Sneed: The recession was the biggest surprise. My time at CSF has coincided almost entirely with the downturn of the American economy. Hopefully my successor will benefit from the recovery that seems to be underway, however slowly. I also think it is very hard to come into a marketplace and fully understand it. I wish I had understood more about how much competition there was, and how difficult it was to operate a professional theater company within the context of a university, where signage is a challenge, and alcohol service is a challenge. I didn’t know that it would be so difficult to get union contracts. I didn’t know it would be so difficult to grow the audience.
Moore: Help readers understand the growth, retraction and re-growth of your company during your time there.
Sneed: My predecessor (Richard Devin) had a budget of about $900,000 his last season (in 2006). And in two years, we almost doubled that. But as you know, we had to then start shrinking it again as the full size of the economic collapse became known. It’s down to about a $1.3 million budget now. Still larger than when I got here. I think that up-and-down parallels a lot of major arts organizations during that time. I don’t fault myself too much for this because some of the greatest brains on Wall Street didn’t see this coming.
Moore: Or they did, and they profited off of it. But that’s a whole different conversation.
Sneed: I don’t have any regrets. Any artistic director coming in has a learning curve, and for me, the economic collapse meant that my learning curve was much longer. And I think it’s still going on. It’s very hard now to know the right thing to do. Everybody is saying, “Things are not returning. This is the new normal,” and I don’t disagree with that. It’s just trying to find the right business model in this climate, in the same way that you and I have discussed how journalism is struggling.
Moore: What happened to the festival as the economy was falling?
Sneed: We had to find ways to shrink. We had to find ways to cut the budget and still maintain the quality of the work. We tried different things. We tried shortening the season to save money. But of course then there was very little time for word-of-mouth to spread. So ultimately the decision we settled on, which I think is working for us, is to operate only one theater at a time. Previously, of course, on most nights in the summer, both theaters had something going on. But that meant twice the number of … everybody. What was most important as a business model was how many weeks we were up overall, not how many performances were in those weeks. In other words, we found that it was advantageous to be running for more weeks but have fewer performances of each play within each week.
Moore: Talk about how your attendance ebbed and flowed during that time?
Sneed: In our first two years, attendance increased 37 percent, but we also went from four to six shows, including a new holiday show. We’ve been flat for the past three years. We’ve held our own. We haven’t dropped, but we haven’t gained, either. One of the interesting questions to me is, “Have we maxed out? Or, is there room for more growth?”
Moore: And what is the answer to that?
Sneed: I honestly don’t know. I think everybody who runs any kind of business — but especially in the performing arts — wants to think that there are more people out there. That if you just do x, y and z, you can sell more tickets. I don’t know the answer.
Moore: The Institute of Outdoor Drama Reports that the total number of outdoor Shakespeare festivals is down by 50 percent nationwide, and that overall paid attendance is down more than 60 percent. So is there a future for Shakespeare festivals as an industry?
Sneed: Well, the Institute only tracks numbers for outdoor performances, so our indoor theater numbers are not included (in their figures). There is nobody tracking total attendance for Shakespeare theaters. That said, I don’t know. We are all wondering about that. Are we just going to keep declining? Given that attendance for the field as a whole is declining, and CSF attendance has been flat, and not declining, is significant. That is a kind of success.
Moore: You said you thought the Colorado Shakespeare Festival would be the last job you would ever have. So did the trends, and the uncertain future of Shakespeare festivals as an industry, factor into your decision to leave?
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