In the latest example of a nationwide funding crisis for nonprofit regional theaters, Chicago’s Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre has announced a year-long pause in new productions and layoffs impacting 50% of its staff.
The move comes just two weeks after the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles announced that theater productions will be halted in July for the rest of the 2023-24 season. Earlier this month, New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music announced that it would reduce its theatrical programming this season and cut staff by 13%, while NYC’s Public Theater announced that its highly influential Under the Radar Festival is on hold for the first time, outside the the Covid shutdown, since its inception in 2006.
The theater companies have been hard-hit by an ongoing downturn in attendance and subscriptions in the wake of the Covid pandemic. LA’s Center Theatre group, in announcing the Taper’s reductions, called the economic situation a “crisis unlike any other in our fifty-six-year history.”
Today, Lookingglass executives echoed the sentiment.
“While the pandemic has been declared over, theatres in our country are still feeling the effects of needing to shut down [during the 2020-21 pandemic] for so long,” said Heidi Stillman, Lookingglass Ensemble Member & Artistic Director, and Diane Whatton, Board Chair, in a statement. “Since re-opening, audiences and donations have not returned to 2019 levels, and the American Theatre is struggling to survive. You may have noticed the recent communications from other not-for-profit theatres across the country regarding the need for layoffs and reduced programming. There have been many of these announcements, and more will come.
“Lookingglass is no exception. We are announcing today that we have to take the heavy, but intentional, step of reducing our staff and will be producing less and in different ways in the coming year as we re-imagine our future.”
The Chicago theater’s current production, the play Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon, closes on July 16.
According to the Lookingglass statement, the company will proceed with a long-planned renovation of its lobby in Chicago’s Water Tower Water Works building with capital funding received from the state of Illinois specifically for that purpose. Lookingglass also will continue its education programs, new workshops, and “testing new imaginative programming ideas.”
In the statement to subscribers and supporters, Lookingglass said, “It is a hard moment, but we believe in impossible things. To make this next year of transformation possible, we are launching a public campaign and are seeking to raise an ambitious $2,500,000 so we can become the next version of Lookingglass Theatre Company.”
Lookingglass was founded in 1988 by graduates of Northwestern University, and has since become nationally recognized for new works. In 2011, the company received the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, with notable works including Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, which transferred to Broadway in 2002 and was nominated for Best Play Tony Award (Zimmerman won the Best Direction award) and David Schwimmer’s adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, among others.