The producers of Get S.O.M.!: Duncan Pflaster (left), Jesse Edward Rosbrow and Michael Roderick. / Photo by Jason Specland
A steakhouse, a Chinese restaurant, several bars and a Hilton are clustered near the corner of West 36th Street and Eighth Avenue. It’s a stark contrast to the shuttered storefronts, “For Rent” signs and grungy parking lots further west at Ninth Avenue. David Pincus believes it’s no coincidence that the Theater Building—which houses The Barrow Group, The Abingdon Theatre Company and The Workshop Theater—is situated at the heart of this revived micro-community.
“It’s art leading real estate,” says Pincus, a middle-aged man with thick brown hair and a warm smile who serves as the managing director of The Workshop Theater Company and who also runs Community Board 4’s Theater Task Force that covers Chelsea and Clinton. But if theaters can function as barometers of gentrification, they also can be the first to go, as was the case when the Zipper Factory, located a block away on West 37th Street, closed, surprising many unsuspecting performers and neighborhood supporters.
But Pincus and many others believe that small, vibrant theaters are much more than real estate aides, and can contribute more than a revitalized block, providing New York City with jobs, taxes and tourists.
Alliance for the Arts, a Manhattan-based advocacy group funded by corporations, foundations and government agencies, published a study in 2007 concerning the economic impact of arts in New York based on 2005 data. While an estimated $21.2 billion was pumped into the NYC economy—mainly due to movie and TV production, the study also found that nonprofit theaters provided over 40,000 jobs in the city, had an economic impact of over $253 million and provided the city with $170 million in taxes.
In this recession, small theater owners like Pincus, who are used to working under tight budgets, worry that the economy could prove fatal to their industry. “We are the most in danger of leaving the neighborhood we helped create,” says Pincus.
No official numbers are kept by the city as to how many small theaters exist, but hundreds dot Manhattan—located in highrises, townhouses and office buildings—and are also one of the most resilient arts groups. Unlike other nonprofit theaters such as New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan Theater Club, the Public Theater and Roundabout, which have multi-million dollar operating budgets, these small theaters may be the most successful in finding ways to use this recession to their creative and financial advantage. With new, fiscally responsible models, improved coordination with government organizations and a renewed effort to collaborate with other theater companies, those involved in the nonprofit theater community hope to not only cut costs, but spur creativity and maybe even save the city while they are at it.
While Broadway has received significant press in recent months concerning show closings and financial shortfalls, small nonprofit theaters are often crippled by their largest and most important payment: rent. New York Innovative Theatre Award’s 2008 “Statistical Study of Off-Off Broadway Budgets” found that small theaters spend roughly 36 percent of their budget on performance space rental.
Three years ago, Melody Brooks, the artistic director of New Perspectives Theatre Company, was spending up to 50 percent of her $100,000 budget on renting a black box theater. This cost eventually forced her out the space and into an office/studio—instead of an actual theater—that is one-eighth the cost. Despite these difficulties, her theater—which aims to use live performance as a means to create positive social change—continued to grow because of the dedication of those involved.
“[We] operated on a shoe-string budget, almost on a volunteer basis for many years,” Brooks explains. “It’s our passion; we can’t not do it. But most artists don’t have healthcare and are scraping together rent.”
The shrinking economy will test just how far that commitment will be stretched. Pincus is also beginning to feel the very real effects of this recession with news that his funding has recently been severely cut. “Last year, Department of Cultural Affairs cut our 2009 funding significantly, after being a recipient for many years,” he explains. “And due to our position in the second round of the 2009 New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) funding cycle, our award was cut by 100 percent.”
To accommodate for this shortfall, Pincus spends more time than he would like sitting in his small, cramped office adjacent to his theater’s small, cramped lobby (a gift donated in honor of his late mother), personalizing a direct-mail campaign. While he has already deposited $20,000 in donations, he was expecting to receive $20,000-$40,000 more. According to him, the checks over $5,000, however, are not being written like they were in years passed.
Ginny Louloudes, executive director of the Alliance for Resident Theatres (A.R.T. New York), a service organization for Off Broadway companies, believes that even though small theaters are currently hurting, they will not feel the full impact of this recession for a few more years due to foundational lag time. Many foundations pay out support over three-year periods, so it will take longer to dry up than the immediate cuts in government funding or decreased private donations.
