Report: Less than half of Philadelphia theaters have had audience numbers return to prepandemic levels

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The recovery of Philadelphia regional theaters is entering its third act, and problems keep escalating.

Since the 2020 pandemic shutdown, the performing arts industry has been struggling to meet shifting audience behaviors. Then, this spring, the Trump administration eliminated most federal funding for the arts.

Now, SEPTA has begun its first round of planned elimination of certain bus and train routes due to budgetary shortfalls, including a 9 p.m. curfew for Regional Rail service.

About 30% of Philadelphia’s theater audiences take public transportation to and from performances, according to a new report by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

“That suburbanite is drawn to a city experience — ‘Let’s go to the theater!’ — and they might take Regional Rail. Well, they can’t take Regional Rail because of the curfew,” said Patricia Wilson Aden, the alliance’s president and CEO.

“Which means that the multiplier effect — you go to the theater and then go out to dinner and all of that — that’s not going to happen,” she said.

The alliance conducted this survey both in-person at theaters and online, at the request of local theaters. It follows a larger study conducted by the GPCA and PA Humanities, called CultureCheck, which was released a month ago. That study showed that audience participation in the general arts and culture sector is recovering from the pandemic slump, except for the performing arts, which significantly lags behind.

Regional theaters wanted a study that focuses specifically on their operations. Audiences are incrementally coming back, with 71% of theaters seeing more people than last year. But only 41% of theaters have recovered to prepandemic levels. By comparison, 71% of museums and libraries are now at prepandemic levels.

What theaters can do

The chief barrier to attending live performances is the cost, according to the study, followed by time commitments and transportation. Many younger respondents to the survey say they are hindered by not being aware of live performances, relying mainly on word of mouth and social media to learn about theater productions.

“There’s no one thing that can be identified as a barrier, but there are a collection of factors that are changing audience behaviors,” Aden said. “By drilling down and sharing this information, they can better respond by identifying those challenges and trying to come up with strategies.”

The survey recommends theaters take steps to make theater more accessible, including social media marketing, pay-what-you-wish ticketing models and performances in public spaces. It also recommends theaters share their own audience research with other theaters to create a pool of cross-theater data collection.

The managing director and co-founder of the Arden Theatre in Old City, Amy Murphy, sat on the report’s advisory committee. She said many theaters in Philadelphia are already doing many of those recommendations.

“Most of us, and certainly the Arden, have changed our start times. We’re starting at 7 [p.m.], not 8 [p.m.], addressing the fact that people want to be home at night now and restaurants aren’t open as late,” she said. “It’s just a constant leaning on all the levers to see what’s working, and this survey is helping give us that information.”

Theater is not dead

One of the bright lights of the local theater sector is the annual Philly Fringe Festival, which starts Sept. 4. Last year’s Fringe sold about 30,000 tickets, a record for the 29-year-old festival.

This year’s festival includes a play that directly addresses the current challenges to making theater.

Chris Davis’ one-man show “The Presented” is an updated version of the play he debuted at the 2018 Fringe Festival, in which he had expressed his frustration with the festival. A longtime participant in the Fringe, Davis had never been selected to be part of the so-called “presented” Fringe, the handful of headlining shows given generous production budgets and headline marketing by FringeArts.

“Honestly, I was bitter,” Davis said. “If I can’t get an arts organization to present my work, what if I make a show that talks about that struggle?”

That was seven years ago. For 2025, Davis reworked parts of the semi-autobiographical script to reflect the current zeitgeist: Even with smaller audiences, fewer opportunities to perform and less funding across the board for most theaters, people still want to make and watch theater.

“Before, it felt like it was personal. Now I’m trying to talk about something much bigger,” he said. “The show is meant to be a fight call to all artists: It’s time to get up and to do what we have to do, even as funding is cut, to continue. Our survival is the best resistance we can make to the way the government is treating the arts currently.”

The Fringe will feature over 300 independent shows, the most it has ever had.

The continued drive to make theater despite economic roadblocks was also evident this summer at the Arden Theatre, whose annual theater summer camp drew a record 900 young people, a 50% increase over last year’s program.

“Kids gotta create, you know?” Murphy said.