Marin Shakespeare Company hosted the Oakland Theater Project’s 2024 production of Angels in America, Parts I and II, optimizing resources for both groups.
Ben Krantz Studio
A theatre performance is by definition ephemeral. It happens once. If you’re not in the room, you miss it,” wrote Aurora Theatre Company artistic director Josh Costello in an August letter to subscribers. “And yet that unique, brief, fleeting moment can change your life forever.”
In the spring, Aurora announced that it would suspend its 2025–2026 season due to insurmountable financial issues—marking the conclusion of a 33-year run of plays produced by the esteemed Berkeley institution. Although the Aurora team hopes to find a way to reinvent the company, its likely end is the latest in a string of closures across the Bay Area, including that of the 50-year-old Cal Shakes in Orinda and Oakland’s Bay Area Children’s Theatre. These losses come as theater groups have battled economic struggles, smaller audiences following the COVID-19 pandemic, and an increasingly digital society.
“Aurora is not the first Bay Area theatre to cease operations in the wake of all this,” Costello added in his email, “and unfortunately, it is unlikely to be the last.”
But even as difficult times continue, arts institutions across the region are finding inventive methods to raise funds, bring in audiences, and craft a thriving industry for a new era. Cultural organizations—in the theater and beyond—are banding together to ensure the Bay Area remains a creative hub for years to come.
To offset funding losses from National Endowment for the Arts cuts, Oakland comic and television host W. Kamau Bell held a series of comedy shows in June to benefit arts organizations.
Courtesy of Berkeley Rep
An Existential Inflection Point
Many moving parts go into the stories audiences see on stage during opening nights—payment for the rights to perform particular plays, recruiting talented cast and crew, purchasing goods for costumes and sets—and companies across the East Bay are dealing with increased expenses for these productions. Causes include interest rates, rising costs of living for performers in the Bay Area, and higher price tags for required physical materials.
“Producing today just costs more, even if it’s the same scale and scope as what you’ve done in the past,” says Lesher Center for the Arts general manager Carolyn Jackson. “Changes at the federal level are [also] anticipated to impact how individual donors support nonprofit organizations, and we don’t know fully what that impact will look like.”
Many arts organizations across the region relied on government support to survive the height of the pandemic, but those fiscal streams have ended. Now, some of those same groups are directly impacted by a lack of federal and state funding. After broad cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) were announced this spring, Berkeley Rep was notified that an NEA grant already awarded to its Ground Floor program—which has supported the writing of hundreds of new works—was being rescinded. Livermore’s SPARC and the Oakland Theater Project (OTP) are postponing productions or otherwise attempting to cover gaps from funds that had been expected from the California Arts Council, the NEA, and California Humanities. OTP and Town Hall Theatre Co. were also among those who applied for grants from California’s Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund, launched this year after the California Legislature’s 2019 passage of AB 5, which ensures performers are treated as company employees. Both were denied due to lack of available grant money.
The steep decline in accessible funds extends beyond theater auditoriums. The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) and BAMPFA were two of nearly a dozen Northern California visual arts institutions to sign a public letter in April asking patrons to support local museums and call congressional representatives in response to major cuts at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, in addition to the NEA and NEH. The California Symphony lost half of an NEA grant that would have helped fund the organization’s Composer-in-Residence Program, which has given an early platform to creators such as Grammy winner Mason Bates and Pulitzer Prize awardee Kevin Puts, who have become central players on the national stage. The symphony remains committed to finding an alternative funding source but has not yet been able to make up the lost resources.
“The board all agree we’re not going to find the funds that we need by reducing what we do and backing off from the community,” says California Symphony executive director Lisa Dell. “This is an existential inflection point for the arts.”
Despite losing a portion of financing for its influential Composer-in-Residence Program this year, California Symphony continues to see growing attendance numbers at its performances.
Kristen Loken
In This Together
When news about the loss of Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor NEA grant broke in May, playwright John Logan donated $40,000 to the program. While Berkeley Rep ultimately obtained the NEA funds to cover Ground Floor’s needs for 2025, the program received almost 800 project residency applications for a summer lab this year, and future grants are uncertain, making Logan’s donation critical for the initiative’s short-term future. Oakland resident and Emmy Award winner W. Kamau Bell also championed local arts, performing a series of benefit comedy shows in June that supported 13 organizations with cut NEA grants, including OTP and Berkeley Rep. The shows garnered $180,765, which more than covered those retracted funds.
