In these difficult times, artists will need to depend on artists to produce new and innovative art.

Back in November, I wrote about conflicts between non-profit theaters and novice playwrights in connection with producing commercially unproven plays.  I also suggested that the solutions to those conflicts were not as profoundly difficult as some were suggesting. One such solution was to require the most successful productions by non-profit theaters to underwrite newer productions.

Yesterday, the National Endowment for the Arts reported that nonprofit theaters in the United States have seen unprecedented expansion across the United States.  Nonetheless, “while the research indicates broad growth and generally positive fiscal health, it also reveals decreasing attendance rates and vulnerability during economic downturns.”

Among the report’s findings were the following:

• Individuals and foundations remain the biggest contributors to nonprofit theater. In 2002, individuals donated 40 percent of all contributed revenue, and foundation giving made up 22 percent.
• Between 1990 and 2005, nonprofit theater revenues fluctuated sharply with business cycles in the U.S. economy. After the 2001 recession, nonprofit theater revenue (including both ticket sales and contributions) dropped nearly 12 percent in 2002. Revenue continued to decrease slowly from 2002 to 2005.
• Audience trends are flat or in decline. The percentage of the U.S. adult population attending non-musical theater has declined from 13.5 percent (25 million people) in 1992 to 9.4 percent (21 million people) in 2008. The absolute size of the audience has declined by 16 percent since 1992.

Given our current economic meltdown, the report does not bode well for the future of innovative theater.  Individual and foundation giving are not likely to sustain theatrical experimentation, and new sources of funding, including playwrights themselves, are going to have to be found.  In short, the global crisis in the markets and the resulting futility of depending on wealthy patrons makes all the more compelling Lewis Hyde‘s call for artists to support artists:

Potential profitability is not a criterion for funding awards at [our theater]; as with other arts funders, we ask our panels to look for originality, risk-taking, mastery, and so forth; we respond especially to projects that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. That said, the principle of sharing the wealth is essential to [financing our productions]. It makes explicit the assumption that all who have succeeded as artists are indebted to those who came before, and it offers a concrete way for accomplished practitioners to give back to their communities, to assist others in attaining the success they themselves have achieved.