Why This Feels Like a Golden Age for DIY Theatre

Don’t worry, I’ll temper that headline in a moment, but for now let’s kick this post off with some unbridled optimism: we’re living in the golden age of DIY theatre!

Sure, that do-it-yourself spirit has always been part of theatre in one form or another, from artist-run touring companies and scrappy Chicago storefronts to community theatre fundraisers and black box productions. DIY theatre isn’t new. What’s new is the scale of possibility. There are more tools, resources, and avenues than ever before to create high-caliber work on a budget and put it in front of an audience.

“Quality” theatre is no longer subject solely to the whims of traditional gatekeepers. That doesn’t mean gatekeepers are gone. Artistic directors still decide what goes on their stages. Investors still decide what gets funded. Institutions still hold power. But something fundamental has shifted, even compared to a few years ago: you no longer need permission to make a show.

If you want to mount a production, you can. Right now. With enough drive, planning, and a willingness to figure things out as you go, the barrier to entry has never been lower.

As a result, more and more theatre artists are building careers outside traditional institutions, sometimes because they have to, and increasingly because they want to. What used to feel like an alternative path is starting to feel normal. I’m seeing a lot more shows and theatre companies being created by artists who decided to stop waiting for permission and just make the thing themselves.

And that matters, because if you’re a creative person who’s been bitten by the bug to make something, or a producer who wants to bring someone else’s script to life, that impulse doesn’t politely fade. Once an idea gets under your skin, you either make the thing or it drives you a little nuts. So it’s genuinely good news that the friction between wanting to make something and actually getting it in front of an audience has become a lot smoother.

Before I fully understood how producing models worked or the existing pipelines for theatre development, I felt a gap between the work I wanted to be a part of and the opportunities available to me. And as I began building a career in the arts and entertainment, that gap didn’t close. It widened.

For me, and for many artists I know, the industry didn’t offer a particularly clear path in. Sometimes, it was slow, narrow, and built for someone else. Other times, there was no path at all. So we made our own. That response wasn’t unique. It was shared by a generation of artists and creators encountering the same narrowing pathways and choosing to build parallel ones instead.

A great example of this spirit can be found at the IAMA Theatre Company in Los Angeles. Today, IAMA is widely recognized as a leading new-works and development company. What’s easy to forget is that its origin story is pure DIY: red solo cup fundraising parties, original productions staged in basements of bars, and the drive to make work together with extremely limited resources. (I talked with Artistic Director Stefanie Black while putting together the Make The Damn Show toolkit, and their origin story is a great reminder that even successful institutions often start by simply making the thing.)

A different version of that same energy can be seen in Team StarKid, which I helped found alongside a group of friends who wanted to make work together. At the time, there wasn’t some grand strategy. We were just trying to put our work into the world. It happened to coincide with YouTube taking off as a platform, which allowed us to build a direct relationship with audiences rather than relying entirely on old-school norms.

Like many independent companies that chart their own course, neither began with institutional support. They began with a familiar impulse: if the opportunity doesn’t exist, you create it.

You no longer need permission to make a show.

So why does it feel like now is the age of DIY theatre, if theatre has always rewarded scrappy go-getters?

A few reasons.

1. Access to Information

It’s obvious to say that the internet has democratized access to information. Like, duh. What’s worth pausing on is how specifically that shift has changed the mechanics of making theatre.

A lot of this information used to be siloed in certain circles. Or buried in a handful of outdated books written for people working in opera houses with fly rails and resident ghosts. Now it’s everywhere!

Want to watch a BTS TikTok of a stage manager calling a Broadway show? Easy.

Want to live vicariously through friends at a fringe festival, posting about the best thing they saw that night? Done.

Want to take a playwriting or producing course online? Uh-huh.

By making the process more visible, social media has brought artists, producers, and audiences much closer together. It’s changed not only how work gets made, but how people discover it, support it, and help it spread.

Scripts, budget templates, marketing strategies, and long-form conversations about theatre development are readily available to anyone motivated enough to seek them out. The mystery of how production works has largely disappeared. What remains is execution, and the willingness to use what’s available.

To be clear, there is still plenty of mystery when it comes to the art itself. That part should remain mysterious. But the logistics of making a show no longer require insider access in the way they once did.

The mystery of how production works has largely disappeared. What remains is execution, and the willingness to use what’s available.

2. Crowdfunding Changed the Money Conversation

Crowdfunding has become a lifeline for new theatre productions outside the small circle of major institutional theatres in each city.

Theatre fundraising has never really been about financial returns (unless you’re part of a very small circle of commercial investors). At its core, it’s about cultivating belief in the power of live storytelling. You’re not promising profit. You’re building excitement and inviting people, both inside your network and just beyond it, to rally around the idea behind your work.

In a way, that was always true. But crowdfunding blew the door wide open!

