Yes, stage fans, there will be a 2015 season at the Spirit of Broadway Theater in Norwich.

Board president Anne Tortora said the season should be announced around the beginning of March, with the offerings expanding beyond the new musicals that the theater has focused on staging in the past.

While there will continue to be new works, they will mingle with some "standard rep" - meaning titles that people would readily recognize - and a cabaret series. Tortora says that Spirit of Broadway leaders have been in contact with several performing groups and individuals who are interested in bringing their art forms to the theater. Spirit of Broadway will feature, too, educational components.

This is all part of the theater's period of transition, after Brett Bernardini, who founded the Spirit of Broadway 17 years ago, retired at the end of 2014.

"We're not at a place where we can name the person who's our candidate for the interim managing director," Tortora said, "but we do know that we want to get the season off and running, because we've certainly been contacted by so many people as far as (wanting to know) what's going on, what's going to be going up at the theater this year. It's such a great place. It's been our commitment to just keep it going."

The board was scheduled to meet this week to continue their work developing the season and to talk about a new business plan, she said.

A new business plan is particularly vital, since the Spirit of Broadway has faced financial struggles after the recession hit in 2008. Best Production Co. Inc., which runs the theater, had operating deficits of $103,351 in 2010, $98,171 in 2011, and $33,884 in 2012, according to its Form 990 IRS nonprofit filings. It also had, for instance, fallen behind on mortgage payments to the city and to the Community Economic Development Fund.

Spirit of Broadway moved into a former city fire station in 1999 and has remained there since. In 2006, Norwich converted the theater's lease-purchase agreement for the building into a $60,000 mortgage, which would let the theater apply for grants as the structure's owner. The upshot: the theater had to pay $200 each month and a $5,000 lump sum each October.

After a three-year deferment agreed to by the City Council in 2010, monthly payments began again in October 2013 and the $5,000 lump sum resumed in October 2014.

Joshua A. Pothier, Norwich's comptroller, said Thursday that the last mortgage payment the city received from Best Production was on Dec. 30, 2014 for that month and that they are therefore two months behind.

Norwich Public Utilities General Manager John Bilda said Wednesday that NPU is working with the Spirit of Broadway this winter to help the theater control energy costs this winter.

Discussing the theater's overall financial situation, Tortora says, "It is what it is. It's not going to go away. ... It's a very big part of our responsibility to remain fiscally responsible and to develop a budget that's going to be able to keep the season alive for this year and also chip away at the existing debt. Stop the bleeding and keep moving forward."

Day staff writer Claire Bessette contributed to this article.