“We are all in this together. We need to help each other out if we’re all going to get through this,” says Berkeley Rep managing director Tom Parrish. “We want to ensure that as many organizations survive as possible and that we have opportunities for artists to make a living in the Bay Area—and for audiences to have a rich selection of storytelling and artistic opportunities.”
Smaller-scale donations from individual attendees are also critical. Town Hall and Pleasanton’s Tri-Valley Theatre Company (TVTC) offer recurring donation programs, and gifts as small as $10 or $20 a month are going a long way to cover costs, while corporate sponsorships can also be a huge boon.
“We saw more individuals contributing to [California Symphony] in the last year that we had in the two prior years,” says Dell. “It’s not enough support to make up for the gap, but it is very hopeful for us to see that we have an engaged community.”
Traditional fundraising galas are also seeing a tremendous response for many local groups—the Diablo Regional Arts Association’s On Broadway Gala in October sold out weeks in advance, and Berkeley Rep’s Ovation Gala brought in over $750,000 in March. Additionally, many groups are introducing casual fundraisers and virtual campaigns. TVTC is tying donation drives to each production, while SPARC encourages fundraising through Shakespeare’s Birthday Bash and a trivia night series.
Town Hall is brainstorming inventive new ways to garner support, including a 24-hour playwriting event. “Donors support [writers], and then we come together 24 hours later to see these pieces come to life,” says artistic director Richard Perez. “It’s a great way to get local writers, actors, and directors to come together and have a major impact on our bottom line.”
A new initiative from Oakland Museum of California offers free class field trips to the institution for all students in the Oakland Unified School District.
Leopoldo Macaya
Finding Fresh Ways to Bring in Audiences
After shifting to virtual offerings or shutting down during the pandemic, many arts companies have struggled to convince audiences to return to physical venues and are finding it a challenge to anticipate audiences’ responses to programming. “People want variety and interactivity,” says OMCA deputy director of curatorial affairs Makeda Best. “It’s about trying to read those tea leaves well.”
SPARC spent nearly $30,000 on marketing efforts for Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor at Darcie Kent Estate Winery and Danville’s Village Theatre in July and August, but didn’t get a resulting growth in audience numbers. “We are still trying to woo audiences away from their streaming services,” says SPARC executive/artistic director Lisa Tromovitch. “Surveys show audiences enjoyed the production, so word-of-mouth is good, but a variety of digital and print marketing isn’t working.”
Spiking temperatures resulting from climate change also complicate matters for companies like SPARC and the Eugene O’Neill Festival, which perform their central summer and early fall offerings in outdoor venues or in a barn on the late playwright’s Danville property. “We’re proud and grateful for our patrons, who ride park service shuttles, picnic outdoors, and enjoy shows with unpredictable wildlife and shifting weather conditions,” adds Eugene O’Neill Foundation copresident Teresa Morley.
Slowly, audience numbers are growing, however, and new guests are even beginning to find their way to performance venue seats. Ticket sales at California Symphony have risen 29 percent over the last three concert seasons, and the company just saw the biggest ticket revenue season in its history, while Center Rep’s subscriber numbers at the Lesher Center blossomed by 11 percent last season. Berkeley Rep’s subscriber base is smaller than it was pre-pandemic, but it has seen more than 50 percent growth since reopening after COVID closures. Town Hall has reinvented its subscription system, moving toward a new, versatile Hall Pass that grants attendees a discounted trio of tickets to any performance in a given season.
Companies are also reimagining offerings with budget constraints—while California Symphony had a great response to a film-based event, the team doesn’t plan to repeat it each year due to associated expenses—and are often choosing comedic material and crowd-pleasing shows. “It used to be these are shows that the company wants to do. Now, it’s what are shows that we think are going to draw an audience [and] actors?” says TVTC artistic director Brian Olkowski.
“We made lists as a board. We talked to our audiences. We talked to our actors,” adds board president Glen Riggs. “A lot of thought has gone into our next season.”
