Theater artists are expected to make something from nothing. But Joseph Haj, PlayMakers Repertory Company's producing artistic director, surpassed expectations in his first year.

PlayMakers, the professional company within the Department of Dramatic Art at UNC-CH, reports that Haj attacked a substantial to-do list. The most dramatic accomplishments were financial: eliminating a $98,000 projected deficit and ending the 2006-07 season with a record surplus of almost $145,000, plus retiring an accumulated deficit of $500,000. The subscriber base rose 9 percent, and single ticket sales were up 18 percent.

Haj says that when he took the job, he set out to learn what the community wanted, what the artists wanted and how to merge those interests.

"That doesn't seem overly complicated," he says, but it was. "I learned that we don't have one audience. We have a half dozen at least. ... We have to be about a lot of things to offer the sense of invitation we want to in the community."

This season, Haj expanded the roster from five to six mainstage plays in the Paul Green Theatre and included "The Little Prince" as a kid-friendly holiday show. And after experimenting last season with the 200-seat Elizabeth Price Kenan Theatre, he created a second-stage series, PRC2.

PRC2 kicks off Wednesday with Haj starring in "When the Bulbul Stopped Singing," a solo show about the Palestinian conflict. Lisa Kron's "2.5 Minute Ride," about surviving the Holocaust, follows in January. April brings "Witness to an Execution," a piece about capital punishment that PlayMakers commissioned from Triangle playwright Mike Wiley.

Haj selected meaty plays for PRC2 after realizing that audiences are more inclined to stay for post-show discussions in Kenan than in the 500-seat Paul Green Theatre. Thus every PRC2 performance will be followed by a post-show talk.

"I think we can go a long way toward doing what we talk a lot about over here," Haj says, "which is, 'How do we create a dialogue with our community? How do we have them more included in the work that we make?'