The Dallas Children’s Theater has announced programming reductions and staffing changes as the organization faces financial difficulties.
The Dallas Children’s Theater is located at the Rosewood Center for the Family Arts.
Lake Highlands Advocate previously reported that the DCT was looking towards its future. Now, it seems that the same future is looking increasingly uncertain as the organization faces difficult financial circumstances. The theater is cutting some of its educational programming, shortening its 2025-26 season and reducing staffing to respond to the challenges, according to a press release from June 2.
Costs have significantly increased, while fundraising has lagged behind campaign goals and targets, DCT Executive Director Samantha Turner told the Advocate.
“We launched the extraordinary campaign, which was inspired by an incredible gift of $1 million over the course of five years from the March Family Foundation,” Turner said. “So we launched the campaign, which is a $5 million campaign that would support us over five years while we worked through our plan to move to sustainability. We have been working on an Extraordinary Campaign and having some great meetings and good conversations. Commitments, however, are coming in more slowly than we would like to see them coming in.”
Turner said the organization has not been affected by a loss in federal or state funding up to this point.
“I know this community values DCT,” Turner said. “I know that they support it. It takes time to build the new relationships that we want to add to our existing donor base and help support us. So we find ourselves in this difficult time where cash is tight, and we need an influx of cash to get through this period so that we can get back to the upward period. So we are letting the community know that so that they can help, and in response to that, we are taking pretty serious and significant measures on our end.”
For the 2025-26 season, two of five previously planned shows, Junglebook and The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley, have been cancelled. In addition, the DCT plans to lay off or furlough 45% of its staff. The first round of layoffs began in early June, with additional departures expected in July and August. DCT employs 30 full-time staff members, Turner said.
DCT will “pause” its academy class programs after August. While summer programs will take place as scheduled, classes will be suspended beginning in the fall.
The organization is retaining its student matinee programs, which Turner said will allow 24,000 students, primarily from Title 1 schools, to come to the theater during school hours for performances. Sensory performances for each show are set to continue, and Neighborhood See-A-Play Date, the DCT’s free and low-cost performance program for Vickery Meadow neighbors, is expected to remain a part of programming.
Despite the cuts, the theater is still facing a $500,000 deficit that, if not addressed by late summer, Turner says could put the theater’s “operations in jeopardy.”
“This process is incredibly difficult for the theater — we’ve got 40 years of history,” she said. “We’ve got 40 years of people who have impacted the organization who are still working with us today, and for some of them to be impacted and for the future of what has been created is such great concern. It’s just an awful place to be. But, we do feel encouraged by the incredible support we do get from the community. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for some really wonderful donors, contributors, foundations, corporations that are supporting us. So it’s dark times, but we look to the positive and we lean into that so that we can get to better times.”