“Next year is going to be worse, and the year after that will be even worse,” warns Louloudes. She also predicts that wealthy New Yorkers who have lost money in their IRAs won’t be as generous as they may have been in years past. Louloudes worries that those operating small theaters that have not yet experienced serious budget shortfalls may falsely believe they have dodged the effects of this bitter economy.
“People are still in the denial stage,” says Louloudes. “The money is gone.”
Brooks says this is the first time the Off-Off Broadway community has had the attention of elected officials, so she hopes they can capitalize on that. “It means we have to seriously educate them about what it takes to operate even a small theater,” says Brooks. “And what we really need in resources from the city and local communities.”
The small theater community may still be debating the impact of this economic crisis in dollars and cents, but there seems to be some consensus that this recession is the ideal time to choose—or be forced into—long overdue sustainable models.
“Theaters have always been struggling. The patient has always been running a small fever,” says John Clancy, who runs the annual New York Fringe Festival, and who created the League of Independent Theaters last August to promote small theaters’ creative and economic interests. “This is an opportunity to re-look at the basic understanding of the ecosystem of the city and these small theaters.”
The major deterioration of the economy this past fall did not fundamentally change Clancy’s objectives, it vindicated his sense of urgency.
In February, the theater community hosted a forum at The Players Club on Gramercy Park to begin the long-overdue discussion about the state of theaters and how to seize on the opportunity inherent in the crisis. The event, hosted by community boards covering Downtown, Midtown and the West Side, attracted a standing-room-only crowd of over 300 nervous, yet optimistic, theater directors and producers that ditched their rehearsal clothes for khakis and dress shirts to adhere to the club’s dress code. Louloudes, Pincus and Clancy sat on the discussion panel alongside other theater leaders and Anthony Borelli, Manhattan’s director of land use.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer opened the event by stressing the cultural and, especially, economic necessity of keeping small theaters in New York. “We need [tourists] to come here, we need to keep New York vibrant,” said Stringer, who went on to explain that he wants to be challenged to find new ways to lower the cost of rent for theaters and use the arts to revitalize communities.
Much of the time that was supposed to be spent discussing “the new era” in small theaters was lost to theater leaders arguing over whether or not money will still be available, and how significant their changes should be. One of the most promising signs was an apparent motivation to seize upon the opportunities of this recession by injecting the arts into places that have recently been closed.
“If we can then look at all the empty property that will be in this city very soon and insert the arts and keep them there,” said Clancy. “The scrappiest always survive, and we are quite scrappy.” Louloudes went further, suggesting that actors and directors should not be afraid to do occasional performances in unconventional spaces—such as pools and buses.
Small theaters and other arts organizations did celebrate a small victory with the recent stimulus bill in Washington. When Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn added an amendment to block stimulus funds for what he considered to be cultural projects, including “casinos, zoos, golf courses, swimming pools, parks, museums, theaters or highway beautification projects,” the theater community—driven partly by their anger over being grouped alongside zoos and golf courses—began a grassroots and political campaign against the cursed “Coburn Amendment.” Through a groundswell of letters to politicians and a strong lobbying effort in Washington, the final stimulus bill eventually passed and included $50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts.
Victories like these need to be won on the city and state level as well, say local theater organizers. Community board leaders wrote letters to Governor Patterson to restore funding for the arts and last week the mayor's office announced an initiative that will help nonprofits in a cash crunch. But Louloudes and others feel the true improvements will come from the theater community itself.
“There is not going to be government money like there was for your predecessor,” she says. “You must work under different models.” She proposes sharing space and collaborating with other theaters on shows.
Chelsea’s the cell theater, which opened last year in a townhouse on West 23rd Street, began with the idea of cooperation from the outset. The cell has pews instead of traditional seats and an adjustable stage has hosted art exhibits, films and panel discussions.
“It is a bit silly to be competitive with other small theater companies, I mean you can barely survive just on your own.” says Kira Simring, the cell’s creative director. “You kind of have to support each other to survive at all.” Since the space is owned, and not leased, the rentals have provided the main source of income for the theater.