Though diverse representation on stage has long been a hallmark of theater in the Bay Area, many companies are now placing renewed emphasis on works that reflect a variety of audience experiences. The Lesher Center introduced Fiesta Cultural, which celebrates Latin American arts and cultures, in 2023 and has welcomed more multicultural visiting performers such as the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Town Hall is centering stories that explore issues appealing to local and broader communities and feature more multiethnic characters.
SPARC will push topical boundaries next spring during its Science @ Play staged reading series, through two newly crafted works presented together: an AI-themed play penned by Cleavon Smith and a production written by artificial intelligence, followed by an audience conversation. “Will the AI play be noticeably without heart? Are there benefits to a partnership with AI, getting help to bring an idea to life?” asks Tromovitch. “We won’t know the answers to these questions, or even what the questions will be, until we tinker with [the production].”
The Next Act
The East Bay’s artistic scene has seen signs of gradual growth. The Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, formerly the Oakland Civic Auditorium, opened in May after being closed for two decades. Programming kicked off with The Copacabana Supper Club, a culinary-theater experience highlighting both local chefs and performers. In the coming years, construction will start on a multiuse center in Dublin; the facility from tourism group Visit Tri-Valley will feature live performances and other events, leading to more potential cultural opportunities.
“We need to help each other out if we’re all going to get through this. We want to ensure that as many organizations survive as possible and that we have opportunities for artists to make a living in the Bay Area—and for audiences to have a rich selection of storytelling and artistic opportunities.”—Tom Parrish, Managing Director, Berkeley Rep
Arts-oriented educational programs for kids are also focused on expansion. In September, OMCA announced a new initiative that will facilitate class field trips to the museum free of charge for the almost 34,000 children in the Oakland Unified School District. Town Hall has seen burgeoning interest in its education offerings, which may in itself provide an alternative revenue source. “Parents are looking for something to get their kids engaged that is not electronic,” says managing director Morgan Dayley. “We are looking for ways we can promote teamwork, collaboration, and person-to-person interaction. Theater is really starting to stand out as the place that you learn those basic types of skills … that we maybe took for granted pre-pandemic.”
Additionally, engagement efforts are giving audiences fresh avenues for gathering and interaction. Berkeley Rep has witnessed renewed interest in its post-show conversations, the Eugene O’Neill Foundation has held sold-out fundraising writer appearances featuring Michael Connolly, OMCA has seen continued support for its Thursday After Hours and Friday Nights at OMCA series, and OTP recently introduced book and movie clubs that promote community dialogue.
Innovative partnerships have further helped local organizations access opportunities for growth. Town Hall acts as a rental venue, has a long-standing association with Lafayette’s Front Porch Music, and recently started partnering with area nonprofits during productions. “Alabaster is about a woman’s journey with trauma and contains a couple of goats that are played by actors,” says Dayley. “I found a local nonprofit called the Crescent Moon Center, which, like in Alabaster, is helping [people process] trauma with art therapy and horses.”
A collaboration between Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport and Berkeley Rep has given East Bay visitors and residents ticket deals and parking discounts, plus, starting this fall, access to an exhibit of Berkeley Rep costumes worn by the likes of Rita Moreno and Frances McDormand for those waiting to board flights in OAK’s Terminal 2. “It’s about making the East Bay a destination and encouraging travel and tourism into the East Bay, which is a goal of the airport as well,” says Berkeley Rep’s Parrish. “It’s a win-win opportunity to promote our respective brands to each other’s audiences.”
Theatrical producers are also working together to maximize each production’s potential and optimize the use of each other’s venues. TVTC is traveling to Danville’s Village Theatre for Puffs this fall, while OTP returned to Marin Shakespeare Company’s facility for Hamlet after success with its North Bay production of Angels in America, Parts I and II in 2024.
“We’re serving more audiences every year, … [and Marin Shakespeare Company’s] theater is about double the size of our black box here in Oakland,” says OTP managing director Colin Mandlin. “It’s a great partnership to help us build the road map of how we grow.”
The Show Goes On
In his August letter, Aurora’s Josh Costello noted, “Theatre as an art form will not disappear. … We’ll see new models for funding theatre—new models for making theatre. We’re living in rapidly changing times. … I urge you to support and attend the many amazing theaters that continue to find ways to serve this community.”
