After 20 years, Triad Stage exits stage left

Triad Stage, which offered professional theater productions in the Piedmont for two decades, is shuttering its doors.

The not-for-profit organization was poised to return to Greensboro last summer, following a roughly two-and-a-half-year COVID break. Leading the transition was retired Community Theatre of Greensboro Executive Director Mitchel Sommers. He was brought in to plot a path forward for the struggling regional company in the wake of former artistic director Preston Lane’s sudden departure amid sexual abuse allegations.

But then, in March of this year, the Board of Trustees announced the season’s suspension as it explored its options. Three months later, in a press release, the Board concluded that dissolving the organization is the only responsible option.

Triad Stage is among several long-running theater organizations across the country hit hard by the financial stresses caused by the pandemic. In 2020, the theater was running a $1.5 million deficit. The attempt to reopen was met by strong headwinds of the post-pandemic landscape with anemic donation revenue and houses averaging less than half full.

Details of the theater’s liquidation plan will be released later this summer.