Alaska’s largest professional theater indefinitely postponed a run of its show in Anchorage this spring due to financial concerns.
Perseverance Theatre had originally planned to bring its newest production, opening in Juneau later this month, to Anchorage. For the past decade, the theater has regularly run productions in both the capital city and Anchorage. But staff say the decision to postpone the latter leg came after a period of financial pressure on the national and local level.
Artistic Director Leslie Ishii said Juneau has been feeling the impacts of federal job cuts and economic strains, so less people have money for entertainment.
“Many, many jobs are gone, besides just being laid off,” she said. “So we’re feeling the effects of that as we all look around and see some shops are no longer there, or restaurants are having to cut back hours.”
The nonprofit – which relies on a number of funding streams for its budget, including support from the city, state and federal governments – considered other factors as well. That includes an upcoming $10 to $12 million budget shortfall at the city level, plus ongoing instability with the Trump administration’s efforts to cut arts spending. All of this informed the decision to not take its upcoming show, “Pueblo Revolt,” to Anchorage. Ishii said it would have cost about $60,000.
“The good news is we’ve been able to say we want to produce this show here,” Ishii said. “We were able to keep that funding in place. But just the added cost of transferring it to Anchorage is what made it difficult to say we can still do this.”
She said so far, the theater has only seen minimal reductions in their current grants. Moving forward she is expecting that funding from all government levels will be greatly diminished.
On a positive note, she said the Mellon Foundation – a private funder of arts and humanities programs – just renewed a two-year $500,000 grant to Perseverance. And Ishii said theater leadership is working with a financial management company that specializes in helping arts organizations budget and plan for the future.
The theater hopes to take “Pueblo Revolt” to Anchorage later this year instead.
Kylie Ferguson manages community partnerships with Perseverance. She said postponing the show’s run in Anchorage was a decision to maintain the theater for the future.
“Sometimes the play doesn’t have to go on,” Ferguson said. “Sometimes it gets delayed by a few months, but it’s in service of keeping this wonderful organization around for the next generation.”
Ferguson said the Juneau community — which values its performers and the work they do — will be here to appreciate it. In 2024, Juneau was ranked third of small cities nationwide for having a vibrant arts community by SMU DataArts.
