The North Carolina Theatre in Raleigh will discontinue its operations next month due to not securing enough funds.
It’s Raleigh’s largest professional theatre company that produces live musical theatre. The NC Theatre company is housed within the Martin Marietta Performing Arts Center in downtown Raleigh. It has served the Triangle for 40 years.
The pandemic caused some financial strain on the company, which caused them to suspend their 2024 season. Some factors that contributed to the suspension include declining sales, increasing costs, and loss of sponsorships, as cited by the theatre. Last year, they filed for bankruptcy and had issues making some payments to the Small Business Administration.
The NC Theatre’s chairman John Zaloom gave an update to WUNC’s Sharryse Piggott.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Why is the NC Theatre closing?
“We did not secure the funding we needed. The North Carolina House had an allocation for us in their short session budget last summer, but that budget never passed the North Carolina Senate. We planned to try again with the legislature this summer, but we needed the ability to keep running our Conservatory in the meantime.”
“We learned in November that a hoped-for merger with another professional theater company in Raleigh would not go forward and that we would be losing our space in the Kennedy Space Center on Barrow Drive, where we had offices and where we held our Conservatory classes.”
What happened with the bankruptcy process?
“Because we could not secure enough funding, we could not ‘substantially consummate’ the bankruptcy plan. We were down to one full-time staff member starting in October, we inadvertently missed the November and December payments to the SBA (Small Business Administration) that were called for under the bankruptcy plan, but we made them up in January.”
When will it close?
“The Conservatory students will be performing ‘Into the Woods’ on May 1, May 2, and May 3. The next day will be the end of operations for NCT (North Carolina Theatre).”
