Its not coming back: Oskar Eustis and L.A. theaters confront the end of the nonprofit movement

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Set us as preferred He said the quiet part out loud.As the artistic director of New York’s Public Theater and one of the art form’s most prominent leaders, Oskar Eustis is known to do that.

And as always, he got the art world talking.When Eustis, 67, announced Wednesday that he would step down from his role at the Public in 2028 — after 23 years — he said in a New York Times interview that “the American nonprofit theater movement is over.” This has been whispered about and lamented since the COVID-19 pandemic led to temporary theater closures across the country that have since become permanent, but it is rare to hear it expressed so candidly.Did Eustis, one of the key players in that vaunted movement — the man who helped foster “Hamilton” — really mean what he said? And if so, how does theater move on in the face of obstacles that at times feel as though they are scattered across an increasingly difficult course? In a wide-ranging follow-up interview with the Los Angeles Times, Eustis addressed the path forward.

It’s not an easy one, but Los Angeles theater leaders working in the trenches, including Tarell Alvin McCraney at Geffen Playhouse, Danny Feldman at Pasadena Playhouse and Snehal Desai at Center Theatre Group, already knew that.They talked with the Los Angeles Times about their plans at the crossroads reached by American theater in light of Eustis’ imminent exit.Eustis traces the rise of the American nonprofit theater movement to the late 1950s when W.

McNeil “Mac” Lowry, director of the arts and humanities program at the Ford Foundation in New York, began organizing existing regional theaters into a national movement.“What happened during that period was that a consensus emerged,” Eustis said, noting that it was expressed in the form of national endowments, state arts agencies...