What started as an existential crisis for Broadway’s nonprofit producers turned into an unexpected windfall.
Thanks to a resurgent but fickle stock market, insurance payouts, cost-cutting and emergency grants from the federal government and foundations in response to Covid-19, Lincoln Center Theater and Roundabout Theatre Co. emerged from the 18-month industry shutdown wealthier than when they entered it.Continue Reading
The self-described “world’s No. 1 live theater company” has taken a drubbing.
The parent company of U.K.-based Ambassador Theatre Group reported a pretax loss of $202 million for the 12 months ended in March 2021. The holding company attributed the results to Covid-19, which decimated rental income when its theaters shuttered in March 2020.Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: The nation’s oldest theater company specializing in nurturing women writers and directors is in a seven-month court battle to recover $30,000, a significant sum for a nonprofit institution trying to survive a pandemic.Continue Reading
While performing arts spaces in the region remain largely shuttered because of Covid-19, Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater said that it plans to build a permanent home, its first since the Long Island company was founded as a summer theater in 1991.Continue Reading
Christie’s auction house said it will offer three original drawings by the legendary Broadway portraitist Al Hirschfeld that were owned by Terry Allen Kramer, the prolific Broadway producer and Palm Beach doyenne who died in May at 85.Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: Ken Davenport’s eponymous theater is no more.
“As of the end of January 2019, the Davenport Theatre has closed,” according to an announcement on Davenport Theatrical Enterprise‘s voicemail.
Ken Davenport, the producer-general manager-book writer-marketer-podcaster-blogger-consultant, has told people in the industry that he lost his lease. He declined to comment for this story.
EXCLUSIVE: On September 15, 2008, hours after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the Roundabout Theatre Co. signed a lease to take over a third Broadway house. Given the expense of producing and its thinning ranks of subscribers, some in the business questioned whether the company, founded in 1965, overextended itself.
Seven and a half years later, the Roundabout can make a convincing case that adding the Stephen Sondheim Theatre inside the Bank of America tower constituted shrewd investing in a downturn.
