When leaders of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis announced an emergency fundraiser late last year and shortened the troupe’s season midstream, the theater’s immediate future seemed cloudy.
But the nonprofit theater show signs of getting back on track. It successfully closed its “Rally for the Rep” campaign, raising $2.6 million in that emergency effort, and announced a four-show 2024-25 mainstage season. Theater leaders also plan to announce the return of the black-box series of edgier work at Webster University's Emerson Studio Theatre, an initiative launched during the 2018-19 season but interrupted by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The Rep also has seen the return of over 600 lapsed subscribers this season, according to new artistic director Kate Bergstrom.
Bergstrom has been on the job since May, meeting with theater supporters and preparing for the upcoming season. Bergstrom is a theater director and musician with a long track record of developing new plays, including as founding artistic director of On the Verge, a California theater company dedicated to producing works by female and LGBTQ writers.
St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy D. Goodwin asked Bergstrom about their plans for the Rep, this season and beyond.
Jeremy D. Goodwin: How do things stand today with the Rep’s finances?
Kate Bergstrom: The Rep continues to have a really beautiful forward momentum pull throughout the community and beyond. So many folks rallied for the Rep last year as part of our benefit, and we'll have another benefit again this year.
The real, tried and true marker, I think, is that we've got a bunch of subscribers who are returning — lapsed subscribers who are coming back this year. Over 600.
Goodwin: That’s 600 people who used to subscribe, stopped, and now are back? That sounds like a lot of people.
Bergstrom: It's a lot of people. I think it’s because of a mixture of things, but also a movement where people are feeling the Rep is starting to resonate with them again in a meaningful way and that The Rep is a meaningful part of their life experience, and they feel safe again to return to an indoor space together.
Goodwin: As a new artistic director coming in, what's on your plate? What are you going to do all day?
Bergstrom: What am I not going to do all day! Right now we've got a few things cooking. First, we are still in the process of casting and making sure the entire teams are all set for our mainstage productions. And we are about to announce a really exciting studio season. For the first time in five years, we're opening the black box theater under the Loretto-Hilton stage. That is the more intimate, 120-seat, experiential, adventurous, immersive studio, which many subscribers from years past knew and loved. And this Steven Woolf Studio Series is going to be showcasing some pretty exciting work, which will be announced on July 22.
Goodwin: You're taking this job at a time when theaters all over are struggling to recover from the pandemic. A lot of big theaters have closed. Some funding sources have disappeared. There must be a temptation to program plays that are safe — known hits, rather than new work or more edgy stuff. How do you walk that line?
Bergstrom: What I think we're really facing in this moment is: How can we make sure that the theater onstage, and the experience from the moment someone walks out of their car or walks down the street is not only safe, but is relevant? That they've taken a risk in a purposeful and meaningful way that they're going to walk away from feeling good about.
Titular recognition could mean a title is safe. But what's so exciting is there's so much to be done within a production that can really make transcendent theater. For example, last year's “Moby Dick.” You go, “Oh, Moby Dick, I recognize that. I did or did not finish that book in high school.” And when you see it onstage at the Rep and you've got some beautiful silk going over you and the rest of the audience members, you go, “Oh my God, this is a transcendent theater experience like no other.”
It may feel safe as a title, because people recognize it. But the experience itself is transcendent and extraordinary. And that's what I want us to keep programming along with newer work in different formats that's relevant to St. Louis and that's going to resonate with our audiences here.
Goodwin: You're preceded in your seat as artistic director by Hana Sharif, a very respected leader in American theater. She was scooped up by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. And she did a lot of work here to bring underheard voices onto the stage and into the organization, particularly theater makers of color. And that was not universally applauded by the Rep’s supporters. How do you bring the audiences along with you if you do encounter resistance?
Bergstrom: I appreciate that question. And I hope that my tenure will honor the legacy of Hana and Steve [Woolf] and all of the amazing artistic directors that have come before. This is an opportunity, I think, particularly in this bifurcated political time, to celebrate our differences and find the undergirding humanity. And that's going to mean not only making sure that audiences are resonating with titles, and resonating with different experiences that they're seeing offered at the Rep, but that every time they come through our doors, they feel beloved. They feel like they are part of the Rep community.
That means former subscribers, that means folks of every different political bent, that means young, old, that means every demographic that you can think of feels like they are taken care of and treated like a deep and profound collaborator when they come into the doors at the Rep.
Goodwin: I think a difficult dynamic in these kinds of conversations is getting everyone to understand that inviting one person into the room does not mean that you're disinviting someone else.
Bergstrom: I completely hear that. And I think that the big goal is also to say that when you come into our doors and you find your seat, there is room for everyone to experience this transcendent theater. My big goal is that when you come into the Rep, you're respected and uplifted, and are respectful to everyone's identity surrounding you. And the stories you're gonna see onstage are going to bring you closer together, knowing that that's the only way that St. Louis is going to thrive.
![Will Mann, Ezioma Asonye, Kambi Gathesha and Joe Ngo [left to right] rehearse a scene from 'Mlima's Tale.' [6/1/21]](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/17c7dcd/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3428x2268+240+0/resize/260x172!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F1c%2F18%2F742727b848cebe891efb0cf194fa%2Frehearsal-photo-1.jpg)