Defining Professional NFP Theatre

In Chapter 6 of Stage Money, we layout the problem of defining professional not-for-profit theater.  The NFP part is easy, since NFPs must have a 501(c)3 certification from the IRS.  The word "professional" is trouble.  In the NFP theater world, there are troupes that are clearly amateur, where no one--or almost no one--is paid.  Then there are theatres, such as the members of the League of Resident Theatres or LORT, where at its highest standing, LORT-A, everyone is a member of a professional union. Such LORT theatres are clearly professional.  Between these extremes is a continuum of different mixes of volunteer and professional.

We've just read a 1995 article by Joan Jeffri, "Nature's Journeymen: The Education and Training of the American Artist," available at Columbia University's Research Center for Arts and Culture site, that offers a structure for considering the definition of professional. Jeffri identifies three different definitions of professional which she says are "constantly being meshed, confused, or used interchangeably."  They are

• Occupational measures, such as, hours worked and money earned,
• Credentialing, holding a license to practice a profession, such as, a lawyer passing a state bar exam, and/or
• Quality of work performed.

In Stage Money, we identified membership in the Theatre Communications Group or TCG as the closest clear and distinct identifier of professional NFP theater status.  This mark of professionalism is not the same as credentialing but resembles it in some ways.  Using TCG as a proxy for professional NFP theater is far from perfect, as the book discusses.  For just one example, 18 of the 77 LORT theaters have not chosen to be members of TCG.

When friends reviewed early drafts of Stage Money, the use of this proxy was controversial for some.  We now realize the problem was that our friends had an unspoken definition of professional as reflecting the "quality of work performed."  One actually said, "I've seen the work of --------- theatre.  It may belong to TCG, but it's not professional."  If we had Jeffri's parsing of the definition of professional, we might have engaged our friends in a more meaningful discussion of professionalism in the NFP theater.

As to the quality of the art created by America's NFP theaters, we are not qualified to judge.  What night was the company unprofessional in quality?  What production?  What play?  All the time?  Never?   We don't think anyone is qualified to attest to the quality or lack of quality of even a few NFP theaters let alone all.  And if anyone did, he or she would surely get a battle from others who had the opposite opinion.