Where are the audiences? Tucson arts see dramatic decline

In late September, Arizona Theatre Company saw more empty seats than filled for its 2022-23 season opening show “The Lion.”

Attendance averaged just 38% capacity of ATC’s downtown home theater, the 623-seat Temple of Music & Art.

That same weekend, just over a third of the 2,289 seats at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall were filled for Tucson Symphony Orchestra‘s season opener with violinist Anne Akiko Meyers.

When Arizona Opera opened its season at the Temple in late October, almost two-thirds of the seats were empty.

Tucson culture arts are seeing a dramatic decline in audiences, which is prompting some to rethink their business models.

ATC this year began offering flex subscriptions for its six-show season, allowing people for the first time in its 56-year history to subscribe to three, four or five shows instead of the full season.

“It is really tough right now. We thought COVID was tough; that’s nothing,” said ATC Managing Director Geri Wright. “Our staff is back, our expenses are back, but our audiences aren’t back.”

“The arts in the culture sector nationally is under great pressure. The question always is what are we going to do about it?” said Arizona Opera President and General Director Joseph Specter. “The sector is in a period of turnaround, but these moments also are moments of true reflection where we have the opportunity to make meaningful changes.”

Nationwide, arts organizations are seeing similar attendance drops from pre-pandemic levels. The New York Times in August reported that many of the country’s leading theaters, orchestras and opera companies anticipate ticket sales will remain slow through the season and possibly beyond as arts leaders try to figure out how to attract audiences back to their spaces.

The decline, many say, is due to older audience members being reluctant to return to performance spaces with the threat of COVID still lingering. Others conclude that audiences got used to not going when stages nationwide went dark for more than a year at the height of the pandemic. Even when the pandemic eased, and live performances returned, some audience members stayed away when theaters lifted their COVID protocols that required audiences to show proof of being vaccinated and to wear masks.

Performing arts groups in Tucson say one of their most worrisome concerns is the dramatic decline in season subscribers.

Tucson Symphony has seen a drop of 17% in its fixed series subscribers — those who subscribe to the full Classics series, for example — over 2019-20 and an even bigger decline in flex subscriptions, which allows subscribers to commit to fewer concerts. With the new season already in full swing, TSO President and CEO Paul Meecham doesn’t see those numbers improving. But he is hoping for an uptick in sales of modified three- or four-concert season packages, especially when many of the winter residents return in January and February.

“Maybe we can turn that around with single tickets, but clearly people made the decision back in the spring (when the season was announced) not to commit to season tickets,” Meecham said. “Unfortunately it’s continuing in the fall where single tickets are the preferred way to purchase tickets.”

ATC’s season tickets are down 15% to 20% from last year’s numbers, “and that’s right coming out of the pandemic,” Wright noted.

“Audiences are slow to return, and we don’t know what is causing that, if it’s a concern over COVID or basically audiences got out of the habit of going to live performances,” she said, noting that the company, which was born in Tucson and mounts its productions here and in Phoenix, had come into the season with conservative expectations. “We budgeted … for 2022-23 as a bounce-back season.”

Like ATC, Arizona Opera serves Tucson and Phoenix, two very different markets in terms of audience engagement. While opera audiences historically trend older, Specter said he is seeing younger audiences trying opera for the first time “particularly among single-ticket buyers.” But overall, even single-ticket sales have dropped off by 20% to 25%, he said.

“Honestly there are still people who are hesitant about coming back. It just emphasizes the need to reach out to people who haven’t attended,” he said. “I think there will be a period where we … decide do we pull back, but I think on the other side of that, how can we create an incredible renaissance for all of these art forms? We have to produce the very best work we can and make the stronger case for people to return when they are ready.”

Tucson’s smaller arts organizations, meanwhile, seem to be faring much better.

Coming out of the pandemic last season, the Rogue Theatre Company was down 27% of its audience. Pre-pandemic, the company, founded in 2005 by local actors Cynthia Meier and Joe McGrath, averaged 1,788 people for a show’s three-week run at its 160-seat theater in downtown’s Historic Y.

“This September, we’re just down 8%. People are coming back,” said Meier, the company’s managing director and associate artistic director. “The season tickets have been a little bit slower coming back, although we are doing better than we were last year at this time.”

True Concord Voices & Orchestra had its biggest opening concert in its 19 years when it performed the regional premiere of Timothy Takach’s “Helios” in late September, said founder and Music Director Eric Holtan.

Season ticket sales also are up by 11% over 2019-20.

“We’re feeling good,” he said. “We’re not trying to feel overly confident. We are cognizant that the pandemic could flare up again.”

Both Holtan and Meier said one reason they believe their audiences never left them was because they continued engaging them with virtual programming and other outreach throughout the pandemic.

“We never stopped. Even during the pandemic, we were offering video productions,” said Meier. “We really made a super effort to stay engaged with our audience, and that may be part of what’s helping us.”

“We kept the music going. We didn’t shut down,” said Holtan, noting the weekly play lists he sent out to subscribers with recorded versions of True Concord performances, streamed concerts and their live events held outdoors before limited, masked audiences not long after shutdown orders were lifted in summer 2020.

ATC’s Wright said she is seeing some positive signs. The company just opened its second production, the holiday-themed “The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley,” a follow-up to last year’s “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley.” “Miss Bennet” was one of the company’s biggest shows of the 2021-22 season and “The Wickhams,” which runs through Dec. 2, is also selling well, she said.

Next season in Phoenix, the company will move from its longtime home at the Herberger Theater Center downtown to the Tempe Center for the Arts on Tempe Town Lake for the 2023-24 season while it finds a permanent East Valley location. Wright said the company is hoping the move will open the company up to a wider audience. including young people.

The symphony also saw a boost when 2,600 people, mostly young families, attended the two performances of “Coco In Concert — Live to Film” in late October.

“Coco” was part of the orchestra’s new seasonlong ¡Celebración Latina! series to appeal to Tucson’s Hispanic community, which is one of the things TSO is doing to attract new audiences. Meecham said the orchestra also will increase its advertising now that the midterm elections are past and advertising rates will go down.

Other initiatives include focusing on its educational outreach and exploring ways to engage with its audiences outside of the concert hall in hopes of bringing them back.

“I think these things are an opportunity. I think what we have to do is not assume that we can go back to the ways we did before the pandemic and everything will be fine,” he said. “We have to think internally (about) what we can do and what might we do on stage that will appeal to new audiences in ways that the standard concert format doesn’t.”

“We’re resilient because we have to be constantly creative about the ways we do things. We can’t afford to be static and stuck in our ways,” he added. “These are challenging times, but we’ve got a lot of creative people working here and a supportive community.”