Shaw Festival turns the corner
Financial results for the season show surplus of $65,000
AFTER
TWO financially fraught seasons, which built a deficit of more $2.5 million, the Shaw Festival turned the corner in its 2017 season.
Financial results for the season, the first under artistic director Tim Carroll, showed a surplus of about $65,000 for the 12month period ending Nov. 30, finally giving board members reason to smile at Friday's annual general meeting.
As executive director Tim Jennings told a crowd gathered in the Festival Theatre lobby, one of his objectives when he joined the company in 2015 was to erase the company's accumulated deficits “permanently” and ensure the Shaw was sustainable long term.
Last year was a huge step toward that, with the company managing to pay off $1.25 million in operating debt and $800,000 of its capital debt. To go with the company's best fundraising year ever — more than $9 million — and with endowed gifts eligible for matching grants from Heritage Canada, Jennings says the Shaw is “on track to eliminate all capital deficiencies by the end of 2018.”
Despite total attendance at the company's four theatres (and assorted secret and pop-up performances) dipping slightly, the numbers got a boost from the late season addition of A Christmas Carol, which sold out all performances at the Royal George Theatre.
It will return this year, and with shows now going into December, the company has changed its fiscal year-end from Nov. 30 to Dec. 31 to align with the new schedule.
December is normally a highexpense, low-revenue month for the company.
Total attendance across 783 performances was 236,824, or 67 per cent of capacity.
In summing up his first season, Carroll was pleased to see plays like the volatile An Octoroon and audience-engaging Androcles and the Lion generate extreme reaction — both good and bad.
“There were all sorts of lovely things said, and all sorts of angry emails,” he said. “The only thing you don't want is indifference.”
Highlights of the season included a critically-adored production of Middletown and the hit musical Me and My Girl.
Even so, Carroll felt “frustrated” with ticket sales, and says it's imperative to “start to create a journey for new people into the heart of what we do.”
Adding A Christmas Carol to the season (it will return this year) is a first step, he says,
“since people aren't likely to start with Bernard Shaw.”
He intends to continue a theme of “real human encounters” for 2018, which will see 14 productions. Ticket sales are already $1.5 million ahead of last year at this time. Previews begin April 4.