Filling seats and satisfying staff at a uniquely funded nonprofit theater

There have been a lot of stories in recent years about the hit that theaters both in NYC and regionally have taken since the advent of COVID-19, with theatergoers – who tend to be white and aging, and often full-season subscribers – never really filling seats at the levels they did before the pandemic, leaving theaters to shutter or severely cut staffing and programming. An exception is 59E59, a three-space theater whose title is also its location. 

Founded in 2004 by philanthropist Elysabeth Kleinhans, 59E59 is unique in that it is a rental theater – meaning that it hosts other companies' work rather than producing its own – that basically doesn't charge rent. It also handles things like promotion and ticketing, taking a huge financial burden off of small theater companies – a handful of which, like Primary Stages, have an ongoing partnership with the venue. 

Currently, 59E59 is hosting a showcase of work headed to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland; The Rosenberg/Strange Fruit Project, which explores the link between the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case and the Billie Holiday civil-rights song "Strange Fruit"; and The Sabbath Girl: A New Musical.  We talked with Val Day, 61, 59E59's artistic director, about running a theater when you don't really have to worry about funding the way most theaters do, what kind of shows do well at a time of decreased theater attendance and how she'd like to make it even easier for small theater companies to thrive.

Hi, Val! Can you give us a brief bio?

Sure. I've been the 59E59 artistic director since 2017. Prior to that I was an agent for playwrights and directors for almost 20 years at various agencies, and prior to that I'd been a director myself since my twenties, then in my thirties ran a theater in the Tampa, Florida area while also owning a bookstore with two other women. 

If we were seated together at a dinner party and you told me you ran a theater, what more would you tell me about it?

It's a theater that only does shows that are having their New York premiere. It's been in that space since 2004, and it's different from any other theater in the U.S. in that we are the operating arm of the Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation. That's brilliant because we don't have to have a development department like most nonprofit theaters. We also don't produce plays, and the only other theaters in New York that don't produce are basically rental houses. So we're sort of a rental house with free rent. Also, most companies have between three and eight shows a year, and we have between 25 and 35. So because we're not producing the shows, I, as the artistic director, am not becoming obsessed with the one that I'm directing or am the most excited about. I'm obsessed with everything that I program. 

Our operating budget is $5 million, which is comparable to some other two-space theaters, but we spend most of our budget on the companies. The rest of it is to operate the building and pay our staff to take care of the companies’ press, marketing, advertising, ticketing and other needs. We spend three times as much on a show as its company does. We don't pay their crew or actors, or for their sets and costumes. And we give them a majority of the box office, which is something we did even before we eliminated weekly rental fees earlier this year.

As an agent for 20 years, I represented and advocated for individual artists. Now I advocate for theater companies in the same way. I sit down with them and say, “Where do you want to be in five years? What excites you?” Now, in terms of choosing shows for 59E59, I say to the companies, “Look, I trust you – tell me the show description.” If I think they'll really struggle (having success with that show), I'll tell them, but I won't tell them not to do it. Our audience is primarily older and I can't (bring in a sufficient audience) for, say, a high school coming-of-age story. But sometimes I'm wrong. We had a show from The New Light Theater Project called “According to the Chorus.” It was about the chorus girls backstage in a 1980s Broadway musical. I'm sorry, a show about a show is a pet peeve of mine. But people wanted to see it. They loved it. It sold out even before the first performance.

And you work with five or six companies over and over again, like Primary Stages.

These were companies to whom we already gave a rental discount before we switched to a full ride. I guarantee them dates every year even before they know what they want to do. But the space is open to other companies, and with the new model, I'm getting so much more interest from companies in the U.S. and internationally. We have a steady flow of scripts coming in, and I don't have an assistant. I'm not whining, I'm just saying that I don't have anyone to read scripts for me or to send to shows. We have only two slots available in two theaters in 2025, in December, and I'm being selective because it's the holidays and I want the shows to do well. So I've closed submissions for 2026 until January of 2025. 

