Played Out?
The Twin Cities’ theater scene has boomed in recent years, spawning dozens of new productions and acting companies. But even as new venues have opened, ticket sales have slowed or leveled off. Can the show go on?
by Christy DeSmith
Photo by Thomas Strand
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EVEN AS TICKET-BUYING slowed, an optimistic engine kept chugging along. The local theater community added facilities and organizations with little regard for audience or resources.
The first and most-visible result is a glut of performance spaces. In recent years, several new venues have opened—including the Ritz Theater, the Walker Art Center’s McGuire Theater, and St. Paul’s SteppingStone Theatre—significantly increasing overall audience capacity. The new Guthrie complex has about 400 more seats than the former Vineland Place and Guthrie Lab spaces combined. Meanwhile, the old Guthrie Lab in Minneapolis’s North Loop neighborhood (now known simply as the Lab Theatre) has sat vacant save for a single show: Menopause the Musical.
Peter Rothstein, founder and artistic director of the Theatre Latté Da, says things were very different eight years ago, when his company took up residence at the Loring Playhouse. “At that time, there was a real shortage of space,” Rothstein says. Last fall, the 10-year-old troupe left its longtime home at the Loring (the Playhouse was converted into offices). But finding a new place to put up Latté Da productions hasn’t been as difficult as Rothstein anticipated. “I don’t want to say there’s an overabundance of venues,” he observes. “But right now we have people clamoring for us to produce an event: the Ordway, the Southern, the Guthrie.”
Venues like the Ritz and the Southern are increasingly aggressive about booking shows. Yet directors producing shows in such houses often run into another problem: There aren’t enough good actors to go around. The player with the deepest pockets, the Guthrie, soaks up most of the talent these days. In fact, the number of productions in the Guthrie’s 2008–09 season is nearly double that of the 2005-06 season, the last at Vineland Place. This means the Guthrie needs more performers than ever—and they only hire the best. Most small- and mid-sized theater companies applaud the Guthrie’s willingness to lend out costumes, set pieces, and technical equipment. However, an article that ran last March in the St. Paul Pioneer Press noted that the Big Blue Box is making it increasingly hard for smaller companies to procure high-caliber local talent.
“The Guthrie is doing so many different shows with so many different actors and so many different understudies,” Richard Cook, artistic director at downtown St. Paul’s Park Square Theatre, told the paper, “that, right now, our dilemma is about doing the right show at the right time and with the right people.”
Of course, the Guthrie’s outsize appetite for acting talent is good news for some. Stacia Rice, an acclaimed local actress who three years ago launched her own company, Torch Theater, postponed her production of Macbeth, the remaining show in Torch’s 2007–08 season, when the Guthrie called with acting jobs. For performers, of course, increased demand means more work and an ability to put food on the table. “It’s a good thing for families that have actors in them,” Rice says of the Guthrie’s growing need for talent.
Nevertheless, that’s sour news not only for smaller troupes, but also for audience members: a homogenizing punch to the gut of a theater scene that’s supposedly brimming with diverse ideas and activities. Sure, we’ve got more shows to choose from than ever before, but these days we’re less likely to happen upon standout performances when venturing outside the biggest, most conventional shops.
The final, and most frustrating, symptom of our theater surplus is this: more hastily staged productions. Most theatergoers are willing to put up with the occasional clunker from a small, penniless troupe. But in the past couple of years, audiences have seen professional actors at both the Jungle and Guthrie fail to memorize their lines by opening night. There have been original, ensemble-made narratives at Jeune Lune and a handful of smaller theaters that were so loosely threaded as to feel unfinished.
Scott Mayer, the founder and project director of the Ivey Awards, an annual awards ceremony for local theater, and one of the most fervent boosters of Twin Cities theater, dismisses the idea that there’s a theater surplus. But even he concedes: “It may be true,” he says, “that the amount of theater [in the Twin Cities] does a disservice” to companies striving to produce high-caliber work of which they can be proud.
WHY HASN’T the ticket-buying public weeded the worst companies from the lot? Because Darwinist forces aren’t entirely at play in the world of nonprofit theater. In addition to earned revenue from box office sales and concessions, theaters rely on donations from individuals, corporations, government, and—here’s the rub—foundations. In 2007, Mixed Blood Theatre received $205,000 from the St. Paul–based Bush Foundation, $236,000 from the Minneapolis-based McKnight Foundation, and $40,000 from the Minneapolis-based General Mills Foundation. A recent playbill from the Jungle Theater thanked 22 foundations. Garnering foundation support is increasingly key to financing theater productions, and it’s only gotten more competitive in recent years as more and more companies apply for grants.
But foundations often have an agenda. Many like to fund educational shows that tackle important, contemporary issues. “I feel like performing artists have to have a social issue...to be recognized,” says the artistic director of one area theater, speaking anonymously. Companies, therefore, are compelled to stage identity art and weepy works of pedantry. For example, the Guthrie’s 2007 production of Boats on a River, a play about Cambodian sex-trafficking, was seeded by a Bush Foundation grant that encouraged “global perspectives.” The Los Angeles-based playwright, Julie Marie Myatt, who has penned several plays concerning women’s sexuality, used the money to travel abroad so that she could study her subject. The resulting play revealed this shocking truth: Child prostitution is bad.
Foundational focus on outreach- and education has given rise to countless other plays that teach special lessons. Not all of these plays are bad per se. Mixed Blood recently premiered a play about the experiences of biracial Americans, called Messy Utopia, which was well-reviewed. But overtly political shows tend not to attract large audience; instead, they get propped up by foundations.
