Late on Friday afternoon, Hana Sharif, Artistic Director of Arena Stage, parted ways with the company. Her last day will be tomorrow. This is after only 3 years on the job following the tenure of Molly Smith who led the theater for 25 years.
Hana’s departure means that the six artistic directors who were profiled in a New York Times article in 2018 (Jacob Padron at Long Wharf, Robert Barry Fleming at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Stephanie Ybarra at Baltimore Center Stage, Maria Goyanes at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company , and Nataki Garrett at Oregon Shakespeare Festival) no longer run these theaters. Maria went on to lead LCT3 at Lincoln Center Theater which led my firm to lead the search for her successor. We did in partnership with the board who had shown a clear commitment to diversity and inclusion. A similar case happened at Baltimore Center Stage where we led the search that led to the appointment of Stevie Walker-Webb. Still, there is something that sinks in the pit of my stomach to think that some theaters have largely retreated from the examination of the regional theater field that these leaders were brought in to deliver.
There is a backsliding that has happened in the regional theater when it comes to art and leadership by diverse communities. I remember in 2020 when so many theaters put out statements saying they would dedicate themselves to being more inclusive organizations. The main way that theaters made this commitment was through the hiring of people of color and staging of works with a focus on diverse communities. You can read the letter from Arena Stage’s leadership and board chair here. They committed to as August Wilson said “wrestle with their demons.”
The demons though may have been larger than previously explained or revealed to the candidates for the Artistic Director role. While the hiring of people of color was admirable and lauded, the leaving of these leaders after only a few years in their roles should require us to examine our own demons as a field. This should be an agenda topic at the next LORT meeting.
What is going on that one of our most qualified leaders in the field has to resign after just 3 years on the job?
Hana’s resignation letter has some telling lines to read in between that reflects the macro challenges regional theaters have faced over the last three years.
Over the course of my tenure, I have witnessed our field undergo a profound and irreversible transformation — one that has demanded not only artistic courage, but a reimagining of the very systems, processes, and structures that sustain our institutions.
Hana walked into a situation where for all of her visionary plans likely shared during the search process, those were going to come crashing down by the weight of Arena Stage’s finances. She was announced as the Artistic Director in April 2023. From a study of Arena Stage’s audit from the end of FY2023 there were significant red flags. In 2018, the theater took out a loan of approximately $60 million dollars (See Note 10 - Long Term Debt). But by March 2023, the theater and the bank were negotiating how to pay the principal balance and interest. At one point, there was an agreement that if the organization paid $15M by June 2024 they would consider the note and accrued interest paid in full. That’s a heavy anchor to put on an artistic director to deliver on a loan payment that could otherwise go to the art, staff, or other resources.
It is unclear how the board, the search firm, and the search committee approached the challenge of this debt and their financial situation with their candidates. If you only look at the first page of the balance sheet, the undesignated net assets read as $60M which appears pretty good. What some artists are not taught or shown though is what matters to you more is liquidity (how fast an asset can be turned into cash) than the numbers on the page. The real place to look in an audit though is the notes. Deeper into the audit in Note 14, the undesignated assets are actually -$47M and a cash reserve of $1.3M. There are investments and there is an endowment, but those assets are not as liquid and cannot be touched easily. The only reason the undesignated net assets are positive is because of property and equipment valued at $106M at the time. So there is really not much undesignated liquid cash (see note 20 on liquidity) that puts the organization on solid footing to pay their liabilities without selling the building (which a leader is not going to do) or some other drastic action.
So when Hana speaks of reimagining, it is from a place of practicality. When leaders talk about the model being broken, the financial situation at Arena Stage is telling. Unless Arena Stage sold their building or engineered a massive increase in revenue, they were in trouble. She walked into a gravity problem - one that would bring any leader back down to earth.
Ultimately, the Board and I arrived at a crossroads — one defined not by a lack of shared love for this institution, but by differing visions for how Arena Stage should meet the future: what art belongs at its center, how its teams should be built and empowered to evolve, and what a sustainable path forward truly requires.
The art and vision question is important here. Part of where I think the American theaters face a deep hole is in strategic differentiation and articulation of value. It’s pretty clear the COVID recovery has been mixed and more theaters are in a slow death than thriving. Arena Stage's building holds three stages and nearly 1,400 seats. Filling those seats requires a balance of artistic risk taking that meets your mission with broad commercial appeal. But broad commercial appeal, pursued under financial duress, tends to produce seasons that look increasingly like every other regional theater in the market. When the pressure to generate revenue overrides the mandate to take artistic risk, the theater loses the one thing that justifies its scale: a reason to choose a theater like Arena Stage over others.
You can see the implication of art and vision in their financials. Over the last two years program services revenue (which include ticket sales, but not only ticket sales) was $10M in 2024 and $12M in 2025. While impressive since a pandemic low of $4.6M, it is still below a high of $15M in 2019 before the pandemic. But given inflation over the last several years, the revenue in 2026 would need to be closer to $19M in order to get back to the equivalent of what they made in 2019. Again, a heavy lift for any artistic leader who would look to shift the programming and expand the audience base.
Arena Stage also had deficits for years beforehand. According to their 990s, these were $2.7M in 2022, $2.5M in 2021, $7M in 2020, $6M in 2019, $4.5M in 2018. In total, Arena Stage accumulated more than $22 million in operating deficits in the five years immediately preceding Hana's arrival. You can see that in the decrease of their assets. Their total assets went from $154M in 2018 to $123M in 2025, a 20% decrease.
So walking in, Hana was pushing large boulder up a steep hill. Considering the above statement about questions of art and vision, those questions cannot be separated from this fiscal situation. Tackling a structural deficit and a large debt means less, much less for the art. The art that might have be envisioned in the center by the board which usually demands more broad appeal (which Hana has usually delivered in her tenures as Artistic Director) is a different center and transformation likely envisioned by Hana. Artistic Directors can get handcuffed by a board who wants a certain kind of change, but not necessarily the kind of turnaround situation required.
The kind of art at the center is a question the Board at Arena Stage will have to wrestle with as they search for their next Artistic Director. What Hana’s departure signals to artists who might consider the job is that you need to have “hit” after “hit” in order for the model to be successful. To me, this can dilute a theater’s competitive advantage. If an audience can’t tell the difference between Arena Stage and say Studio Theater in terms of what is being offered, the art making is only going get more difficult for the next leader. Differentiation is the way we compete in theater for buyers who have limited resources.
The response from most people online has been one of a pattern that is recognized by many people of color working in this industry that all of these leaders of color seemed to face over the last nearly 10 years. An excitement about a person of color in leadership in order to make a statement only then for those leaders to be handed a financial model that was unsustainable and really tough for them to succeed. That’s a recipe for failure and the numbers tell that story.
What I believe boards and our field have to reckon with is that Hana’s departure, as well as the others, has become a feature and not a bug. These leaders are not perfect and no leader is. But it is hard to build a house on quicksand. We need better foundations in a moment of deep volatility.
The search committee should do some soul searching. They will and should get a lot of questions about what is exactly happening and how can someone be successful in this next moment?
Hana took on a herculean task following Molly Smith. As she mentioned, she gave it her all. And for that, I believe we all owe her a debt of gratitude for her service and leadership at a storied institution.
Thanks for this, Al.
Outstanding analysis, Al. You took me back to grad school but it's important to highlight these issues which lay firmly at the feet of the Arena Board of Directors. Let's hear from their Finance Committee about their strategy to combat this structural deficit. And why is artistic leadership being challenged and not the other side? To paraphrase this guy named Willie ... "something is rotten in the state of Arena Stage."