Broadway investors stand to lose about $200 million on the 2023-24 season’s flops. For Jujamcyn Theaters, the Broadway landlord, it was a different story.
Jujamcyn earned a profit of $34 million on revenue of $116 million in the year ending March 30, 2024. The disclosure, in a filing in the U.K. by Jujamcyn’s new parent, ATG Entertainment, is the first time in memory that a major commercial Broadway theater owner shared its financials.Continue Reading
In 2020, a year in which theaters were dark for nine and a half months, Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis earned $1.15 million in pay and benefits, more than any other nonprofit theater leader in New York.
Eustis’ 10 percent jump in overall compensation — disclosed in the Public’s 2020-21 tax return filed with the New York Attorney General — runs counter to the company’s messaging about pandemic pay. In an April 2020 New York Times story about the cancellation of Shakespeare in the Park and planned staff furloughs, Michael Paulson reported that much of the remaining staff “will take up to a 25 percent pay cut. Eustis will take a 40 percent pay cut.”
The tax return, which details compensation for calendar year 2020, tells a different story. Eustis, one of the highest-profile figures in nonprofit theater since assuming leadership of the storied organization in 2005, was paid $901,000, up from $807,000 in 2019. Benefits and deferred pay were valued at an additional $255,000.Continue Reading
What started as an existential crisis for Broadway’s nonprofit producers turned into a 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
André Bishop, head of Lincoln Center Theater, earned pay and benefits valued at $1 million in 2017. It’s likely the biggest one-year compensation for a New York nonprofit theater leader. Todd Haimes, artistic director and chief executive of the Roundabout Theatre Company, was close behind, with $922,000.
“More people who run theaters are realizing it’s very hard work and want to be paid for it,” said James Abruzzo, a recruiter and compensation consultant who’s hired by arts executives to negotiate their contracts with nonprofit boards. Those at the top who have management and artistic ability are scarce, he said. “Keeping leaders happy and keeping them close are the most important tasks of the board.”
In the previous decade, Bishop’s comp package doubled while Haimes’ rose 74 percent — increases at least four times the rate of inflation.Continue Reading
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.
