Shaw Festival posts $780,000 shortfall for 2016 season

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As the Shaw Festival prepares to launch its first season under new artistic director Tim Carroll, a full picture of the hole that his programming will have to dig the Niagara-on-the-Lake repertory theatre out of has emerged.

At an annual general meeting on Friday, the Shaw's executive director, Tim Jennings, announced a $780,000 operating deficit for the 2016 season – the final one programmed by former artistic director Jackie Maxwell. This follows a $1.75-million shortfall in 2015.

Attendance for last year's varied playbill – which included admired productions of Engaged and "Master Harold"… and the Boys on the festival's secondary stages – was 237,471. That was up almost 5,000 from the year before, but still the second-lowest ticket sales in Maxwell's 14-year tenure as artistic director.

On the main stage, visionary director Peter Hinton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland managed to reach its sales goal despite being panned by reviewers – however, Maxwell's own late-opening production of Sweeney Todd did not hit its budget goals. It filled an average of 75 per cent of seats in the 856-seat Festival Theatre, but was expected to be more of a cash cow.

In an interview, Jennings put a positive spin on the numbers – noting that ticket revenue was up despite a lower average price, and that the festival's four theatres were filled to 74-per-cent capacity compared to 66 per cent the season before. "I was looking for a break-even year, for sure," he says. "Our fundraising this year was really terrific, but I thought a lot more of it was going to end up in operating."

Indeed, the big picture for the Shaw Festival is not exactly bleak. Its endowment is up by $2-million from last year – and a recent grant of $2.78-million from the Department of Canadian Heritage will help renovate aging theatres and make them more accessible. The arts institution with an annual budget of just under $29-million has pulled itself out of similarly sized accumulated deficits before.

Nevertheless, recent results mean that there is less of a cushion for Carroll's first season – which leans more on contemporary playwrights than recent ones (Will Eno's Middletown and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon), puts namesake playwright Bernard Shaw back on the Festival stage (Saint Joan) and features a lesser-known musical (Me and My Girl).

With money flowing into refurbishing old buildings, the previous regime's plan to build new theatres on a tract of land by the water that was purchased in 2014 is still on hold – and the property may even be sold at the end of an upcoming strategic review. "We have an offer to buy it back from the folks who sold it to us," Jennings says.

Despite the shortfall two years in a row, Jennings has no plans to right-size the Shaw Festival's budget around these recent lower audience numbers. "Our focus is trying to engage with more people – I don't think you can save to success," he says, pointing to a new bus that the festival will operate from Toronto to Niagara-on-the-Lake, currently poorly served by public transit. "I think you have to invest in new businesses if you're going to see growth."

The Shaw Festival's 2017 season begins previews April 5 and runs through Oct. 15.