969 and served as its chairman and president for the next 20 years.Starting in the early 1980s, Mr. Pels invested heavily in cellular communications, buying up licenses from the Federal Communications Commission that became increasingly valuable as cellphone use spread. In 1989, McCaw Cellular bought a controlling interest in Lin in a deal valued at more than $3 billion. Mr. Pels’s personal profit was estimated at nearly $175 million (more than $420 million in today’s money).Not long after, The New Yorker reported that Ms. Pels and her husband had donated more than $1 million to help the actor Tony Randall start the National Actors Theater, originally out of the Belasco Theater on Broadway, to present affordable shows by playwrights like Ibsen, Chekhov and Miller.The Pelses filed for divorce in 1993, and Ms. Pels became the foundation’s leader. (Mr. Pels died in 2014.)The foundation also funded Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. And it provided educational grants to up-and-coming artists at institutions like the Juilliard School and the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.For many years Ms. Pels owned an apartment in Paris and Le Théâtre de L’Atelier in the city’s Montmartre neighborhood, which she ran with her daughter Juliette. In New York, she endowed an annual $10,000 cash prize for midcareer American playwrights for PEN America.In addition to Juliette, she is survived by another daughter, Valerie A. Pels; a son, Laurence, who is on the foundation’s board; and four grandchildren.In 1995, Roundabout staged a production of Mr. Pinter’s “Moonlight” at a newly opened 399-seat venue on West 46th Street, the Laura Pels Theater.“I thought it was an honor I didn’t deserve,” Ms. Pels said at the time. “But I realized that giving up a little anonymity could have a positive impact on the work I want to do.” More

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      Todd Haimes, 66, Who Rebuilt the Roundabout Theater Company, Dies

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      After rescuing the company from bankruptcy, he turned it into a major player on Broadway and one of the largest nonprofit theater companies in the country.Todd Haimes, who rescued New York’s Roundabout Theater Company from bankruptcy and built it into one of the largest nonprofit theaters in America, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 66.A spokesman, Matt Polk, said his death, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, was caused by complications of osteosarcoma. Mr. Haimes had lived with the cancer since 2002, when he was diagnosed with sarcoma of the jaw.As the artistic director and chief executive at Roundabout, Mr. Haimes had an extraordinarily long and effective tenure. He led the nonprofit company for four decades, turning it into a major player on Broadway, where it now runs three of the 41 theaters.Roundabout has focused on classics and revivals but has also been a supporter of new work. Under Mr. Haimes’s leadership, it excelled on both fronts, winning 11 Tony Awards for plays and musicals it produced and nurturing the careers of contemporary American writers, including Stephen Karam, Joshua Harmon and Selina Fillinger.Among Roundabout’s biggest successes during his tenure was a 1998 revival of “Cabaret,” originally starring Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson, that survived a bumpy start (a construction accident interrupted performances for four weeks) and then ran for nearly six years. It returned a decade later for a one-year reprise.There were many other triumphs, including a 2020 revival of “A Soldier’s Play” that is now touring the country. Both productions won Tony Awards.Catalyzed by America’s social unrest over racial inequality in 2020, Mr. Haimes led Roundabout in an effort to unearth lost gems written by artists of color. One result was an acclaimed Broadway production of the Black playwright Alice Childress’s 1955 backstage drama, “Trouble in Mind.” It had never made it to Broadway because Ms. Childress had refused to soften the show’s ending to make it less challenging for white theatergoers.Mr. Haimes joined Roundabout in 1983 as managing director. He was just 26, and the company, founded in 1965 and saddled with debt, was operating in rented space in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. At one particularly desperate point he used his own credit card to keep the company afloat. But a few weeks after he arrived, the board of directors voted to shut it down.A board member subsequently donated enough money to buy the company some time, and Mr. Haimes engineered a turnabout — cutting the staff, reducing expenses, improving marketing and, over time, expanding the audience with measures such as early weekday curtain times to attract an after-work crowd, special events for singles and gay theatergoers, and discounts for children. In 2016, he became the first presenter to allow the livestreaming of a