At the Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation, we believe in the power of live theatre to spark dialogue, open doors for challenging conversations, shift perspectives, and inspire civic engagement. This belief has been the driving force behind our annual Social Impact Theatre grant program, which has supported productions addressing critical, timely issues and engaging audiences across theatres in the Western States since 2015.
Because we believe in theatre’s potential to create positive change in our communities—from strengthening our economy and education and healthcare systems to enhancing our sense of well-being—we feel deeply invested in the health and sustainability of the theatre ecosystem.
For the last few years, we have been acutely aware of the challenges facing theatres: slow audience return, the end of federal pandemic relief funding, rising labor and material costs, and a fiscal cliff that theatres warned us was approaching. Yet we’ve also felt confident that in times of challenge, the sector would apply its boundless creativity to adapt and build new models for sustainability.
In the summer of 2024, after hearing from theatres that razor-thin budget margins left little room for bold, necessary innovation, we launched our Change Capital Grant Program. Designed to support theatres kickstarting new plans or deepening strategies already underway, we received applications from 31 West Coast theatres, with a variety of approaches represented. Ultimately, we identified changes in business models as having the greatest potential benefit for the sector, offering opportunities for shared learning.
Six theatres were selected to receive change capital awards—each one on a unique journey exploring new ways of doing business. Aside from the theatres’ geographic and organizational diversity, we prioritized diversity in the size and scope of the changes they are undertaking. Some of these changes are technical, literally involving IT systems, while others represent broader shifts in vision. Some focus on gathering critical data, while others aim to address structural inequities in the field. Despite the range of projects, each awardee recognized the importance of these changes to achieve greater stability and sustainability and held a commitment to share their experiences for the sector’s benefit.
Since the program’s inception, our goal has been to learn alongside our grantee partners and to share these learnings with the field. To that end, here are six examples of innovative business model changes happening right now—examples we hope will serve as inspiration or blueprints for other theatres considering change.
Portland Center Stage: New Ticketing Model
The traditional subscription model, more specifically the difficulties of sustaining that model, has long been a topic in the theater community. Related post pandemic data suggested that the conventional subscription model may no longer be the most effective. Four facts for Portland Center Stage (PCS) corroborated this data: single ticket prices were up, subscription packages were down, late ticket-purchasing was now a habit, and while certain titles far exceeded financial goals, others missed them by a long shot. PCS concluded that while people were willing spend on particular plays, they were unlikely to front-load that expense to purchase a subscription for a season of shows.
Building on this conclusion, PCS will be embarking on a new ticketing model in the 2026/2027 season. Because PCS has yet to announce these changes publicly to their audiences, detailed plans can’t be shared at this time, but on a high level, PCS will be investing in a new model to expand and diversify their audiences, create more consistent and increased revenue streams, encourage audience exposure to new and more thought provoking works, and to allow them to lean in to their organization’s community-centric values.
As many theatres have come to the similar conclusion that the economics of the traditional subscription model no longer pencil out, we believe that PCS’s learnings as they implement and evaluate this change will be helpful to other theatres exploring new ticketing models.
Portland Playhouse: Social Prescriptions
Portland Playhouse has a deep and firmly held belief that theatre is good for our health. This belief is shared by many, including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy who, in a session during the NEA’s Healing, Bridging, Thriving Summit in 2023, described the role arts and cultural institutions can and must play to help strengthen social connections and increase well-being.
The Playhouse also recognized that similar to the theatre ecosystem, our healthcare system is facing critical challenges and searching for strategies to address mounting mental health crises. In response, Portland Playhouse is in conversation with healthcare providers to introduce social prescriptions to the Portland Metro area.
Through a year-long pilot, mental health providers will “prescribe” 25-50 clients, who they think could therapeutically benefit from new avenues of social connection, with Playhouse programming. Pass usage will be tracked and program impact evaluated with the goal of prototyping a model for future theatre-based social prescribing initiatives. In addition to the long-term goal of having this new business model contribute to 10-15% budget growth year over year, Portland Playhouse hopes this work will contribute to community healing and raise public awareness about the connection between theatre and mental health.
Social prescribing has long been a data-backed practice in the UK, and in 2021 the UK Theatre & Society of London Theatre released statistics that showed that UK theatre-going resulted in an annual cost saving to the National Health Service of over 100 million pounds.
The ripple effects of theatre-based social prescribing initiatives could greatly impact the field in terms of audience and revenue generation and Portland Playhouse’s pilot will yield important lessons for other theatres who are interested in the practice of social prescriptions and who want to better understand and communicate the value of their work through a public health lens.
Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum: Collecting Data on Theatre’s Intrinsic Value
Similar to Portland Playhouse, Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum (WGTB) is acting on the firm conviction that theatre contributes to healthy, thriving communities. While anecdotes and reviews have qualitatively represented the significance and range of their impact, in 2025 WGTB will capture quantitative data on the beneficial effects of live theatre on their audience members by participating in WolfBrown’s Audience Outlook Monitor (AOM) Post-Event Feedback Survey cohort.
