Tampa Bay theaters are finding ways to give audiences what they want without losing themselves

American theaters are in crisis. New York Times theater reporter Michael Paulson noticed some alarming trends in the summer of 2023. Post-pandemic theater audiences are smaller than they were pre-pandemic.

While ticket sales declined, production costs increased, donations dwindled, and struggling newspapers published fewer theater reviews.

As a result, theaters across the country produced fewer shows and staged fewer performances. Many theaters are going out of business. According to Greg Reiner, director of theater and musical theater at the National Endowment for the Arts, two to three theaters closed monthly in the U.S. in 2023.

Tampa Bay theaters are dealing with similar challenges. The government assistance money is spent, everything is more expensive, and people aren’t going out as much anymore.

“It’s not like all of a sudden we reopen, and more people are coming to the theater,” David Jenkins, Ph.D., Producing Artistic Director and co-founder of Jobsite Theater in Tampa, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “There are fewer people, overall, going to the theater. And this is proven, over and over again, at the national level.”

When theaters finally reopened, audiences wanted something different. Multiple sources in the theater community report that post-pandemic audiences, like post-war audiences, seek lighter, familiar fare. “People want escapism” is the popular refrain, and these people include Tampa Bay theater audiences.

Pre-pandemic, freeFall Theatre’s logo was a falling man. The company’s tagline was “Unexpected, Daring, Authentic.” Matthew McGee, freeFall Theatre’s Community Outreach Director, told CL that post-pandemic, his company got Bay area artist Chad Mize to design a bouncy, happy freeFall logo.

“And now our motto, our moniker for the company, is ‘simply escape awhile,’” he added.
Though the impulse to show lighter fare is substantial, those who run Tampa Bay theater companies emphasize the importance of continuing to do what they do well because that’s what their audiences want.

freeFall audiences show up for cabaret and drag.

For Jobsite, that’s horror and Shakespeare. “When we do that stuff, people come out,” said Jenkins, giving Jobsite’s 2023 production of “Lizzie,” a rock musical based on the life of accused axe murderer Lizzie Borden, as an example.

For Stageworks Theatre in downtown Tampa, it’s plays that celebrate differences and promote social justice. Even the company’s more commercial hits, like “The Great American Trailer Park Musical” and “The Great Christmas Cookie Bake Off,” celebrate differences and uniqueness. “Trailer Park” is full of quirky Florida people, and “Christmas Cookie” was about a bunch of weird kids with a shared passion for baking, Stageworks Theatre’s Artistic Director, Karla Hartley, said.

“At the works’ core, we deal with communities or segments of communities that aren’t listened to,” Harley added, “and poor people in a trailer park in Florida absolutely fit that mission.”

Post-pandemic audiences aren’t taking any risks either. “People are much more selective in what they want to come see,” said McGee.

“Before the pandemic, you would see shows where people were just along for the ride because they wanted to see what freeFall would do with it,” McGee added. “They don’t do that as much anymore.”

All the Tampa Bay area theaters I spoke with felt this change in audience behavior—so they’re all finding ways to adapt. Mostly, they’ve chosen to stage surefire hits that fit their mission statements.

But what does a surefire hit look like?

Fun and familiar is the winning formula these days. Often, the biggest audience hits are the plays with the greatest name recognition.

“For Jobsite’s 22-23 season, we picked shows we knew were household names that we didn’t need to explain to anybody. And the proof was in the pudding—we had our best season in 25 years,” Jenkins said.

Like Jobsite, freeFall and Stageworks pushed familiar fare in 2023-2023.
“This past season, one of freeFall’s biggest mainstage hits was ‘Baskerville,’” McGee told CL about the work that featured himself and freeFall Artistic Director Eric [Davis] playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

“It’s five people doing ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles.’ It was comedic. It was fun. It was inventive in the way we changed costumes and did all the different settings. We sort of moved furniture around and stuff, and people were really delighted by it.” McGee said. “And why is that? They know the story well; they already know who those characters are. And we did it in a freeFall way that was exciting and different.”

Stageworks produced “The Diary of Anne Frank,” “Murder on the Orient Express,” and Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Anna in the Tropics.”

Changes in programming were just the beginning. Tampa Bay theater companies also changed pricing and introduced cost-cutting measures.

Jobsite introduced dynamic pricing—that’s when the cost of a show goes up as you get closer to show time. freeFall added a monthly subscription plan.

“When we opened in 2021, we began to do our monthly season ticket where, like Netflix, you pay a monthly fee,” McGee told CL. In addition to its mainstage performances freeFall presented cabarets, concerts, film screenings, and special events. At one point there was even a game night.

“We’re trying a lot of different things to add value to the subscription without having to remount a whole other show. Because with everything down, we didn’t have the revenue to continue to do that amount of shows or hire that many actors,” McGee said, adding that the extra offerings are doing well.

Trying to cut costs without sacrificing audience enjoyment has led to some interesting challenges for local theater companies. As McGee commented for this feature, freeFall was being tented for termites. They’d started keeping materials from old sets around to recycle into new sets. Unfortunately, those materials are wood, and we all know what wood attracts in Florida.

Theaters are even reconsidering showtimes and run lengths.

“I was getting a lot of feedback from people who thought that our shows should be earlier.”

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“I was getting a lot of feedback from people who thought that our shows should be earlier,” Jenkins told CL. “I was resistant for a really long time, but I bet on it.”

Jobsite moved their 4 p.m. matinees to 2 p.m., and their 8 p.m. shows to 7:30 p.m.

“Saturday nights used to be the big theater night; it’s not anymore,” McGee told CL, which is why he’s considered a 1 p.m. matinee and a 5 p.m. evening show instead of freeFall’s usual 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. shows. “It’s something I keep toying with, but everyone says it’s just too weird.”

freeFall’s Davis has considered doing fewer shows with longer runs so everyone gets a chance to see popular shows like “Baskerville.”

“We probably had another three to four weeks in that run,” says McGee. “There were people who couldn’t get in, and they were kind of upset at the end of the run because they couldn’t get in. But we had another show right up against it, so we had to go on to the other show.”

Adding a little extra space between shows could prevent this issue in the future.
“It’s really a matter of programming and scheduling that’s keeping us in a place where we can continue to do what we do,” said McGee.

Despite pandemic challenges, Tampa Bay theaters feel optimistic about the future.

“I would venture that, since the Greeks, any number of people have probably talked about how theater is going to die tomorrow,” says Hartley, “and I just don’t think that’s true. I have to move forward in a positive space that we create here. And I can’t move forward and be creative if I have this monkey on my back about theaters closing around the country. I just can’t. I feel like we have to move forward as if. It’s classic improv instructions. Yes, and…”

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