Instead of relying on a handful of wealthy backers, competitive grants, or waiting for an established theatre to greenlight your project, you can now ask thousands of strangers to believe alongside you. And a lot of the time, they do!

Maybe 15 years ago it still felt weird to give money to a stranger just because you liked their idea. Now it’s so baked into the culture that we almost expect a good idea to get noticed.

On Kickstarter alone, theatre is one of the platform’s most successful categories. According to Kickstarter’s self-reported data, roughly 14,000 theatre projects have launched, with around 60 percent reaching their funding goals and raising approximately $50 million. That kind of volume doesn’t happen by accident. It suggests a real appetite for helping bring independent theatre projects to life.

With my partners at Tin Can Bros, I’ve raised about half a million dollars for theatre projects. Among my friends and peers, that number climbs into the millions. None of that happened because we knew the “right” people. It happened because these platforms (and the reach of the internet) allowed the work to travel far beyond our immediate circles (and yes, a lot of luck).

Crowdfunding isn’t a surefire moneymaker, but it reframes risk. And the return isn’t just financial, it also comes in the form of early audiences and visibility. In exchange, producers take on a different kind of obligation: clear communication and tangible rewards rather than lawyers and an operating agreement. Just as important as business sense is clarity of vision, community-building, and planning… producing skills that are increasingly learnable.

3. Fringe Festivals = Access + Infrastructure

Fringe festivals offer access to space, audiences, and production infrastructure that might otherwise be completely out of reach for independent artists. And fringe festivals are not niche anymore. They are massive cultural platforms!

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest in the world, sold over 2.6 million tickets across nearly 4,000 shows in 2025. That kind of scale is mind blowing when you remember it all happens in about a month. For context, Broadway, the crowning jewel of theatre tourism, draws roughly 1.3 million attendees a month.

This isn’t a Broadway vs Fringe argument. They’re doing different things, for different audiences, in different ways. But it does put into perspective just how concentrated, intense, and culturally significant the Fringe ecosystem has become in a very short window of time. For a growing subset of audiences, a brand-new solo clown show is just as interesting as checking out Stereophonic (or insert your favorite Broadway title here), for a fraction of the price.

What makes fringe festivals especially powerful for artists and producers is how quickly you can put a show up, market it, and learn from it, often in weeks instead of years. And it’s not uncommon to learn more from a single fringe run than some projects reveal over an entire development cycle. For audiences, that same structure makes it a lot easier to take a chance on something new. Lower ticket prices and shorter runtimes mean you can roll the dice on a show you’ve never heard of without feeling like you’re making a huge commitment.

Edinburgh, Adelaide, Hollywood Fringe, New York Fringe, and dozens of other fringe festivals in the U.S. and hundreds more around the world give artists real opportunities to test work, find audiences, and learn fast. Are they easy? No. Are they risk free? Absolutely not. But they are powerful engines for DIY producers who are willing to do the work.

I brought the play Solve It Squad to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024 with Tin Can Bros. It was thrilling, exhausting, and wildly educational, even after having done this professionally for over 15 years and mounting the show twice previously in Los Angeles and New York. The scale is intense. The competition is real. But the support systems and the pipeline for discovery are also very real, and the opportunities can be enormous if you show up prepared.

Another perk of Fringe is that you’re not operating in isolation. You’re part of a larger ecosystem, supporting other artists, learning from peers, and raising the profile of your work by being part of something bigger than just a single production. Pretty cool.

The Catch: DIY isn’t a Guaranteed Win

All of this adds up to a pretty simple conclusion: this may be the most accessible moment ever to be an independent theatre creator.

The reality is that more access doesn’t automatically make this easy. There are more tools, more resources, and more ways to get started than ever before, but making theatre is still hard. You still have to build the team, raise the money, solve the problems, and actually put the thing in front of an audience.

Will it be profitable? Sustainable? Will it extend beyond a single run? Maybe. Maybe not. And honestly, sometimes that’s okay. Not every project needs to turn a profit. Sometimes the goal is artistic exploration, community, or simply making something because creatively you just need to.

But if you want a project to have a life beyond the initial burst of adrenaline, access is only the starting point. You still need taste, planning, follow-through, collaborators, and enough structure that the whole thing doesn’t collapse the second enthusiasm gets tired.

What’s exciting is that the old model isn’t the only model anymore. Waiting for a greenlight, hoping someone “discovers” your script, crossing your fingers that a better-connected producer swoops in, all of that still exists. But it’s no longer the only door.

DIY doesn’t have to mean guessing, burning out, or learning everything the hard way. It can be strategic. It can be repeatable. And it can contribute to a healthier, more diverse theatre ecosystem.

If nothing else, the current moment offers this: if you’ve been waiting for the right time to make something yourself, there may never be a better one.

If you’ve been waiting for the right time to make something yourself, there may never be a better one.