“I don’t think our situation is as dire as some of the other companies,” explains Nancy Manocherian, who bought the space five years ago.
Beyond sharing space, it will be co-productions that will be the small theater community’s strongest defense against the forces of the economic crisis. While theaters wait for government, foundational and private donations that may never materialize, they can immediately cut costs by collaborating on shows with other theater companies.
Jason Eagan, the artistic director of Ars Nova, the eclectic performance space located on a lonely area of West 54th Street, says he began to look for these partnerships when the economy headed south. “We’re trying to find out how much we can do on as little as possible,” says Eagan. “That’s not a bad thing, it puts us in check.” Eagan believes that collaborations do more than simply cut costs on design teams, technical resources and rehearsal and theater space, they also fuel creativity and invention. He hopes collaborations will continue to exist after this economy bounces back.
“It makes it more about the art and the artist, coming together to make art,” he explains. “That can’t be a bad thing. It not ending would be fine in my book.”
Leonard Jacobs, a theater critic for Backstage and New York Press, who has also directed productions , believes that these models might help secure, and possibly, increase funding: “[If two nonprofit theater companies] are both behind this new particular play and find a way to work together hand in glove, I would think they could use how they are collaborating to make funders pay attention to them.”
It’s just such a collaboration that three indie theater company producers are planning for May. Before the recession hit, Michael Roderick, artistic director of Small Pond Productions, says he could afford to put up the roughly $20,000 needed for a show as a solo company/producer. As the economy deteriorated, securing this relatively small sum of money was no longer a possibility, but he still had the desire to put up a show.
Now, under a collaboration model, Roderick is partnering with Jesse Edward Rosbrow from Theatre of the Expendable and Duncan Pflaster of Cross-Eyed Bears to present a “repertory merger” at the Workshop Theater Company. Theatre of the Expendable is showing “Mare Cognitum,” Small Pond Entertainment will present “Squiggy and the Goldfish” and Cross-Eyed Bear Productions will present “Ore, or Or”. In this merger, each producer is spending approximately $11,000-13,000, which means they’re saving between $7,000-9,0000 each by working on these shows together. None of those involved say they view this collaboration as a sacrifice of individuality, rather, it is a way to expand creativity and move theater outside of conventional norms.
“In times of difficulty, that’s usually when we find the most inventive ideas and that’s usually when some of the best work comes out,” Roderick explains.
“It’s art leading real estate,” says Pincus, a middle-aged man with thick brown hair and a warm smile who serves as the managing director of The Workshop Theater Company and who also runs Community Board 4’s Theater Task Force that covers Chelsea and Clinton. But if theaters can function as barometers of gentrification, they also can be the first to go, as was the case when the Zipper Factory, located a block away on West 37th Street, closed, surprising many unsuspecting performers and neighborhood supporters.
But Pincus and many others believe that small, vibrant theaters are much more than real estate aides, and can contribute more than a revitalized block, providing New York City with jobs, taxes and tourists.
Alliance for the Arts, a Manhattan-based advocacy group funded by corporations, foundations and government agencies, published a study in 2007 concerning the economic impact of arts in New York based on 2005 data. While an estimated $21.2 billion was pumped into the NYC economy—mainly due to movie and TV production, the study also found that nonprofit theaters provided over 40,000 jobs in the city, had an economic impact of over $253 million and provided the city with $170 million in taxes.
In this recession, small theater owners like Pincus, who are used to working under tight budgets, worry that the economy could prove fatal to their industry. “We are the most in danger of leaving the neighborhood we helped create,” says Pincus.
No official numbers are kept by the city as to how many small theaters exist, but hundreds dot Manhattan—located in highrises, townhouses and office buildings—and are also one of the most resilient arts groups. Unlike other nonprofit theaters such as New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan Theater Club, the Public Theater and Roundabout, which have multi-million dollar operating budgets, these small theaters may be the most successful in finding ways to use this recession to their creative and financial advantage. With new, fiscally responsible models, improved coordination with government organizations and a renewed effort to collaborate with other theater companies, those involved in the nonprofit theater community hope to not only cut costs, but spur creativity and maybe even save the city while they are at it.
