One year ago, leaders of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis had one eye on the calendar and the other on the calculator. The Dec. 31 conclusion of the theater’s emergency fundraising campaign loomed, as its lavish production of “A Christmas Carol” was put on the shelf in favor of a holiday show with a smaller cast that cost less to produce.
Without $2.5 million in donations, theater leaders said, they would have to abruptly end the season.
In the view from the Rep’s offices in Webster Groves, the future looks different this December.
A robust number of new and returning subscribers, box office successes and support from donors have buttressed the theater’s financial health, theater leaders said.
“For the folks who are on the fence about ‘Will the Rep make it?’ and whether their investment in us would be a worthy one, I think that this past year we have shown that the Rep is working hard and is getting to a place that I think everyone should be really proud of,” Managing Director Danny Williams said.
Now midway through the current fiscal year, the Rep has a balanced budget, Williams said. The theater posted a nearly $1.9 million deficit in the fiscal year that ended in May 2023, the most recent for which tax documents are publicly available.
Numbers trending upward
“Million Dollar Quartet Christmas,” a co-production with STAGES St. Louis that runs through Dec. 22, is already the company’s second-most successful show ever as measured by single-show ticket sales.
There are more repeat patrons as well.
The Rep now has 3,500 season subscribers, up from 1,000 or so when Williams started at the Rep in 2022, he said. Among them are 300 new season subscribers and 758 who returned for the 2024-25 season after dropping out in the past few years.
A benefit performance at the Rep last week headlined by actor Sean Gunn and jazz vocalist Denise Thimes netted more than $300,000, about twice the income from a similar but hastily planned event last year featuring actor John Goodman. The more recent benefit included a live auction and drew more financial support from local businesses and charitable foundations.
The emergency “Rally for the Rep” fundraising campaign launched in October 2023 wound up netting just north of its $2.5 million goal.
After the Rep hired Kate Bergstrom as its new artistic director in April, Bergstrom and Williams held more than 20 small-group gatherings in which they solicited feedback and contributions from lapsed donors.
This season, the Rep revived its “studio series” of newer plays staged in the 300-seat Emerson Studio Theater at Webster University’s Loretto-Hilton Center, which also houses the 700-seat theater the Rep uses for mainstage productions. Performances of the second of two such shows, “Athena” by Gracie Gardner, are set to begin on Jan. 15.
“It's just so exciting to be able to have two spaces to be programming in and have those both be so vibrant,” Bergstrom said. Previous artistic director Hana Sharif left the Rep after its 2022-34 season to lead Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.
Still further to go
The Rep’s leaders walk the line between appealing for much-needed funds and assuring its stakeholders that the future is bright. Though some key indicators are trending upward, the organization is still working to regain ground it lost during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We're in a much healthier position than we were a year ago — financially, artistically and structurally,” Williams said.
The reemergence this season of patrons who were slow to return to live theater is particularly encouraging to theater leaders, but even after doubling in recent years, the subscriber count is far fewer than the 10,000 or more the Rep had annually in the 1990s and early ’00s, Williams said.
The Rep’s current annual revenue of around $9 million is about what it was in 2019, but expenses are up. After heavy use of reserve funds and unrestricted endowment money to get through the pandemic years, the Rep’s reported net assets dropped from $7.1 million at the end of fiscal 2019 to $1.7 million four years later.
The theater employs about 30 people year-round — down from 35 to 40 in 2019 — after shifting some positions from full-time to part-time and consolidating job duties, Williams said. In season, the organization employs about 50 full-time workers, plus part-time ushers and other staff.
In coming months, the Rep will announce its next season, its first to be programmed by Bergstrom. She said it will include four mainstage shows, two or three studio productions and possibly more.
