During the latter half of the twentieth century, following the advent and rise of first film and then television, live theater in the United States scrambled to find a niche in American culture. Because producing live theater is extremely laborintensive, mounting professional productions necessitates selling tickets at a prohibitive price for many Americans. Despite vigorous efforts on the part of many producing organizations to diversify their audiences, theater audiences remain largely white and affluent.

Contemporary American theater falls into several categories. It varies according to location, size, the physical configuration of the performance space and the financial structure of the producing organization, among others. All of these factors must be taken into account when theaters decide what kinds of plays to produce. While theater struggles to maintain its role in American culture, an audience member can still view some type of live theater in virtually every community in the country. Performances occur in a variety of buildings and spaces, from converted warehouses to state-of-the-art Broadway houses.

(Broadway refers to both the location of theater within a several-block radius of the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan, as well as to the financial structure of the producing organization.) An audience member can have an intimate performance experience in a ninety-nine seat black box theater, or be part of a thousandplus throng at a Broadway musical.

Throughout the twentieth century, New York City has remained the center of live theater in the United States, boasting a full range of theater spaces and showcasing works from minimalist performance art to Broadway extravaganzas. Tourists from across the country and abroad flock to New York’s Broadway musicals, but the more seasoned or adventurous theater-goer can find a wide range of performance styles in what are called the off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theaters. In counterpoint to the highly commercial aspect of Broadway theater, New York’s avant-garde venues boast some of the most innovative and experimental performances in the country, showcasing works from across the cultural spectrum, including the voices of African American, Latino, Asian American and gay and lesbian playwrights and performers.

In the early 1960s, led by such pioneers as Tyrone Guthrie, founder of the Guthrie Theater, in Minneapolis, the United States saw a renaissance of regional theaters. These medium to largesized theaters became established in communities with an affluent population large enough to fill the theater’s seats, as well as a large enough “giving” community to subsidize productions with personal, corporate, foundation and public donations. Consequently cities such as Seattle, Chicago, IL and Minneapolis/St. Paul have become dynamic theater centers in their own right. In the wake of the arrival of well-established regional theaters, a host of smaller theaters have sprung up offering an eclectic range of styles. For example, St. Paul is the home of Penumbra Theater. Founded in 1976, it is one of the country’s oldest and most wellestablished theaters dedicated to presenting theater from an African American perspective.

While successful professional theaters have usually been established in large urban areas, some American Shakespeare Festivals are a noted exception. Ashland, a small town in central Oregon, hosts the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. With three separate stages, the festival is in operation from mid-February through October playing to a steady stream of tourists from across the country. The town has become primarily a support industry for the festival. In addition, professional dinner theaters and amateur community theaters, some old and well-established, others nearly as ephemeral as the 2 hours traffic on their stages, can be found throughout the country.

Live theater in the United States is financed under one of two systems, either for-profit or notfor-profit. Broadway productions are for-profit endeavors with investors. Their contracts with such labor unions as Actors Equity Association (AEA), representing actors, dancers and stage managers, and the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), representing stage hands, requires that they pay union members top wages. To fill the large Broadway houses, producers also employ highly paid star performers for leading roles and spend lavishly on spectacular sets, lighting, costumes and special effects. The fact that Broadway productions are so costly to mount and also require a return of profit to the investors dictates the repertoire. Broadway relies on appealing to a broad-based, largely tourist audience to fill the seats and turn a profit for investors. Some off-Broadway theaters (defined by the smaller size of their houses and the nature of their labor contracts rather than by their specific location within New York City), dinner theaters (which exist across the nation and range in size from intimate dining rooms to multi-stage complexes serving up mostly musicals and romantic comedies, along with cuisine for the patrons) and a smattering of other theater companies are also for-profit. But the majority of producing organizations in the country are organized under the not-for-profit model.

Not-for-profit organizations generally rely on contributions to supplement revenue from ticket sales. Live theater in America has never enjoyed the kind of widespread governmental support found in many other nations. Indeed, even the pittance allocated to performing arts through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and through various state or local government funding agencies has been, since the late 1980s, under continuous attack from political conservatives and the Christian Right. Already minimal public funding has actually declined. However, in the United States not-for-profit organizations may register under a provision of the tax code allowing them to solicit taxdeductible contributions from corporations and individuals. Contributors receive no return on their investments, but are able to deduct their contributions from their taxable profits or income. Many not-for-profits, such as San Diego’s Old Globe Theater and Chicago’s Goodman Theater, are thus heavily endowed with donated funds. Others constantly struggle to keep their financial heads above water. But, even though pundits in every decade in the latter half of the twentieth century wrote the obituary of theater in America, a portion of the population continues to find the immediate and engaging experience of live performance irresistible.