// Operational infrastructure for the arts

Streamlined operations and systems, built for how theatres actually work.

Substructure is the layer beneath your theatre: the workflows, software, and admin that connect your departments. Solid enough to fade into the background, so your team's attention stays on your art, your artists, and your audiences.

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6 → 1

Artist intake forms

1 click

From form to contract draft

15+ yrs

In theatre management

// The problem

Tools pile up. Work doesn’t get lighter.

Dropbox, DocuSign, Zoom, a dozen other logins — each one solved a problem, but together they create new ones. And too often, the whole system runs on the knowledge of one general manager or tech-savvy staffer, who can walk out the door with it.

// Who we are

Run by someone who’s done the job

Substructure pairs 15+ years of theatre management — rural stages to Broadway to a sitting General Manager role at a LORT theatre — with real technical fluency. That combination is hard to hire as one person. We bring it to you as a partner.

Our promise is simple: subtraction, not addition. We use technology and hands-on management to bring simplicity back to complex organizations — removing work, cost, and complexity, never adding to it.

// What we do

Two ways we take work off your plate

Technology & systems

Systems people actually like using

We design the tools and workflows around how your staff already work — replacing scattered subscriptions and manual busywork with something built for your theatre. Six forms become one; a dozen manual steps become a single click.

Fractional GM

Fractional General Management

CBA administration, payroll, reporting, artist negotiation, contracting, budgeting — run remotely by someone who’s actually done the job, at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire.

// Case in point: artist onboarding, rebuilt for a LORT theatre

6 forms → 1 form → contract drafted → e-signed → filed, paid & union notified

// About Drew

Who’s behind it

Drew Kowalkowski has spent more than 15 years leading, managing, and producing across nonprofit and commercial theatre, from rural community theatre to Broadway.

His experience spans general management, finance, production, marketing, ticketing, and technology.

His commercial theatre work includes serving as Chief Operating Officer of Thompson Turner Productions (the GM office behind The Book of Mormon, Company, Mean Girls, and other Broadway productions) and as Operations Manager of the Westside Theatre.

In nonprofit theatre, Drew has held leadership roles at Central Square Theater and Indiana Repertory Theatre. IRT became Substructure’s first client, and Drew continues to serve as its General Manager, keeping him closely engaged with the day-to-day realities of running a LORT theatre.

Drew founded and led Wheatland Theatre Company in rural Washington State. He holds an MFA in Theatre Management and Producing from Columbia University.

He founded Substructure to help nonprofit theatres replace manual work and disconnected tools with practical systems built around how their staff actually work.

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Subtraction, not addition: we take work, cost, and complexity off your plate — never add to it.

Let's talk