performance of a Broadway show, a much-praised revival of “She Loves Me.”Mr. Haimes, right, with Gene Feist, Roundabout’s artistic director, in the theater in 1986. “I have no desire to be on stage, but I get a tingle just being around one,” he said.Jack Manning/The New York TimesBernard Todd Haimes was born on May 7, 1956, in Manhattan to Herman and Helaine Haimes. His father was a lawyer, his mother a homemaker.His onstage life was exceedingly brief: In elementary school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he wore a dress to play the title role in a production of “Mary Poppins.” He later claimed that he had landed the part because he was the only child who could pronounce “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. at Yale. Before arriving at Roundabout, he was general manager of the Hartman Theater Company in Stamford and managing director of the Westport Country Playhouse, both in Connecticut.“I had no desire to trade stocks and bonds, and making Nivea cream wouldn’t turn me on,” he told The New York Times in 1986. “I’ve loved the theater all my life. I have no desire to be onstage, but I get a tingle just being around one, ever since I worked on the stage crew for ‘How to Succeed in Business’ on Broadway when I was in 10th grade.”He became producing director of Roundabout in 1989 and added the title of chief executive in 2015.“The advantage of my background is that all of my artistic decisions are being informed by management concerns,” Mr. Haimes said in 2004. “No one’s ever going to accuse me of being a crazy artist. The disadvantage is the same: that perhaps there are brilliant things other people could accomplish that I just can’t.”He is survived by his wife, Jeanne-Marie (Christman) Haimes; two children, Dr. Hilary Haimes and Andrew Haimes; two stepdaughters, Julia and Kiki Baron; and four grandchildren. His first two marriages, to Dr. Alison Haimes and Tamar Climan, ended in divorce.Mr. Haimes led Roundabout’s move to Broadway in 1991, when he began presenting work in the Criterion Center, which no longer exists. The move was a turning point for the company. “Because of the Tony Award eligibility,” he said, “we will have a tremendous advantage when it comes to obtaining the rights to plays, securing directors and attracting distinguished actors.”In 2000, he moved the company into the renamed American Airlines Theater, which is now Roundabout’s flagship house. It has since also acquired the theater at Studio 54 and assumed operations of the theater now known as the Stephen Sondheim.Among the Tony-winning shows produced by Roundabout during Mr. Haimes’s tenure were revivals of the plays “Anna Christie” and “A View From the Bridge” and of the musicals “Nine,” “Assassins,” “The Pajama Game” and “Anything Goes.” Roundabout was also among the producers of Tony-winning productions of two new plays, “Side Man” and “The Humans.”The company now runs five theaters, all in Midtown Manhattan, including the three Broadway houses, an Off Broadway theater and an Off Off Broadway black-box space that it developed to give a platform to emerging playwrights.Over the years there have also been flops and budget deficits, and some critics have suggested that Roundabout was overextended. Its enormous real estate footprint became a financial challenge that the company addressed partly by renting out some of its Broadway venues to commercial producers. The company made a significant amount of money, for example, by renting out the Sondheim for five years to the producers of “Beautiful,” the Carole King biomusical.Mr. Haimes was one of a handful of leaders of nonprofit theater companies in New York whose decades-long tenures have raised eyebrows among those who want more turnover. He held onto the Roundabout job even when he took another one, as artistic director of the deeply troubled Toronto theater company Livent, in 1998; that company collapsed, and Mr. Haimes stayed at Roundabout.Roundabout’s size — 150 employees and a $50 million annual budget — has given it the ability to support significant endeavors offstage. It operates education and training programs, including school partnerships that serve more than 4,000 students each year and a partnership with the stagehands union to train theater technicians.But like many nonprofits, it has not yet fully rebounded from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Roundabout staged one show on Broadway this season, a revival of “1776.”Mr. Haimes, who was often content to remain in the background, was a well-liked and enthusiastic figure in the industry. He was active in both the Broadway and the Off Broadway communities, serving on numerous committees, and over the years he taught at Yale and Brooklyn College.But he remained a businessman and a booster at heart.“Basically I’m incredibly insecure and don’t take myself seriously as an artist,” he said in a 1998 interview. “But somehow my taste seems to match up with what the public wants.” More