Saying Nay to the Naysayers: A Positive Look at the Future of American Theater
Friday 9/25/26, doors open at 5:00pm ET, interview starts at 5:30. Come early so we can meet you!
Community Gathering on Zoom - register with the bright red reservation box to receive the Zoom link. These gatherings are a service for the theater community and are offered free for TRU members; we ask that non-members help keep us running by buying a ticket, making a donation or joining as a member.
In the room: Brett Bernardini, founder of Spirit of Broadway musical theater in Norwich, Connecticut, which he ran for 21 years, former executive leader at Nebraska Shakespeare Festival, The Cape Playhouse and Theater Harrisburg and currently chronicling the cultural life of rural America; and Cody Lassen, Tony-nominated commercial producer (Broadway: How I Learned To Drive, Indecent, the Deaf West Theatre revival of Spring Awakening; Off-Bway A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet), new works developer and live events consultant. The death knell just seems to keep tolling for the American theater, though that mournful sound has filled the air on and off for at least a century. More recently, in announcing that he was stepping down as artistic director of New York's Public Theater, Oskar Eustis suggested that the current cultural environment and economic trends have ended the nonprofit American theater movement. Meanwhile in other not-so-news, the off-Broadway producing model has long been declared untenable, and the skyrocketing costs of productions and the consequential ticket pricing (and audience drop-off) looks to many like a deadly vicious circle. Brett and Cody see things differently. Hear why they think we'll make it through this.