Are you the sole decider of what shows you host?

To some extent. I run it by the staff. I’ll ask the marketing staff, “What do you think?” Sometimes I'll pull patrons aside before a show and say, “Hey, I'm considering shows A, B and C, which sounds good to you?”

What kind of shows do well?

I love this question because I can get up on my soapbox and say that shows that are entertaining do really well. I know that sounds vague and obnoxious, but there are so many shows that aren't entertaining. And “entertaining” doesn't necessarily mean comedy, singing and dancing. It can be a very dark show about dark things, but if you're riveted and want to stay until the end...

So really you mean that shows that are compelling, or what in the book world you'd call "unputdownable,” right?

Right. I had one where I couldn't put the script down. It's called “Blood of the Lamb” and it opens in September. It's about a pregnant woman traveling from New York to California, but she passes out and wakes up in Texas, where a woman tells her that her baby didn't make it but that she, this woman, is representing her deceased fetus, which is still inside of her, because the baby was a citizen and all citizens have a right to representation. It's a tense post-Roe psychological drama with a lot of twists and turns and reversals of power, which is why I couldn't put the script down. 

Why do you think you're thriving as a theater company? Is it because you don't have to worry about money like most companies do?

A lot of people think that's the only reason we're thriving, and that Elysabeth is an ATM machine, but that's not true. Yes, we couldn't do the free rent without that generous and unexpected infusion of money from her, but we still operate on a very tight budget. When I got here, my push was programming plays by women, and now we have gender parity, but over the pandemic, I realized that we'd failed within other areas of parity. Our audiences were not that diverse, and if your programming doesn't draw a diverse audience… Theater has been trying to do this since the 1980s.

Well, theater tickets are often expensive. What are ways to bring in younger and more diverse audiences?

After the pandemic, I thought, “This is not a five-year goal, we're doing it now.” And as painful as that overcorrection was for some of our theatergoers, we leveled off at a really good place where we have a mix. I'm not totally thrilled, but we're moving in the right direction. Such as, we hadn't had any guest companies of color.

Do you have that now?

The Negro Ensemble Company is our only guest company that is 100% people of color. Last year, they had a success here with “Unentitled,” which they're doing again here this summer, and we're really excited about that. But in terms of diverse programming, I don't know if you ever read the comments (under theater reviews) in The New York Times, but the blatant racism was disgusting to me. I got an email from one patron on a show from 2022 that read, “I'm tired of this woke theater – why are you falling in lockstep with this crap?” It was a very compelling story, but because it was about two characters from Afghanistan, it was “woke” to this patron. I don't even know what that means. People like that will also say that plays (written by or featuring characters of color) are not being chosen on merit.

So how did you get this job?

I moved to New York City to direct, but I liked the business side of theater. So I applied to William Morris and got a job working in their literary department first, then I was at Gersh, then went back to William Morris for another 14 years, where I was good at crossing talent over into TV, then I went to ICM. But I took a year off between ICM and coming to 59E59.

Why did you leave ICM?

I just needed a break. So while I went traveling on that year off, during which I did not read a single theater review, the listing for this job was forwarded to me. I knew 59E59 well – many of my clients had directed there. And I thought, “That's really near my apartment – this could be a sweet job.” And I'd always wanted to be an artistic director. So I applied and didn't even think I'd get a phone call, coming from agenting, but I did. One part of why I got the job was that Elysabeth, whose mother was a real estate mogul, loved my (agenting) list. She'd directed theater all over New York in what she referred to as “crapholes,” and she thought everyone deserved better than that, hence why she started a foundation and opened 59E59. I also told her that I was extremely good at advocating for artists and that I could transfer that to theater companies. And we agreed on things we liked, which was important to her, and she was looking to hire a woman.

Once you came on board, what were the front-burner challenges you addressed?

