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 DIY spirit has always been part of theatre, from artist-driven touring companies and scrappy storefronts to classrooms and community 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 decade 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, a growing number of theatre artists are building careers outside traditional institutions, sometimes by necessity, increasingly by choice. This shift isn’t a trend at the margins. It’s becoming a defining feature of how indie theatre gets made.
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.
Long before I understood industry structures or producing models, 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.I was graduating into an industry in flux, and like many artists entering professional life in the 2010s, I had to figure out how to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape shaped by aging theatre audiences and the internet increasingly vying for attention.
For me, and for many artists I know, the industry didn’t offer a clear path in. Sometimes there was no path at all. Other times, it was slow, narrow, and built for someone else. 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.
A different version of that same energy can be seen in StarKid Productions, which bypassed traditional development pipelines by building a direct relationship with audiences online, right as YouTube was taking off as a platform. Rather than waiting for permission or validation, the company used the internet to share work, grow a fanbase, and sustain future productions.
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.
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. What’s worth pausing on is how specifically that shift has changed the mechanics of making theatre.
Producing 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.
In making the process visible, social media has collapsed the distance between artists, producers, and audiences, shaping not only how work gets made, but how it finds momentum, support, and new audiences.
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.
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 ethos of your work.
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 theatre 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 ROI (return on investment). 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, soldover 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 your favorite Broadway title), 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 lowers the risk of trying something new. Lower ticket prices and shorter commitments make it easier to sample unfamiliar work and discover shows they might not otherwise take a chance on.
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 deeply educational, even after having done this professionally for over 15 years. 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
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 TL;DR is this: like a lot of creative industries, the internet actually did what it promised to do. It cracked open access. That’s not a hot take. What is worth talking about is how that plays out in real life, day to day, when you’re trying to get a show off the ground. Because “the internet is good, sometimes” isn’t a strategy for actually making a show. And access alone doesn’t guarantee long-term viability.
Yes, it’s easier than ever to make a show. But 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.
At the same time, sustainability is no longer limited to a tiny, exceptional few. This moment is producing a broader tier of working artists who are cutting out traditional intermediaries and making ambitious, audience-facing work outside established institutions. Even as grant funding shrinks and margins get tighter, people are still finding ways forward through regional black boxes, fringe festivals, touring circuits, and internet-native theatre companies. The work is bold, inventive, and widely shared, even if the business models behind it are sometimes still a little haphazard.
What’s changed 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. That path still exists, but it’s no longer the only door. Today, theatre-makers are building their own teams, finding their own funding, and putting work out on their own terms.
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.