The survey derives from a groundbreaking two-year study that created a new vocabulary and means for measuring the intrinsic impact of art. Questions explore captivation, intellectual stimulation, emotional resonance, aesthetic enrichment, and social bridging and bonding.
While audience surveying is neither new nor innovative, the data WGTB will collect feels to be so. Intrinsic impact assessment provides arts organizations with quantitative data on the most important, but previously unmeasurable, effects of their work. Should it become a standard practice among theatres, it could transform the national conversation about the importance of arts in healthy, thriving communities and confirm the necessity of live theatre in American society.
Latino Theatre Company: Succession Planning
The theatre sector is experiencing a new wave of leaders, many of whom enter their role unaware of the true budget realities and are simply not set up for success to implement the vision they were hired to make.
Latino Theatre Company (LTC) identified a need to address not only these challenges, but challenges unique to culturally specific, ensemble-based theatres, including a disparity in funding that reaches BIPOC lead and serving organizations, and the fact that founders of these organizations often give their time and talent for no or low pay out of a passion for the people they serve. As a result, LTC identified the issue that these organizations often remain constrained by low compensation levels and insufficient staffing capacity, leading to difficulty recruiting and retaining high-caliber talent and staff burnout.
In response, LTC created a five-year succession plan, over the course of which a new ensemble of artists will be cultivated and candidates for mentorship by current Latino Theater Company members in leadership positions will be identified. By the end of the 60-month succession period, Latino Theater Company will have built a new ensemble-based company and have new leadership that is committed to LTC’s mission, history, and community.
Not only will these benefits directly impact LTC’s longevity in the Los Angeles community, this succession plan importantly builds a pipeline of leaders to sustain and run culturally specific theatres and serves as a model for ensemble-based companies on a national level.
Seattle Children’s Theatre: Resource Sharing Initiative
As theatres address post pandemic budget realities, many are exploring new ways of operating to mitigate the impacts of rising costs and slower to return audience members, with collaboration and resource sharing emerging as a viable solution.
Resource sharing can take many forms, from large scale executive leadership consolidation, as is being explored by North Coast Repertory Theatre and Laguna Playhouse to the more tactile, like Cal Shakes’ carpentry shop (the fate of which currently feels uncertain) which builds sets for neighboring Bay Area theatres.
Seattle Children’s Theatre (SCT) is carving their own path, acting on the revelation in a recent resource sharing research study that identified box office services as an area of collaboration with the lowest barrier and the greatest potential benefit to organizations and patrons. Following a feasibility study and implementation over the summer, SCT and Seattle Rep, physical neighbors on the Seattle Center campus, have combined box offices, are sharing IT services, and are partnering on database management to realize not only long-term opportunities for efficiencies, but additional career pathways for staff and a more robust and consistent experience for ticket buyers.
SCT and Seattle Rep are using this box office consolidation as a test for additional patron and administrative services collaborations and possible larger-scale partnerships in the future. This resource sharing initiative also serves as an example of a very focused, intentional collaboration for others who may be considering a similar approach.
Geffen Playhouse: Repurposing the Blackbox Theatre Space
In the words of new Geffen Playhouse artistic director, Tarell Alvin McCraney, “over the last decade, those of us who work in live performance spaces have learned two things: change terrifies everyone, and the future means change. These lessons come from the decline in live audiences due to factors social, political, and medical. This change was hastened by a generation of folx who were digital or online native. My artistic vision for Geffen Playhouse is to embrace that change.”
In a recent tour of college campuses and other spaces that attract young professionals, McCraney engaged in honest conversations about the arts experiences that have resonated with them and what they want to see now. From those insights, he developed a plan to transform the Geffen’s Audrey Skirball Kenis theatre from a traditional presentation space (where the earned income projections were always limited by the relatively small number of seats and short performance runs) into a space for experimentation, to create the experiential content for which audiences are asking.
With the long-term goals of building a new revenue stream and reaching new audiences, Geffen Playhouse will partner with industry-leading commercial entertainment artists and innovators to guide investments and programmatic direction inspired by magic shows, intimate spectacle shows, and immersive-style events.
Leveraging the utility and revenue generating potential of theatre spaces is an avenue being explored by many organizations, and Geffen’s project will provide helpful lessons for the field: what they learn through artistic risk and exploration of new financial models will undoubtedly be of value to peer institutions.
Innovation takes many forms. The examples here represent a wide spectrum—from large-scale changes in business models to more focused, behind-the-scenes initiatives. Yet each one offers valuable blueprints and inspiration for other theatres exploring the changes needed to achieve greater sustainability. We look forward to learning from these six theatres as they implement their bold visions and share their insights with the field. These learnings will, in turn, help us continue to be of service to the theatre sector in meaningful ways.
As American theatre navigates this historic crossroads, these types of innovation showcase how theatres of all sizes can contribute to a thriving, sustainable future for the field.