In news that has members of Canberra’s theatre community reeling, the 52-year-old Canberra Youth Theatre has announced that it will drop all productions in 2025, but it will not close its doors.

Citing the need to consolidate both artistically and financially, artistic director and CEO, Luke Rogers, explained via email to supporters of the company on Tuesday that the decision had come in the wake of increasing difficulty in covering costs.

“We receive generous support from our partner, Canberra Theatre Centre. Despite this, the income we generate from ticket sales, even with very successful shows, doesn’t cover our costs,” Rogers said.

Staff will go across all areas of the organisation, a blow, since Youth Theatre is known as one of the leading employers of professional acting and technical theatre teachers in the ACT.

Workshops will only be held at Gorman Arts Centre, not as before in Belconnen and Queanbeyan. Signature programs, the Emerge Company, Emerging Creatives, Writers Ensemble, Resident Artists, and Creative Leaders programs for 2025 will be “paused” until additional funding can be secured, with a new Open Studio program filling the gap.

It has been obvious to close watchers that they had already been downsizing in the past 12 months, with only one major production, Honor Webster-Mannison’s play Work, But This Time Like You Mean It, staged at the Courtyard Studio.

On Wednesday morning, Rogers told CityNews that the difficulties were part of an Australia-wide systemic phenomenon that had seen many youth arts organisations go to the wall after the then-Australia Council dropped its youth arts fund in 2015, a clear indication that youth arts are oftentimes unfairly perceived as “less-than” to our “adult” counterparts.

Since then, Rogers said, the company had been limping along with “passionate, skilled artists trying to get blood from a stone.”

“But enough is enough,” he said.

“We’ve been trying to be really dynamic and vibrant and doing amazing work but we don’t want to get to a position where we will go down. We’re being honest and transparent…bWe might need to do less but do it better.”

On the surface, showbiz being what it is, the work has looked good, and recent news the two of its recent graduates, Lachlan Houen and Caitlin Baker, have been engaged as directors for next year with Rep, The Q and ACT Hub, seemed to confirm the quality of CYT’s groundwork.

But their immersive, site-specific show The Department of Responsible Adulting in an office in Belconnen had only been possible by stretching the original budget and took a massive toll on the organisation and its people.

“We can’t keep doing that,” Rogers said.

“We need to look at new systems and new avenues of funding,” he added, noting that while they did charge fees for workshops, they’d never charged young people to be in their productions as some other companies in Canberra did.

So, what is the future for theatre-minded kids of the next generation?

“There’ll still be holiday programs and workshops for young people and we’ll still be holding our young people close,” Rogers said.