Salient Negotiations

The strategies that North American nonprofit theatre
companies employ to ensure pragmatic survival and
artistic advancement prove critical to their
abilities to continue working. When the artists in
these companies utilize alternative approaches to
creation, the abstract quality of the resulting
productions often exacerbates the need for
successful survival tactics, as performances may
appeal to a limited number of paying audience
members. Theatre practitioners who emphasize long
term performer training and the lengthy development
of devised productions, such as companies building
upon the artistic tradition of Jerzy Grotowski,
represent one extreme sect of these marginalized
artists. Relying on data gleaned from North
American Cultural Laboratory in New York and Number
Eleven Theatre in Toronto, two companies influenced
by this artistic tradition, this study employs a
grounded-theory method of analysis to examine the
strategies marginalized nonprofit alternative
theatre companies use to negotiate the tension
between economic viability and artistic
integrity.