Post-pandemic audiences are returning in various degrees to Connecticut’s largest presenting houses — The Bushnell in Hartford, Palace Theater in Waterbury and Shubert Theatre in New Haven.

The new concern among venue leaders is how to keep the now more-selective theatergoers coming.

“Much of our traditional Broadway audience returned this spring,” said David Fay, CEO of The Bushnell

But it didn’t look so good at the start of the 2022-23 season, he said. “We began the season (last fall) with three weeks of ‘Hamilton’ at a time when we were still masking, testing and doing other pandemic-related stuff.”

Fay said the return of Broadway scored relatively well, but because The Bushnell, with its 2,800-seat capacity, projected pre-pandemic attendance levels and ticket sales for “Hamilton,” the theater ended up half-a-million dollars in the hole on that production.

“We thought, ‘Wow, if this is going to be the harbinger of the season, it’s going to be a tough year, so fasten the seatbelts,’” he said.

But audiences returned in force at the start of 2023, with the arrival of the Broadway smash “Six,” followed by a series of fresh Broadway shows including: “Tina: the Tina Turner Musical,” “Ain’t Too Proud,” “Jagged Little Pill,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” with Richard Thomas, which broke box-office records for a nonmusical play.

“‘Six’ turned the corner for us,” said Fay, “and for every show after that, we exceeded our budget projections by a couple hundred thousand.”

The Bushnell’s Broadway series attendance during the 2022-23 season was up 60% to 168,888, while revenues increased 59% to $14.9 million.

Fay attributes the turnaround to a windfall of top shows that finally hit the road after the pandemic.

“There was just a lot more product and a lot of it.…{CONTINUED}