There was staff burnout. You've got three shows up at a time, you're working on selling tickets to them while also trying to advance the next three shows. We had no dark weeks. It was three shows after three shows all the time. I came in all fresh and excited and they looked at me like, “We don't have time.”

Did you let people go?

No. I didn't come in with that power. We have a very strong managing director, Brian Beirne, and that's his area and we hardly ever fire people. If somebody's struggling, we want to help them. Do they want to take a class? Do they need time off? We take care of our staff. One thing I realized I had to do with staff was acknowledge the hard work instead of just picking out the one thing that might've been a failure. Because as much as I want to support our guest companies, it's the staff I'm going to see every day. So I've scaled back the programming a tiny bit and now we intentionally have dark weeks. We don't go back-to-back-to-back anymore.

What did you learn in prior jobs that you've brought to this job?

It's going to sound trite, but drama belongs on the stage. By which I mean that we, the staff, have to be the sane people so the artists can be artists. We have to say, “Great, you're doing your thing and it's creative and as long as you're not hurting anyone, great.” It's very rare to have a theater that's calm backstage. We're grounded and kind to each other. At agencies I was at, there's a lot of drama, shouting and ego.

What's an example of what you're talking about?

Recently, we had someone come in who was not really living within our code of community conduct. And this person was non-physically abusive with a staff member. So we sat down with this person, for whom it took a while to get what he'd done wrong. We had a long discussion about why what he'd done was inappropriate. He said, “I'm sorry, I'm old, it's hard!” But it's hard for all of us and this is a different world now and you need to catch up.

More generally, in terms of taking care of employees, our managing director has weekly one-on-ones with all the managers, so if anything is going on with their staff, he's going to know about it. And I run another weekly meeting with all the managers where we go over every show, who's behaving, who's misbehaving, how tickets are selling, what are the pain points. Then we talk about the next three shows. We also have a staff meeting with our part-time box office staff two or three times a year that includes sexual harassment training. But it's also where I talk about why I'm excited about the different shows, because they're in the box office.

What's something you've learned since coming to 59E59?

I had no idea how difficult it is to work on something with a fairly large staff, some of whom I see only rarely because they're there at night. I had to learn how not to scare them! I didn't realize that I was intimidating because I was the boss, that when I walked into a room, everyone was watching me out of the corner of my eye and listening to everything I said. I wasn't used to that level of scrutiny. I didn't know that older people are scary to younger people! I keep forgetting that I'm older and that I have to draw people in. I would think a staffer was too introverted, but I learned that I needed to hang in there longer with them. I want everyone to care about 59E59 as much as I do. I had to become a mini-HR department, because we don't have one.

What's your superpower?

I'm very ambitious, and I have a big imagination. Nothing juices my engines as much as hearing “You can't do it.” Such as, since 2022, we have something called Amplify, where we host three companies simultaneously each producing the work of one playwright. 

What are your goals for 59E59 in the years to come?

My pie-in-the-sky goal is for our companies to not have to pay for anything, because we would payroll their cast and crew. I'd also like to provide housing for companies that are not NYC-based. All this in addition to letting them keep most of the box office, to make money for their next show. 

What is a typical day like for you?

I work from home maybe three days a week, especially when I know I'm going to be at the theater at night. I usually work until about six, then maybe go to dinner with a friend. And I foster dogs. I have one right now. I've been doing it since 2015, because when my own dog passed away, I wasn't sure I could have my heart broken again, so I got into dog training. I really love it. I tend to get some of the more special cases.

As a final question, let me ask you at this time when theater has been taking a hit and when streaming TV keeps everyone at home: Why do people need theater? 

It's so communal – that's why I got into it. People's heartbeats synchronize when they're at a show. They've studied this. It's amazing. It's so great to hear vocalizations, when audience members go “Mmmm” or “Uh-huh.” You wouldn't be making that sound if you were at home alone watching TV. Because you're sharing with the person sitting next to you. Do you feel that? Do you get it too? There's nothing like it. I love going to the back of the theater and watching people when they're really into a show.