Community Theatre Boards Need Term Limits

by Chris Peterson

Community theatre boards need term limits. There. I said it.

And before anyone starts clutching their souvenir programs, this is not an attack on every longtime board member. Community theatre survives because people show up, often for years, doing unglamorous work nobody else wants to do.

But at some point, commitment can turn into ownership. And I have seen what happens when nobody is willing to admit that line has been crossed.

Years ago, I directed Boeing Boeing at a community theatre. For those who do not know the show, it is a classic door-slamming farce about a man juggling relationships with three flight attendants. So yes, aviation is part of the world. But that did not mean I wanted an actual plane hanging from the ceiling.

A board member did.

For reasons still unknown to me, this person became very attached to the idea that the set needed a plane suspended above it. I did not want it. It felt distracting, unnecessary, and like one of those choices that screams, “Look what we made,” instead of serving the show.

But the board member insisted. And because he had been there forever, nobody really checked him on it. That was the part that stuck with me. Not just the plane. The fact that everyone seemed to understand, almost without saying it, that certain people simply got their way because they had been around long enough to become part of the building.

Suddenly, the decision was not really mine anymore.

That may sound small, because in the grand scheme of community theatre chaos, one hanging plane is not exactly a national emergency. But that is how these problems usually show up. Sometimes it is a board member overruling the director on a design choice because they personally want something. Sometimes it is a quiet reminder that authority on paper and authority in practice are two very different things.

I have seen it in season selection, too. At another theatre I worked with, a board member loved sex farces. Loved them. Could not get enough doors slamming, pants dropping, mistaken identities, and middle-aged men hiding in closets. And because that person had influence, that theatre did at least one farce every single year for 12 straight years.

Twelve.

And again, I enjoy a good farce. Plenty of audiences do too. But when one person’s taste becomes the institution’s identity for more than a decade, you have a governance problem.

That is what happens when power sits too long in one place. It gets comfortable. Then it gets defensive. Then everyone else starts working around it.

New ideas come up, and before anyone can really consider them, the answer is already floating in the air: “That’s not how we do things.” A different kind of show? Too risky. A new director? Maybe next season. A younger volunteer with actual marketing ideas beyond a Facebook post and a lobby flyer? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

And then, a few months later, the same people wonder why they cannot attract younger audiences.

Term limits would not fix everything. Of course, they would not. A toxic culture can absolutely survive a calendar change. But term limits force one thing community theatres desperately need more of: room.

Personally, I think the right board term for a community theatre is somewhere around two to three seasons. That is enough time to learn the organization, understand the budget, support a few productions, see what works, and actually make an impact.

Anything much longer than that starts to feel risky, especially if there are no meaningful breaks, no rotation, and no clear path for new people to step in. Nobody should be able to sit in power so long that their personal taste becomes policy.

Community theatre should not become a private club with a stage attached. It should be a living organization where people can enter, contribute, grow, and eventually help lead.

When boards never change, the theatre eventually stops belonging to the community. It belongs to the people who stayed in charge long enough to confuse stewardship with ownership.

And if the people currently holding the keys are terrified of term limits, maybe that tells us exactly why the conversation needs to happen.