http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-pasadena-playhouse30-2010jan30,0,1723543.story
Pasadena Playhouse will close Feb. 7 Financial woes forced the decision. Bankruptcy filing is among the options under consideration. By Mike Boehm Los Angeles Times 12:21 PM PST, January 29, 2010 The Pasadena Playhouse will close Feb. 7 after the final performance of its current production of "Camelot," leaving its future in jeopardy as company leaders explore ways out of its financial woes, including a possible bankruptcy filing. Stephen Eich, the executive director hired last June to run the theater, said 37 employees learned at a staff meeting Thursday that they would be out of work. The playhouse is essentially out of cash to continue running, he said, and faces more than $500,000 in immediate bills, plus more than $1.5 million owed on bank loans and other debts that have dogged the nonprofit company since the mid-1990s. Founded in 1917, the Playhouse was designated in 1937 as the state theater of California. Eich said that tapping into about $6 million donated for a capital campaign to refurbish the playhouse was not an option. "It just would not be any way for us to solve the problems of the place. Those monies are restricted for the building." Instead, he said, he and longtime artistic director Sheldon Epps and the playhouse's board will try to come up with a plan to set the company on its feet, rather than try to keep it going on the hand-to-mouth basis that became impossible as a down economy took a toll on donations. A first step, Eich said, will be hiring a lawyer to advise on such matters as a possible bankruptcy. Eich said he isn't sure if the playhouse's 8,000 subscribers will be reimbursed. "We have subscribers wanting to see the rest of the season. We're devastated by that," he said. Asked the playhouse's chances of surviving a shutdown, Eich said, "There is an unequivocal desire for the playhouse to survive. It seems to me that for that to occur, our position in the community needs to be redefined as it relates to the city and the funding community. Work needs to be done." Eich said the playhouse had pinned its hopes on finding a donor who would give $5 million to have the 684-seat main stage named in his or her honor, but that never materialized. The Playhouse's financial problems surfaced in late September, when it closed a show a week early to save expenses -- "The Night of the Child," a drama by Charles Randolph-Wright that starred Jo-Beth Williams as a woman trying to recover from a family tragedy. Eich said at the time that four employees had been laid off, and that the playhouse needed donations of more than $1 million by year's end to cover up to $600,000 in bills and create a cushion as it headed into the 2010 season. The playhouse also quietly scaled back its season. The playhouse made its name nationally starting in the late 1920s, when, in addition to staging plays, it was home to a university-level theater training program that also featured a branch operation in New York City. Nick Nolte, Charles Bronson, Robert Young, Raymond Burr, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Sally Struthers were among its students or staff members The latest difficulties came on top of a 2008 season during which the economy tanked and the playhouse failed to meet its fundraising targets, leading to a deficit that Eich pegged at $500,000 or more. The nation's economic woes came at a time when the playhouse had been focusing some of its planning and fundraising energy on visions of bigger things. In 2007 it had announced that architect Frank Gehry was donating his services to design a new, 300- to 400-seat theater to augment the main stage, a 684-seat house in the Spanish colonial building that's a California historical landmark. Before tackling that larger project, Gehry was going to redo the existing second stage, the 86-seat Carrie Hamilton Theatre. It's named in memory of the actress daughter of playhouse board member Carol Burnett (Hamilton died of cancer in 2002), and has been home to the Furious Theatre Co., whose leader, Damaso Rodriguez, is associate artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse. Although the playhouse had announced fundraising successes in recent years, including a $3-million gift from an anonymous donor in October 2008, Epps acknowledged last fall that some of those involved pledges to be paid over a long term, not money in hand that could relieve immediate fiscal pressures. The City of Pasadena bought the playhouse in 1975 and later transferred it to real estate developer David Houk, who, after more than 16 dormant years, relaunched it in 1986, with a dream of turning it into a place to develop shows that would tour a circuit of other California venues under the banner of Houk's Theatre Corp. of America. The plan made some headway, but in 1994 it crumbled during a recession economy, and in 1995 Theatre Corp. went bankrupt. The nonprofit corporation that runs the theater -- subleasing it from the city, which in turn leases it from a new private owner -- had to shoulder about $2.5 million in debt. The Epps era began in 1997, when he was hired away from the Old Globe in San Diego, where he had been associate artistic director. Under Epps and executive director Lyla White, the playhouse chipped away at debt, but tax records show that the post-Sept. 11 recession led to a dwindling of donations and more red ink, with the debt again rising to more than $1 million. When good times returned, the playhouse enjoyed budget surpluses and scored artistic and box office successes with shows such as a 2006 production of August Wilson's "Fences." With Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett starring as the embittered ex-ballplayer and his wife, it played to sold-out houses, grossing more than $1 million. That fueled a peak financial year for the playhouse, which saw revenue rise to $9.2 million in 2006, yielding a budget surplus of nearly $2 million. The playhouse spent a record $8.3 million during 2007, according to its tax return, including a large-scale musical version of the hit film "Sister Act." It still managed a $520,000 surplus. Soon, however, the recession began to take its toll: In 2008, records show, the Playhouse's box office take fell from $4 million to $3.2 million, its lowest since the recession year of 2003. ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Internet: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
