Watertown theater takes last bow after 40 seasons

The New Repertory Theatre in Watertown is completely closing after 40 seasons resulting from financial challenges following the pandemic.  

“It’s a little bit of the frog within the boiling pot, the place we’ve been steadily developing up to now. It’s all the time a problem to place the puzzle items collectively, and then you definitely add in all of the various factors over the past couple of years, [and] it’s actually swimming upstream to get to sustainability,” mentioned New Rep Board Chair Chris Jones instructed WBUR. 

In 2021 the theater confronted a troublesome choice resulting from monetary losses from the pandemic and paused its operations, Jones mentioned in an announcement.

Nevertheless, after a nine-month hiatus, the theater produced a full-fledged season in 2023, with exhibits similar to “The Regular Coronary heart,” “A Raisin within the Solar,” and the world premiere of a brand new work titled “DIASPORA!”

Jones instructed WBUR that though ticket gross sales have been encouraging, the price of producing these works prices the theater tons of of hundreds of {dollars}. Cash from ticket gross sales simply isn’t fairly sufficient when there isn’t a robust turnout of philanthropic donors. 

New Rep Resident Artist Maria Hendricks instructed WBUR that donors need to see the success of the season with a view to produce funding to assist the season, creating a niche between potential and precise earnings for the theater.

The theater was additionally dedicated to providing all its artists and employees a dwelling wage following 2020’s nationwide dialog surrounding race and fairness. 

“That’s not a mannequin that existed, essentially, the place each particular person employed by a theater was in a position to reside on what they have been making on the theater, and that’s one thing that we have been aspiring to. That will have additionally impacted the quantity we would have liked to maintain ourselves shifting ahead,” New Rep Board Vice Chair Danielle Galligan instructed WBUR.

After the New Rep leaves its submit on the Mosesian Middle for the Arts, Galligan instructed WBUR she hopes a brand new group of theater people will make use of the black field theater this group as soon as referred to as their house.