The East Bay has long played a crucial role in challenging boundaries, breaking stereotypes, and raising a voice on the stage or canvas—and, in one form or another, will continue to do so.
“Oakland is a birthplace of creativity,” says Mandlin. “California is heralded as the creative economy in general, and that can be in film or tech, but it certainly is also in the performing arts. The East Bay is a place where people can cut their teeth and have profound lived experiences that can then translate into opportunities for artistic expression. That is pretty unparalleled.”
External construction takes place at the Lesher Center for the Arts in 1990.
Courtesy of Lesher Center for the Arts
Where the Arts Come Alive
The Lesher Center for the Arts celebrates 35 years as a mainstay of the Contra Costa County community.
From its grand opening in 1990 with a gala starring Diahann Carroll and Bob Hope to a Headliners Series appearance by the Groundlings on October 25, the Lesher Center for the Arts’ last three and a half decades have featured star-studded appearances, entertaining productions, and thought-provoking dialogues. For this year’s 35th anniversary, the Walnut Creek institution is celebrating the community that makes it possible and looking ahead to the future.
General manager Carolyn Jackson points to the longtime support of the Lesher, Bedford, Hofmann, Rudney, Vukasin, and Simpson families—in addition to Walnut Creek city councilmembers, staff, and organizers past and present—as integral to the center’s high-quality programming. “We’re not only a hub for the arts; we’re also a regional draw that’s an anchor for [the]downtown economy,” she says.
In the years to come, the Lesher plans to expand its collaborations with regional partners, cement its reputation as a home for new projects and supporter of local artists, and expand its offerings, such as a Diwali celebration on October 17–18 and improv festival on October 25–26. Community programs—including Arts Access School Time, which brings many East Bay kids to their first performances— will continue to be a priority.
“We’re looking to build on this incredible foundation that we have, with deep respect for the visionaries who brought the center into being,” says Jackson, “and the folks we have supporting us today, our city council and [Diablo Regional Arts Association] board, helping us shape what’s next.”
A Season of Stories
Save the date for this fall’s can’t-miss events.
Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic
Tri-Valley Theatre Company, Village Theatre, Danville, 10/3–10/12
Inspired by the adventures of an iconic boy wizard, Puffs celebrates the role of side characters in the fight against evil. “You get to root for the people [who] weren’t as prominent,” says artistic director Brian Olkowski. “It shows how people in the background are so important.” trivalleytheatre.org.
The Courtroom: A Reenactment of One Woman’s Deportation Proceedings
Oakland Theater Project, Flax Art and Design, Oakland, 10/9–10/19
This docudrama is based on transcripts from a Filipina immigrant’s real deportation hearings after she mistakenly voted in a U.S. election. Oakland Theater Project managing director Colin Mandlin calls the production “one of the most important and thrilling theatrical experiences.” oaklandtheaterproject.org.
Berkeley Rep presents The Hills of California, a compelling story about returning home.
Liza Voll
The Hills of California
Berkeley Rep, Berkeley, 10/31–12/7
For managing director Tom Parrish, The Hills of California is a “tentpole of the season” at Berkeley Rep. Olivier and Tony Award–winning playwright Jez Butterworth examines sibling relationships as the Webb sisters, whose mother trained them to be professional singers when they were girls, go back to their hometown in England. berkeleyrep.org.
Good Fire: Tending Native Lands
OMCA, Oakland, 11/7–5/31
OMCA’s Makeda Best recommends Good Fire, which features photographs, art pieces, and artifacts—such as tree samples and baskets—in a showcase of how controlled fire has been a cultural tradition and ecological tool for Indigenous tribes. museumca.org.
Beethoven’s Eroica
California Symphony, Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, 11/15–11/16
Opening with “Overture” by American composer Jessie Montgomery before moving into Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21,” this California Symphony performance will close with Beethoven’s “Eroica.” Executive director Lisa Dell calls the event “monumental.” californiasymphony.org.
Snowbound: A Holiday Tale
Town Hall Theatre Co., Lafayette, 12/6–12/20
Richard Perez and Kimberly Ridgeway’s Snowbound follows snowed-in high schoolers in 1992. “[The students have] their challenges and struggles in terms of their peer groups and how they come together to make the best of this,” says Perez. townhalltheatre.com.