While Broadway has received significant press in recent months concerning show closings and financial shortfalls, small nonprofit theaters are often crippled by their largest and most important payment: rent. New York Innovative Theatre Award’s 2008 “Statistical Study of Off-Off Broadway Budgets” found that small theaters spend roughly 36 percent of their budget on performance space rental.
Three years ago, Melody Brooks, the artistic director of New Perspectives Theatre Company, was spending up to 50 percent of her $100,000 budget on renting a black box theater. This cost eventually forced her out the space and into an office/studio—instead of an actual theater—that is one-eighth the cost. Despite these difficulties, her theater—which aims to use live performance as a means to create positive social change—continued to grow because of the dedication of those involved.
“[We] operated on a shoe-string budget, almost on a volunteer basis for many years,” Brooks explains. “It’s our passion; we can’t not do it. But most artists don’t have healthcare and are scraping together rent.”
The shrinking economy will test just how far that commitment will be stretched. Pincus is also beginning to feel the very real effects of this recession with news that his funding has recently been severely cut. “Last year, Department of Cultural Affairs cut our 2009 funding significantly, after being a recipient for many years,” he explains. “And due to our position in the second round of the 2009 New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) funding cycle, our award was cut by 100 percent.”
To accommodate for this shortfall, Pincus spends more time than he would like sitting in his small, cramped office adjacent to his theater’s small, cramped lobby (a gift donated in honor of his late mother), personalizing a direct-mail campaign. While he has already deposited $20,000 in donations, he was expecting to receive $20,000-$40,000 more. According to him, the checks over $5,000, however, are not being written like they were in years passed.
Ginny Louloudes, executive director of the Alliance for Resident Theatres (A.R.T. New York), a service organization for Off Broadway companies, believes that even though small theaters are currently hurting, they will not feel the full impact of this recession for a few more years due to foundational lag time. Many foundations pay out support over three-year periods, so it will take longer to dry up than the immediate cuts in government funding or decreased private donations.
“Next year is going to be worse, and the year after that will be even worse,” warns Louloudes. She also predicts that wealthy New Yorkers who have lost money in their IRAs won’t be as generous as they may have been in years past. Louloudes worries that those operating small theaters that have not yet experienced serious budget shortfalls may falsely believe they have dodged the effects of this bitter economy.
“People are still in the denial stage,” says Louloudes. “The money is gone.”
Brooks says this is the first time the Off-Off Broadway community has had the attention of elected officials, so she hopes they can capitalize on that. “It means we have to seriously educate them about what it takes to operate even a small theater,” says Brooks. “And what we really need in resources from the city and local communities.”
The small theater community may still be debating the impact of this economic crisis in dollars and cents, but there seems to be some consensus that this recession is the ideal time to choose—or be forced into—long overdue sustainable models.
“Theaters have always been struggling. The patient has always been running a small fever,” says John Clancy, who runs the annual New York Fringe Festival, and who created the League of Independent Theaters last August to promote small theaters’ creative and economic interests. “This is an opportunity to re-look at the basic understanding of the ecosystem of the city and these small theaters.”
The major deterioration of the economy this past fall did not fundamentally change Clancy’s objectives, it vindicated his sense of urgency.
In February, the theater community hosted a forum at The Players Club on Gramercy Park to begin the long-overdue discussion about the state of theaters and how to seize on the opportunity inherent in the crisis. The event, hosted by community boards covering Downtown, Midtown and the West Side, attracted a standing-room-only crowd of over 300 nervous, yet optimistic, theater directors and producers that ditched their rehearsal clothes for khakis and dress shirts to adhere to the club’s dress code. Louloudes, Pincus and Clancy sat on the discussion panel alongside other theater leaders and Anthony Borelli, Manhattan’s director of land use.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer opened the event by stressing the cultural and, especially, economic necessity of keeping small theaters in New York. “We need [tourists] to come here, we need to keep New York vibrant,” said Stringer, who went on to explain that he wants to be challenged to find new ways to lower the cost of rent for theaters and use the arts to revitalize communities.
Much of the time that was supposed to be spent discussing “the new era” in small theaters was lost to theater leaders arguing over whether or not money will still be available, and how significant their changes should be. One of the most promising signs was an apparent motivation to seize upon the opportunities of this recession by injecting the arts into places that have recently been closed.
