Years ago, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, which is the business end of the CSO, was undergoing one of its periodic contract negotiating face-offs with its unionized musicians, someone close to the musicians told me something surprising: the administration wouldn’t really mind a strike. If the orchestra doesn’t play, they save money. It’s better for the bottom line.
I took this cynical view of administrative motives with a grain of salt—my source had a stake in the game. But the contradictory situation, in which an organization created to support concerts could be better off if the concerts didn’t happen, came to mind last month, when both Americans for the Arts and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) released studies that looked closely at the economics of arts and culture.
Here’s why: in an ironic twist, at the height of the pandemic, when venues and in-person programming were shut down and government rescue money was flowing, many of those organizations, especially in the smaller-to-midsize categories, showed uncharacteristic budget surpluses. They weren’t really functioning, but—thanks to the combination of sharply reduced program expenses and greatly increased government support—their bottom line flourished.
Shutting down doesn’t work as a long-term strategy, but the fact is, programming’s expensive, and ticket revenue in the nonprofit arena doesn’t usually cover it. Goodman Theatre executive director Roche Schulfer has been telling us for years that this is a structural problem.
Live performance “can’t take advantage of gains in productivity or technology like other sectors of the economy,” Schulfer says. “It takes the same number of musicians the same amount of time to play Beethoven’s symphonies, or actors to do Shakespeare’s plays, as it did when they were written.” If we’re going to have live performance that’s not market-driven, that will take a risk on new work while keeping ticket prices accessible, it’s going to require robust financial support from individual donors, foundations, corporations, and, especially, government. Without it, Schulfer predicted when he talked with me a year ago, there will be hard times ahead.
They’ve arrived: as the DCASE study, “Navigating Recovery: Arts and Culture Financial and Operating Trends in Chicago,” conducted by SMU DataArts, the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University, demonstrates, what we’ve effectively got now is a partial shutdown. In 2022, in-person attendance at performing arts events was down a stunning 59 percent from the 2019 level, while the number of programs presented declined “nearly two-thirds.”
But which is the driver? Fewer ticket sales or fewer programs? I put this chicken-or-egg question to SMU DataArts director Zannie Voss. “It appears that arts organizations are trying to manage programming in a way that fits within their revenue constraints,” Voss said. “And that’s not just a matter of a decrease in demand—it’s also a reaction to increased costs. From September 2019 through September 2023, inflation is up 20 percent.”
This fall, less than two years after completion of a $54 million expansion, Steppenwolf Theatre laid off 12 percent of its staff. Executive director Brooke Flanagan says this “reduction in force is in alignment with a national crisis that we’re seeing at other major regional theaters.”
“When you look at where Steppenwolf was pre-pandemic compared to where we were in our last season, our subscription base diminished 40 percent, single-ticket sales diminished 30 percent, and expenses went up 19 percent,” Flanagan says. Pre-pandemic, the Steppenwolf season consisted of nine shows; the 23/24 season consists of six. “The drop in subscribers has impacted both the number of productions and the length of runs,” Flanagan adds, and single-ticket sales, which are more expensive to attract, have not made up for it. “We were the first industry to close and the last to reopen; we have a longer arc of economic recovery. But we’re working in partnership with each other and the city and the League [of Chicago Theatres] to figure out creative answers to the moment we find ourselves in.”
League of Chicago Theatres executive director Marissa Lynn Jones says the combination of pandemic, inflation, and acceleration of a long-term decline in the number of subscribers has made it harder and more costly to attract audiences. Programming has been cut “out of necessity,” she says, “and part of that necessity has come from the decline in attendance.”
“It’s really a reduction of programming in order to sustain in the long run,” Jones says, “with hopes to be able to bring that programming back in the future.”
The studies were introduced in a double-feature day of webinars, with audience members tuning in on screens, each snugly cocooned in their own home or (less likely) office. No one had to spend any time or money getting to the event, stop multitasking to give it their full attention, or even put their pants on.
And therein lies the longer-term problem, exacerbated by inflation and the pandemic, created and enabled by technology.