“Visual artists don’t have to have a social issue in mind to get support for making their paintings or sculptures. Nobody says that their work must somehow express the desires or ideas of a particular community,” says the artistic director. “Part of me would like to see the entire funding apparatus collapse. It’d be interesting after, say, 10 years, to see what the public is seeing, what artists are making a living, and what is rising to the surface when money is out of the equation.”
THE REAL PROBLEM isn’t that there’s too much theater. Instead, there’s just too much middling, unmoving, playing-it-safe, boring theater. Quality has not improved as our options have grown.
It’s disheartening to see, in several mid-sized companies, that crowd-pleasers have taken a back seat to organization-pleasers. Meanwhile, companies that strive to do excellent work are left with fewer resources. The saturated market makes it more difficult for companies to bring together the necessary ingredients for remarkable theater: money, adequate time to incubate and rehearse, top-notch talent, and, most important, theatergoers. It all undermines the vitality of local theater.
Why be concerned? Because there’s nothing less at stake than three decades’ worth of work. We’ve cultivated a point-of-pride performing-arts scene, which has always been homegrown, independent from the coasts, and distinct in its quirks and regional themes. With so much theater, we ought to be batting a better average.
Sadly, our hard-earned reputation has already taken a hit: Late last year, a prominent local artist told me she hadn’t seen a local show she’d liked in a long, long while. A former board member of a major Twin Cities theater company recently talked of questioning theater’s “relevance” and, after 20-plus years of local theatergoing, has started to wonder about the medium’s ability to connect with audiences. A transplant from New York City, someone who arrived almost two years ago, said she saw “everything” when she first arrived. But she had “given up” after seeing “not one” good show.
“And I was surprised,” she said. “Because the theater here is supposed to be so good.”
Click here to see The Theatergoer's Dilemma
Christy DeSmith is a Minneapolis-based writer and arts critic.
Comments may be edited for length, clarity, or appropriateness.
Reader Comments:
Being a huge musical theatre buff, I read your article on Twin Cities theatre in your recent issue with great interest. Your listing of Chaska Valley Family Theatre was great; however, they are Community Theatre and not the best offering in the area. Minnetonka Community Theatre, directed by R. Kent Knutson from Minnetonka High School, is the most professional and talented group. Check it out.
I find this article wholly irresponsible.
This issue (over-saturation of the theater community) rears its head every few years. Ms. DeSmith has not uncovered a new phenomenom.
Ms. DeSmith suggets that many small theater companies should take down their shingle and let the "real" artists work. Where do you suppose the real artists come from?
The problem is not an overabundance of space- the problem is the rent is so ridiculously high most small theatre companies can't AFFORD to rent these fancy new theatres. Look at smaller, cheaper venues like BLB, always full. Also, there is NO shortage of excellent non-union female actors in the Cities, just male ones. There isn't ENOUGH union work to lure union actors to the cities full time.
I am a Twin Cities theatre practitioner and avid theatre-goer and, having read Christy DeSmith's article illustrating her unfounded opinions on Minnesota theatre, I have several questions. Why would a publication that seems to take pride in delineating the beauty of our state's landscape, population, and culture choose to print a story with such cheap shots at those among us trying, against great odds, to make a career in the local theatre community? And while DeSmith makes it clear that she can turn a scathing phrase aimed at a group whose work apparently was not her cup of tea, what, exactly is her point? Her petty jabs and outrageous overstatements, backed by no discernible facts, undermine anything remotely resembling the thesis that she seems to be trying to support. And an article whose only goal seems to be to discourage potential audience members from taking a chance on local theatre seems a hideous affront to the artistic community of our state and quite out of place in a magazine such as yours.
I respectfully disagree with your comments on MN Shakespeare's Project production of King Lear. Granted, I was there on a different night, but saw nothing hollow or inept about the production. If two women were twittering at the sight of two female actors kissing, I am more likely to chalk that down to discomfort with non-hetero sexuality than a sign of a festering talent problem.
A slackening audience base is not unique to theatre. In literary publishing, there are writers galore but readers are a dying breed. I've seen bad theatre, read horrible books, but hesitate to suggest that readers quit reading (or only read Penguin classics), that new readers should think twice before diving into a diversity of literature, or that arts funding is inherently harmful to creativity.
I am actually kind of surprised that any artist here WOULDN'T think there was an oversaturation of theatre in the twin cities. DeSmith seems to be laying the blame at the feet of small and emerging companies, but I would contend that there is more interesting, quality work coming out of brand new groups then out of mid-size troops who are fighting to KEEP their audience w/o concern for quality.
It's too bad DeSmith didn't bother contacting Anoka Community Theater or Lakeshore Players. These small companies have done well because they serve folks who don't like driving into the Metro and aren't so concerned with appearing erudite . We may see a rise in (gasp) suburban/neighborhood companies that seek to serve the immediate area. Now won't THAT offend Ms. DeSmith's elitist sensibility!
Maybe the Twin Cities gained its cultural reputation BECAUSE we live in a community that values organizations like KFAI as much as we do Minnesota Public Radio. I hope we don't turn into a society that doesn't consider it culture unless you pay $80 at the Guthrie or doesn't consider it football unless the players aren't NFL billionaires.
Amateurs aren't ruining theater. $5/gallon. gas is.
I lived in Minneapolis for thirteen years, and I must say, the problem with the theatre there isn't oversaturation. It's that there's a lot of organizationally supported mediocrity. Couple this with an under-educated power base who are easily fooled into believing bad equals good, and you have a recipe for expansion of this same mediocrity, and, in the end, a disheartened theatre-going public.
The amateurs aren't ruining anything. The lazy professionals are. If the Twin Cities' arts scene would strive for meritocracy, things might start to change.