“If we can then look at all the empty property that will be in this city very soon and insert the arts and keep them there,” said Clancy. “The scrappiest always survive, and we are quite scrappy.” Louloudes went further, suggesting that actors and directors should not be afraid to do occasional performances in unconventional spaces—such as pools and buses.
Small theaters and other arts organizations did celebrate a small victory with the recent stimulus bill in Washington. When Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn added an amendment to block stimulus funds for what he considered to be cultural projects, including “casinos, zoos, golf courses, swimming pools, parks, museums, theaters or highway beautification projects,” the theater community—driven partly by their anger over being grouped alongside zoos and golf courses—began a grassroots and political campaign against the cursed “Coburn Amendment.” Through a groundswell of letters to politicians and a strong lobbying effort in Washington, the final stimulus bill eventually passed and included $50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts.
Victories like these need to be won on the city and state level as well, say local theater organizers. Community board leaders wrote letters to Governor Patterson to restore funding for the arts and last week the mayor's office announced an initiative that will help nonprofits in a cash crunch. But Louloudes and others feel the true improvements will come from the theater community itself.
“There is not going to be government money like there was for your predecessor,” she says. “You must work under different models.” She proposes sharing space and collaborating with other theaters on shows.
Chelsea’s the cell theater, which opened last year in a townhouse on West 23rd Street, began with the idea of cooperation from the outset. The cell has pews instead of traditional seats and an adjustable stage has hosted art exhibits, films and panel discussions.
“It is a bit silly to be competitive with other small theater companies, I mean you can barely survive just on your own.” says Kira Simring, the cell’s creative director. “You kind of have to support each other to survive at all.” Since the space is owned, and not leased, the rentals have provided the main source of income for the theater.
“I don’t think our situation is as dire as some of the other companies,” explains Nancy Manocherian, who bought the space five years ago.
Beyond sharing space, it will be co-productions that will be the small theater community’s strongest defense against the forces of the economic crisis. While theaters wait for government, foundational and private donations that may never materialize, they can immediately cut costs by collaborating on shows with other theater companies.
Jason Eagan, the artistic director of Ars Nova, the eclectic performance space located on a lonely area of West 54th Street, says he began to look for these partnerships when the economy headed south. “We’re trying to find out how much we can do on as little as possible,” says Eagan. “That’s not a bad thing, it puts us in check.” Eagan believes that collaborations do more than simply cut costs on design teams, technical resources and rehearsal and theater space, they also fuel creativity and invention. He hopes collaborations will continue to exist after this economy bounces back.
“It makes it more about the art and the artist, coming together to make art,” he explains. “That can’t be a bad thing. It not ending would be fine in my book.”
Leonard Jacobs, a theater critic for Backstage and New York Press, who has also directed productions , believes that these models might help secure, and possibly, increase funding: “[If two nonprofit theater companies] are both behind this new particular play and find a way to work together hand in glove, I would think they could use how they are collaborating to make funders pay attention to them.”
It’s just such a collaboration that three indie theater company producers are planning for May. Before the recession hit, Michael Roderick, artistic director of Small Pond Productions, says he could afford to put up the roughly $20,000 needed for a show as a solo company/producer. As the economy deteriorated, securing this relatively small sum of money was no longer a possibility, but he still had the desire to put up a show.
Now, under a collaboration model, Roderick is partnering with Jesse Edward Rosbrow from Theatre of the Expendable and Duncan Pflaster of Cross-Eyed Bears to present a “repertory merger” at the Workshop Theater Company. Theatre of the Expendable is showing “Mare Cognitum,” Small Pond Entertainment will present “Squiggy and the Goldfish” and Cross-Eyed Bear Productions will present “Ore, or Or”. In this merger, each producer is spending approximately $11,000-13,000, which means they’re saving between $7,000-9,0000 each by working on these shows together. None of those involved say they view this collaboration as a sacrifice of individuality, rather, it is a way to expand creativity and move theater outside of conventional norms.
“In times of difficulty, that’s usually when we find the most inventive ideas and that’s usually when some of the best work comes out,” Roderick explains.
anonymous
