When the
Performance Network Theatre suspended operations
last spring due to a reported $250,000 in debt, Carla Milarch says it was a "wake-up call" to all local theaters.
"I think that culturally theaters have adopted this sort of mantra of, ‘Well, we just have to keep the bleeding internal," says Milarch, the Performance Network's former artistic director. "I had donors say to me, ‘I don't want to give to a sinking ship,' and ‘I don't want to throw good money after bad." So we had this vicious cycle of, ‘We just have to pretend like everything's great,' and that just reinforces this lack of openness and transparency when in reality I think that people appreciate authenticity. They appreciate knowing what's going on."
The Performance Network's troubles came at a difficult moment for the national theater scene in general. Milarch says it often feels as though American theaters are "toppling like dominoes." But in Ann Arbor certain problems are intensified. Keith Medelis founded the New Theatre Project in Ann Arbor in 2010, and produced numerous shows in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti before he decided to move to New York City in 2013. He says he encountered costly zoning issues and high rents in Ann Arbor, and when he moved his theater to Ypsilanti many of his regular Ann Arbor patrons didn't follow.
"We were young and cheap and just sort of looking to produce art," Medelis says. "It was very hard to find reasonably priced space in Ann Arbor, which we could have easily found in Detroit. For $2 you can, like, buy a fucking building, you know? I was a little frustrated."
Medelis also faced a challenge in bringing some more unconventional works to town. The New Theatre Project featured local playwrights' work, unusual reworkings of Shakespeare plays, an original musical featuring the songs of Ypsilanti band Match By Match and several LGBT-related plays. Medelis says he found it "pretty impossible" to produce fringe theater in the Ann Arbor area while also working a full-time job.
Purple Rose Theatre Company artistic director Guy Sanville says it's difficult to make a living off of avant-garde theater in any city, but Ann Arbor can be especially challenging given the competition from the impressive and internationally renowned acts the
University Musical Society brings to town.
"If it's a small outfit, a storefront thing, small, lean company, 80 seats, between $300,000 and $500,000 a year budget–yeah, you could make a go of it," Sanville says. "Absolutely. But if you've got a few hundred seats and you're downtown and you're competing with all this great university stuff–world-class, a lot of it–it's going to be tough."
Another issue facing many local theaters is the limited age demographic of theatergoers. Area theater directors generally agree that the vast majority of audiences are middle-aged or older, but they view that fact in different ways.
"A lot of people think there's this huge horde of young people out there that are just dying to get to the theater if only we could reach them, and that's just not true," Sanville says. "They're going to school, they're building their lives, they're starting their careers, they're establishing their credit, they're doing a lot of things. And it's the older folks who have raised the kids and have the disposable income and are looking for things to do who are going to the theater."
Conversely, the Performance Network's new executive director, John Manfredi, is in part counting on young new theatergoers to help turn his operation around. Manfredi outlines three key points to his plan for putting the Performance Network back on track, approved by the theater's board
in June. Manfredi emphasizes a much leaner staff (the theater now operates with three full-time staffers, compared to nine pre-shutdown), showcasing and developing new plays, and offering a wide range of entertainment to bring in new demographics.
"We want to young the audience up," Manfredi says. "We want them to think about the Network first when it comes to what I want to do with my entertainment dollar, which is why we have a Wednesday night concert series and a Friday night concert series and we're doing a strong push to bring in some musical acts. We know that we're going to have to widen the audience base to survive."
Milarch agrees. With her new endeavor,
Theatre Nova, she and her colleagues are implementing a "pay what you can" ticket policy to encourage a broad cross-section of theatergoers.
"We've effectively priced ourselves out of our own market, and it's a huge problem," she says. "[Nova is] trying to make it affordable for students and some of the audience segments that have been kind of left out of the equation in recent years."
At the
Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, a change in audience makeup has already been happening. Managing director Suzi Peterson says the theater has made outreach efforts to new audiences by boosting its social media presence and advertising in local college publications. But she suggests young people have been turning toward the theater of their own accord just as much as Peterson and her colleagues have worked to bring them in.
"For us it's always been very long-time season ticket holders and older patrons, and I would say in the last two years it's really switched," she says. "There are so many students and younger people that are coming to see theater. I think we're in a transition period right now."
Still, some of Ann Arbor's most rabid young theater enthusiasts are also some of the least likely to stick around town. Multiple local theater directors interviewed for this story noted that while partnerships with Eastern Michigan University's theater department are common, University of Michigan students and faculty have little interaction with local theaters. Most say that's a tough, if not impossible, nut to crack because U-M's top-tier program is focused on placing students in theater meccas like New York and Los Angeles. But Sanville proposes a more radical solution to keep the next generation locally engaged.
"If I were king, I would love to see Ann Arbor become this little hotbed," Sanville says. "I'd like to see the city somehow get behind it and offer [theater graduates] studio space, offer people an opportunity...[to] build your little 80-seat experimental thing and find your voice and do some stuff. I think that would be really, really interesting. I think the Ann Arbor-Ypsi area could tolerate three to five or six of those kind of places."
Patrick Dunn is an Ann Arbor-based freelance writer and a senior writer at Concentrate and Metromode.
All photos by Doug Coombe except where noted.
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