Financial Flows & Realities

As part of an initiative to help support artists with children, the CLO could implement childcare during rehearsals and performances of their mainstage season. If rehearsals are during the day, the children could take part in the academy classes or summer camps already coexisting at the same time. Families can be a taboo topic within the theater industry and artists, like the ones behind Mamas Talkin Loud, are changing the stigma. It is imperative theaters follow suit by accommodating artists with children in order to create better art.

From a managerial standpoint, we might consider the current size of the board and determine if it needs to be so large. While there is a large safety net in place structurally, this may be hindering the organization with making progressive changes.

Pittsburgh is home to two highly-ranked university theater programs, Carnegie Mellon and Point Park, utilizing more local students in productions will help cut travel and housing costs.

By keeping the run of seasonal production in short duration to fit into the availability of Benedum Theater for flexibility, and maximize the usage of Greer Cabaret Theater, Pittsburgh CLO can reduce the venue constraints.

There is a drastic decrease in the program revenue for Pittsburgh CLO from $8,293,411 in 2018 to $2,029016 in 2019. One way would be to increase programming revenue by expanding the duration of seasonal productions from 1 week to 2 weeks.

In 2019, the membership dues for Pittsburgh CLO were $150. Another way to increase revenue would be to bring in more membership dues.

In 2019, Pittsburgh CLO’s expense for salaries, compensation, and employee benefits was $5,456,997, which constitutes 40% of the total cost. Pittsburgh CLO can reduce the payment to key employees (for instance, the total compensation for the CEO in 2019 was $627,970) and recruit more seasonal employees.

The CLO has a thriving educational program full of students of all ages. It may be advantageous for the organization to utilize more students in their internship program to help cut costs on overhead expenses, as well as provide more meaningful educational experiences. We believe it is important to pay the interns or provide school credit, however the CLO would not be paying benefits or sick time for these students which saves on costs.

Pittsburgh CLO can hire a new full-time position to approach a younger and more diverse audience/patron demographics. This employee will design new community outreach programs and a new Donor Benefit plan involving entry-level donation levels (such as $200 or $500 annually) to engage younger potential patrons.

The Pittsburgh CLO mainly utilizes the Actor’s Equity Council of Stock Theaters (COST) Agreement when hiring Equity actors and stage managers. This contract does have the benefit of allowing the theater to have a mixture of people on Equity contracts and Non-Equity contracts. This allows the CLO to utilize top tier Union talents within the industry and save additional fees by rounding out the Chorus with Non-Union performers.

• The COST agreement allows productions to tour as a “package” meaning that once a production ends at the CLO, the production may tour to another regional theater using the same artists, stage direction, choreography, etc. This can be demonstrated with the production of Sister Act at the CLO in the summer of 2022 that toured to the Starlight Theatre in Kansas City, KS.

The CLO’s main summer season occurs in the largest theater venue in Pittsburgh, the Benedum Center. There is a prestige that exists with performing arts events that perform within the Benedum. This is a great asset and marketing tool to the CLO. The Benedum is a massive space and can hold 2,800 patrons, so the CLO will never have to choose shows based on the size of the theater. The Cultural Trust rents the Benedum Center to the CLO at a reduced price to help support a flourishing Pittsburgh art’s ecosystem, although rent is still a great expense for the CLO. The CLO capitalizes on rent expenses by only producing work at the Benedum during the summer. They utilize their cabaret space for their year-round events, which helps cut costs of rent.

The CLO, while boasting a large full-time staff, has an even larger amount of seasonal employees, contractors, and interns to help round out their staffing structure. Most employees within their administrative, education, and construction shop are full-time, but production staff and interns are seasonal. This structure helps largely cut personnel expenses.