🔒CT’s six presenting theaters form rare alliance to promote, safeguard arts industry

Days after the pandemic shut down theaters last year, the executives of Connecticut’s leading performing arts centers did something rare in the arts and entertainment industry: They were talking to each other in significant and wide-ranging ways.

“Before this, we worked independently,” said Frank Tavera, CEO of the Palace Theater in Waterbury. “One good thing that came out of COVID was the fact that we were now all talking to each other about the future.”

Tavera said there had been some previous collaborations by “The Big Four” — which also included The Bushnell in Hartford and New Haven’s Shubert and Stamford’s Palace theatres — but mostly in regard to lobbying efforts for annual line-item funding from the state legislature, now totaling a combined $784,000 for those institutions.

But this was the first time the foursome invited Torrington’s Warner Theatre and New London’s Garde Arts Center into the room — or more accurately, into the Zoom — and so the loose group became a larger and formal organization with a new name: The Connecticut Performing Arts Centers Coalition.

New executives

The reach out from the top theater executives couldn’t have been more welcome for the two new leaders who had just been hired and faced a unique challenge. Rufus de Rham began his job as executive director of the Warner Theatre in Torrington just a few weeks before the institution had to close due to the pandemic.

Anthony McDonald was also new on the scene, arriving on the week of the shutdown as executive director of the Shubert Theatre — and becoming the first Black man to head a major presenting house in the state.

“Coming into a new environment and having that kind of camaraderie allowed me to one, get to know these gentlemen, and two, get to understand the nuances [of the field],” McDonald said. “We really do not look at each other as competition but as colleagues.”

The COVID crisis brought everyone together in new and far-reaching ways, the execs said.

“We were the first enterprise to be shut down completely [in March 2020], and after a few weeks realized, we would be probably one of the last to reopen and that we would need some financial help,” said David Fay, president and CEO of The Bushnell for the past 20 years.

Lobbying and marketing campaign

In the months following the shutdown, the six execs worked collectively to maximize state and federal funding, presenting themselves as the largest not-for-profit venues that drew audiences from every region of the state.

But it wasn’t just about lobbying for funding.

It was also about marketing, technology, programming, bulk purchasing and, most pressing at the time, anticipating what the entertainment landscape would be when they did reopen.

As COVID infection rates decreased in Connecticut and restrictions eased, the new group created a marketing campaign this fall to promote the fact theaters reopened and to encourage audiences to return.

There was also a collaborative booking, with Waterbury’s Palace Theater taking the front end of a week’s stay of the touring musical “Anastasia,” and Shubert taking the back end; both theaters were able to reduce some costs as a result of the partnership.

There are now regular e-blasts for each others’ shows and a website promoting all acts at the venues.

And yes, lobbying efforts are on the agenda, too — and now more empowered with a larger geographical reach.

“With data sharing, we can now say that every corner of Connecticut is impacted by at least one of our organizations,” said Tavera. “They usually see us in our own little fiefdoms. It was important for [legislators] to hear we are working together. The state appreciates that as not-for-profits, we’re looking for ways to best utilize any dollars we get to benefit everybody, not just ourselves.”

Focus on the future

“The [new alliance] is as much about the future as it was about what occurred in the last 18 months,” said Fay.

“I’m one who believes in the years ahead, and certainly in the next decades, that the entire nonprofit community — and not just cultural institutions — is going to have to figure out mergers, acquisitions and affiliations because the cost of doing business [individually] is getting out of hand.”

He notes that presenting houses like The Bushnell — which primarily book touring shows from elsewhere — are different from the state’s flagship regional producing theaters such as Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre and Westport Country Playhouse.

Still, Fay said he sees the trend of smaller organizations joining larger entities in order to share the resources necessary to address advances in technology and customer relations, “and to have the financial footing that allows you to do the kinds of things we need to be doing.”

Fay also said the nonprofit and commercial world will inevitably work more closely together, too. The new alliance, he says, is a way to make that happen.

For now, the theaters are just getting started with their new bond.

“With no preconceived notions,” said Fay, “we’ll just have to see where it all leads. It’s too early to be predicting.”