The foundations of American regional theatre

Since the early 1960s, regional theatre has grown into one of the major sectors of contemporary American theatre culture. Why have so many regional theatres existed for years? Why have they attracted such a large audience? Partially through a survey of the regional theatre sector as a whole, and mainly through case studies of the four individual theatres, this study aims to answer these questions.;American regional theatres are unique in that they offer more than the artistic merit and entertainment value of their productions. This study proposes the hypothesis that, the very foundations of American regional theatres lie not in their productions' artistic or entertainment values, but in their contributions to their communities.;Chapter 1 provides an overview of the development of the regional theatre sector as well as the basic terminology and the scope of the field. Chapter 2 examines the regional theatres' evolving relationship with Broadway from the early 1960s through the 1980s. Chapters 3 and 4 examine four regional theatres, Arena Stage, the Guthrie Theater, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, and the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, to look into regional theatres' relationship with the communities in which they are located. The case studies demonstrates that, once expected to pay their own way through the box office revenues alone, these theatres switched to local, non-governmental sources to supplement their box office revenues and/or to make up for the loss of the foundation grants by the early 1970s. Since then, they have been successfully obtaining annual contributions from local donors by nurturing a shared sense of ownership of the theatres within the communities. Chapter 5 summarizes the research findings and revisits the hypothesis proposed in Chapter 1.;The study concludes that regional theatres have been able to secure their long-term continuation within their communities and continue to attract large audiences only because they have assumed the position of public theatres responsive to communities at large for the first time on a large scale in the history of American theatre.