About Face Theatre
Magic Theatre
Theatre Jeune Lune
American Music Theatre of San Jose
Seaside Music Theatre
Milwaukee Shakespeare
Shakespeare Santa Cruz
House Theatre

of course, there are many many more theatres than what i listed up there, those are just companies that are large enough to be nationally recognized or else local to my own vital theatre scene in chicago.

i’m just wondering how many times theatres in financial crisis are going to be able to post an appeal to the tune of “give us xx dollars by next tuesday or we’ll be forced to close our doors!” before the american public grows weary of these bailouts. or not weary, but just unwilling, unable, to give enough money. all of the theatres listed above tried that tactic in the past year, some met with success, some closed their doors for good. don’t get me wrong. i’m all about funding the arts. it’s my livelihood, for god’s sake. i’m pro-government, -foundation and -individual sponsorship. there is no functional model where theatre can be produced here in american funded on ticket sales alone*. but i am skeptical that going “holy crap! we can’t make payroll!” isn’t going to meet with the same criticism coming from a not-for-profit arts organization as it is from a major national bank. because my own question is the same, regardless of the company: how did you not see this coming?

the answer is that many arts organizations have limped along with large debts and poor financial management practices for a long time. and in years of The Good Economy, many of those theatres were able to get a free pass. credit was extended and extended again. individuals and foundations were generous without asking hard questions about the company’s bottom line. but the fact that arts organizations don’t function on a dollars earned/dollars spent model doesn’t mean that we are exempt from fiscal responsibility. it makes it about 100 MORE important. i look at companies who were skating along with $1,000,000 in debt that suddenly got their line of credit yoinked and say, “you MUST HAVE KNOW THIS WOULD HAPPEN SOMEDAY!” it drives me bonkers.

it sucks sucks sucks to have to program smaller projects, hire fewer actors, fewer artisans, to rely on lower-quality, cheaper labor, whatever. all of the companies i work for/with are doing that now and in their upcoming seasons. but you have to do the hard thing if you want the organization to survive. lop off the finger to save the hand (god that’s a gross analogy – why did i just bring gangrene into this?). i write this knowing that i’m going to have to face those hard decisions many many times in the coming year – when i take over my new theatre position in July, it’s knowing full well that i may have to make hard decisions about how much employment i can offer to talented professionals, how many resources i can make available to the creative team. i know full well that i’m taking a risk that i could be joining a company that could be a victim of the recession in a year (they tell me their books are solid but…you never know these things until you get there). but for all my bleeding heart liberal ways, i am as practical and proactive at heart as any one human being can be. what i can tell you is that, as much as i am able to control it, we won’t be deficit spending on my watch.

and while i’m not getting all sunshiny about the Great Depression that is bearing down on us, i truly do believe that working against those constraints forces artists to make better, more creative work. does a bolt of $500/yard silk REALLY help us tell the story?

* don’t get me wrong, plenty of small theatre companies function without significant sources of contributed income. but they don’t make it on ticket sales alone, either. they make up for it by not being able to pay their employees. what you can’t pay for in dollars, you can pay for in sweat equity. and this works, but only up to a point. there’s a limit with what you can do when your reason for getting up every day doesn’t pay the rent. there is finite amount of energy and time available to each of us.