Member Lindsay Christians reports from Milwaukee Rep Theater Leader Summit
March 4-6, 2026 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, more than 80 artistic directors, executive directors, and journalists representing more than 60 theaters and organizations across North American convened at the spanking new Milwaukee Rep facilities. “From Crisis to Catalyst: Transforming the Regional Theatre Landscape” will be summarized in a report to the field, expected to summarize the summit’s key insights along with excerpts from speeches and keynotes. (A post about that document will be publicized and excerpted here, as appropriate, when available.)
In the meantime, ATCA member Lindsay Christians, co-host of the 2018 annual conference at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, has crafted a summary piece for American Theatre magazine, linked and excerpted below. (Webmaster note: the American Theatre stylesheet use of “theatre” rather than our website spelling “theater” is retained throughout the excerpt below, honoring the source publication.)
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“Resilience and a refocusing on the art form itself were major themes, paired with practical advice, at an early March gathering titled “From Crisis to Catalyst: Transforming the Regional Theater Landscape.” Milwaukee Rep executive director Chad Bauman called this three-day event a “convening,” an opportunity for artistic and managing directors to talk together, in person, about “really big strategic issues.” Most attendees were members of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), with a separate, side convening of the American Theatre Critics and Journalists Association (of which this reporter is a member).
As a bonus, the Rep got to show off a major new $80.1 million renovation of its theatre spaces, which opened to the public last fall, with productions of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, Milwaukee Rep trustee Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal, and an opening preview of the jazzy Fats Waller revue Ain’t Misbehavin’. Akhtar also gave the event’s keynote speech.
Akhtar grounded his talk in theatre history, citing institutions that were “offering (the) community a vital vision of the present, and proceeded to build a relationship around this search for the pulse of (their) time,” he said. “That’s what theatre can do that no other live form can do: It can bring the vital and new into the room with an immediacy that is transformative. It’s the thing that makes what we do irreplaceable.”
Bauman’s goal with this event was to get “artistic, education, and managing leaders (to) come together to talk about impact in civic life,” he said. While Theatre Communications Group, the publisher of this magazine, will hold an annual conference June 10-13 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Bauman noted that TCG has “many different constituencies. They are trying to serve a much larger audience than we are,” he said. “We are trying to serve at this conference just the artistic and executive leaders from North America’s largest leader companies, which I think have a very specific role to play in the overall ecology.”
Bauman was motivated by the fact that “the field in general—the 1,900 professional theatres in the United States—is exceptionally strained, the most strained I’ve ever seen in my career,” he said. “We were thinking about what we could do as a company to share resources, share learning. What if we could have a space where we bring everybody together—artistic, managerial, and journalists—to talk about what we can do collaboratively, to strengthen the field and get through this moment of crisis?”
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— Submitted by Martha Wade Steketee, ATCA attendee at Theater Leader Summit 2026.
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