Theater Latte Da (TLD)

General accomplishments/new work:thanks to the efforts of our staff, the generosity of our community, and historic levels of federal support coming out of the covid-19 pandemic through the shuttered venue operators grants, employee retention tax credit and ppp forgivable loan program, Theater Latte Da (tld) entered fy23 well positioned to carry out its operations and present its largest-ever season of programming. An operating surplus of $1.2m in fy22 allowed the company to implement a capacity-building strategy by expanding our development staff, and to plan for an ambitious slate of full productions, new work development, and community initiatives as we continued to recover from the pandemic. Tld also successfully navigated the announcement of founding artistic director peter rothstein's departure after 25 years and a successful national search that resulted in the appointment of justin lucero as his successor. We continued to invest deeply in the creation of new music Theater through our next up new work development program, an intensive laboratory to incubate new musicals and plays with music. The fy23 next up initiative, led by director of new work elissa adams, included an exciting lineup of workshops and residencies for projects by andrew wilkowske and kelley rourke, noam shapiro and paulo tirol, candrice jones and randy preston, and two next generation commission recipient teams including the trio of celeste moreno, bethany brinton, and crystal manich, and the four-person team of musicians kate kilbane and dan moses of the kilbanes and jessie austrian and noah brody of fiasco Theater. Mainstage productions and national tour:in fy23, tld carried out our first full season since before the covid-19 pandemic, reaching a record total of over 50,000 patrons, drawing near-universal critical and audience acclaim, and exceeding single ticket revenue goals by 22%. The season opened with the rarely produced stephen sondheim musical merrily we roll along. The tld-developed world premiere christmas at the local debuted during the 2022 holiday season, followed by a highly successful revival of hello, dolly!, the world premiere of another tld project we shall someday, and a hit production of next to normal, the final show directed by co-founder peter rothstein in his role as artistic director. A national tour of tld's holiday classic all is calm: the christmas truce of 1914 reached over 10,000 people in 14 cities, with stops in Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Arizona, California, and Washington. Tld also partnered for a second year with crooners supper club in nearby fridley, mn to reimagine another longtime holiday favorite, a christmas carole petersen, for crooners' cabaret mainstage, where it played six sold-out performances. Our annual next festival of new musicals also returned, providing developmental opportunities for three writing teams and sharing three new works in process including the tears of la llorona, love them first, and macbeth and the werd sisters, as well as a special one-night-only presentation of the ninth hour, with sold-out audiences. These productions, combined with the next up development program, together employed more than 350 actors, designers, directors, composers, lyricists, librettists, and other artists. Community engagement & support:we proudly carried on our educational collaborations in 2022-23 with project success, hennepin theatre trust, on stage, and other partnerships that enabled us to introduce more than 300 young people to musical Theater. Over $176,000 in free and discounted tickets were distributed throughout the season to provide attendance opportunities for access target audiences including veterans, artists, students, educators, and fellow residents living in our local 55413 zip code. Tld launched a new open captioning service in the 2022-23 season for patrons who are deaf or hard of hearing, providing the service for three performances of every mainstage production. In may 2023, tld's showstoppers: celebrating twenty-five years of Theater Latte Da gala played to an audience of over 400 patrons at quincy hall, the premier events venue in our northeast minneapolis neighborhood. The evening was both a creative and a financial success, generating almost $300,000 in contributions from our generous community of supporters.