Traci Connaughton never stops looking at the numbers – profit margins, break-even points, revenues, volume sales.
It’s a matter of survival because Connaughton is a rarity in the world of Philadelphia theater. She founded a for-profit theater company, Without A Cue Productions, that has been in business for nearly a quarter century.
“The big thing for me was to operate it like a business, to put policies and procedures into place, even before I had anything to put in place,” said Connaughton, of Morgantown.
Connaughton, the executive director, expects Without A Cue Productions to draw $800,000 to $900,000 in revenues this year, enough to keep 50 part-time actors on payroll, either as employees or contractors, and to pay herself.
These days, some of the crew is in Atlantic City presenting “Slay in the City” at the Starlight Ballroom in the Resorts Casino Hotel. It’s a killer spoof on the TV hit “Sex in the City.”
“It’s a lampooning of that show, while honoring its fandom, because we were all such fans,” said Connaughton, who wrote the play. “It’s visually pretty because of the aspect of fashion. The costumes are fantastic. The ladies are out together, and somebody ends up dead. From there, a mystery has to be solved, which is our format.”
In the fall, the company will return to Philadelphia and its Red Rum Theater in the Curtis Building, 601 Walnut St., to stage “And Then They Were Dead” Sept. 14 through 28 for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Audiences can vote on plot twists in this Agatha Christie mystery takeoff, so actors must be prepared for about seven different versions. The format is a first for the group, and if successful, will be incorporated into Without A Cue Production’s offerings.
In addition, Without A Cue crew members are on the road, staging shows wherever they are hired — for fundraisers, private parties, and in various venues nearby and across the country. In July, it was a mystery twist on the “The Golden Girls Murder Mystery” in Batavia, N.Y., with upcoming dates for that show in Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia.
Wherever the shows are, because the company is a for-profit enterprise, ticket revenues need to cover expenses and generate enough of a profit for the company to grow. By contrast, in nonprofits, it’s often a matter of chasing grants to cover the gap between ticket sales and production and overhead costs.
Theater companies want to produce a “great amazing piece of art, and it should happen,” Connaughton said. “But if you are expecting to make a profit, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. It’s so difficult. The [audience] market can’t bear the price of a ticket.”
The Atlantic City shows run $35 a ticket. “This is stupid low, compared to what my expenses are. That’s why I have to do volume” sales, she said. “It really should be $50 a ticket, but the market isn’t ready to pay that next step up.
“I look at each event: What is my break-even point for the evening? If I’m looking at a week out, if I’m looking at the entire run three weeks out, and I don’t like what I see, I start canceling shows,” she said. “I have to be pragmatic.”
“If I’m not selling out [seats], I’m not making a living,” Connaughton said.
“We are actors, we are performers, but we are entertainment at its core,” she said. “But entertainment is not an artistic mission. We sneak the artistic into the entertainment.”
In the late ‘90s, Connaughton, a young actor fresh out of school, took gigs where she could find them – and those gigs were in dinner theater. By night, she acted, and by day, she worked in a variety of jobs in a variety of businesses – retail, law, nonprofit management.
Through both her day jobs and her theater jobs, she became convinced that she had to start her own business, and that the business should be theater.
“I had been working in the [dinner theater] industry for a while and I saw a lot of opportunities there. I thought the experience could be more robust,” she said. “What if we could transform it? I didn’t know what immersive theater was. Nobody was using that term then, or if they were, I wasn’t hearing about it.” But that was her goal, a more immersive dinner theater experience with increased audience involvement.
From the start she knew she wanted her enterprise to be professional, even if she was washing costumes in the bathtub – costumes she and her mother spent whole days and nights sewing, even if she was schlepping sound equipment that she could barely carry, even if she was scouting thrift stores for props.
From 2001, she built the business one gig at a time, surviving the pandemic by offering murder mystery walking tours. She rents office, rehearsal, and storage space in Willow Grove. In January 2023, she opened her own theater space, the Red Rum (murder spelled backwards, like in the horror classic The Shining) in Center City.
Running a business is not for the faint of heart, and that goes double for an arts business.
“We’re risk takers,” Connaughton said. “We’re incredibly independent. You have to be adaptable to change. You have to have a creative way of looking at the world in order to weather whatever happens to a business. Things go wrong, so you have to be creative at problem-solving.”
Theater down the Shore
It’s not only surf and salt water down the shore. If you’ve had enough of night-time strolls on the boardwalk, check out some beachy theater – mostly musicals and murders.
“Slay in the City,” Without A Cue Productions, Saturdays in August, October and November, Resorts Casino Hotel, 1133 Boardwalk, Atlantic City.
“Dial M for Murder,” through Aug. 31, East Lynne Theater Co., Cape May Presbyterian Church, 500 Hughes St., Cape May.
“Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B,” through Aug. 25, Cape May Stage, Robert Shackleton Playhouse, 405 Lafayette St., Cape May.
“Titanic The Musical” through Aug. 18 and “Head Over Heels” Aug. 20 through Sept. 1, plus several children’s plays: “Frozen Jr.” Aug. 7-11; “The Little Mermaid,” Aug. 14-18; “Cinderella,” Aug. 21-25 and “Peter Pan,” Aug. 28-Sept. 1. Surflight Theatre, 201 Engleside Ave., Beach Haven.
“Grease,” Ocean City Theatre Co., Aug. 6-15, Hughes Performing Arts Center, 6th Street and Atlantic Avenue, Ocean City and “Seussical Jr., Ocean City Music Pier, Aug. 23-24.
