Theatre Resources Unlimited Will Host Town Hall: How Theater Companies Are Adapting To A Post-Shutdown World

Theatre Resources Unlimited (TRU) is excited to announce its return to live monthly panels and discussions with How Theater Companies Are Adapting to a Post-Shutdown World on July 27 at Polaris North Theatre, 245 W. 29th Street, 4th floor, New York, 10001. Doors open at 6:30pm for networking and roundtable introductions of everyone in the room – come prepared with your best 20-second summary of who you are, and what you need. The Open Forum will start at 7:00pm. Free for TRU members and not-for-profit theater companies; $15 for non-members. Please visit https://truonline.org/events/town-hall-companies-are-adapting/ to register, or email or phone at least a day in advance (or much sooner): e-mail TRUStaff1@gmail.com / phone 833-506-5550.

Co-hosted by Rose-Marie Brandwein, president of Polaris North, a membership cooperative of Actors, Playwrights and Directors; Magaly Colimon-Christopher, founding producing artistic director of Conch Shell Productions; Tim Errickson, artistic director of Boomerang Theatre; Ariel Estrada, founder, producing artistic director of Leviathan Lab; Lorca Peress, founding artistic director of MultiStages; Rusty Thelin & Molly Rice, co-artistic directors of Realtime Interventions; Alex Roe, producing artistic director of Metropolitan Playhouse; Cynthia Stephens, executive director of Sacred Ground Productions. Moderated by Bob Ost of TRU.

As part of a multi-tiered initiative to help restore the theater community in New York and beyond, TRU is inviting small to medium-sized producing companies to join us in a series of honest conversation about the struggle to reopen. In 2021, a virtual meeting generated some specific concerns, including the need to find out what audiences required to return to theater. We hosted a hybrid live-plus-streamed Town Hall last November to further consider what still needs to happen now that protocols are relaxed and policies are changing from venue to venue. This time we will focus on the changes wrought on producing companies by shutdown. Have audiences returned? What are some successful strategies companies are using to rebuild their audiences? Do we need to rethink ticket pricing both within the not-for-profit and the less accessible commercial Broadway world? Might partnerships with commercial theater be useful? Are we taking the lessons of virtual into our future?

Companies are encouraged to talk about the impact of shutdown and their plans for or experience with already reopening, with a particular focus on finding solutions to any obstacles holding them back. TRU offers this as an opportunity for companies to learn from and find ways to help each other while exploring programs that might better serve producing companies. Though the focus will be on not-for-profit and fiscally sponsored companies, all companies struggling to return to live performance are welcome to participate in this conversation.

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is the leading network for developing theater professionals, a thirty-year-old 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization created to help producers produce, emerging theater companies to emerge healthily and all theater professionals to understand and navigate the business of the arts. Membership includes self-Producing Artists as well as career producers and theater companies.

TRU publishes an email community newsletter of services, opportunities and productions; presents weekly Community Gatherings; offers a Producer Development & Mentorship Program taught by prominent producers and general managers in New York theater, and also presents Producer Boot Camp workshops to help aspirants develop business skills. TRU serves writers through the TRU Voices Play Reading Series, Writer-Producer Speed Date, Practical Playwriting Workshop, How to Write a Musical That Works and a Director-Writer Communications Lab.

Programs of Theater Resources Unlimited are supported in part by the Montage Foundation, The Storyline Project and the Leibowitz Greenway Foundation.

For more information about TRU membership and programs, visit truonline.org.

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