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A Marriage Of Convenience
Two northern California theatre groups with different
cultures banded together to finance, renovate and operate a new playhouse.
The alliance required some adjustments, but the benefits have outweighed the
disadvantages
In Santa Rosa, Calif., two theatre groups with admittedly different cultures have combined forces to renovate a warehouse into a theatre that is being used by both companies. The Santa Rosa Players (SRP) and the Actors Theatre (AT) are learning to exist under one roof, but will the marriage last?
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, some background on the two companies and how they came to find each other.
SRP was founded in 1970 and had been going strong for 16 years when a group of its actors approached the board of directors to put on a play that had just been written. The board refused, so the determined actors rolled out and created their own theatre group—AT—to launch Tom Toper’s play “Nuts.”
Each company carved out its own niche. SRP put on popular plays and musicals, while AT embraced newer, edgier plays. Although they faced similar challenges—funding, keeping volunteers, attracting an audience and finding workable performance space—they had remarkably little crossover of actors, volunteers or audience for two theatre groups in the same town.
More space needed
Fast-forward 16 years to 2002. AT, cramped by its facility’s 70-seat
capacity, was looking for a larger space. Artistic Director Argo Thompson
considered the 107-year-old Del Monte cannery in Santa Rosa’s Railroad
Square. His great-grandfather had worked there, and Thomson could imagine
the space as a centrally located semi-professional and community theatre.
But the expense to renovate was clearly beyond the means of the theatre’s
budget, so he kept looking.
A few years later, Pam Zainer, then president of the SRP board, also looked at the cannery building. “We rented the Merlo Theatre at the Luther Burbank Center for four weeks at a time,” she explains.“Between performances, we had no home, no office, no place to build sets or rehearse. We stored equipment and office materials at members’ homes.”
Zainer, too, could envision the cannery as a vibrant downtown theatre, but the expense to renovate was too much to take on alone, so she put out a call to the local theatre community: Was anyone interested in joining forces to build a new theatre in Santa Rosa in the old Del Monte cannery?
Back together again
AT’s Thompson was. It was a move that reunited two groups that had split
nearly 20 years earlier. Consider it a marriage of convenience.
Neither group could afford to build a new theatre, but together they managed to pull off a $1.1 million renovation. “We absolutely didn’t have the resources to do this on our own,” says Danielle Cain, managing director of the new theatre, called Sixth Street Playhouse. “It was only possible by joining forces.”
The Santa Rosa Players and the Actors Theatre raised $500,000
in gifts and pledges in less than a year, but both groups also incurred a
combined operational shortfall of almost $800,000 while their attention was
diverted by fund-raising efforts. Approximately $700,000 is still owed for
the renovation, but Thompson is confident that the debt will be paid off in
three to five years. Meanwhile, the theatre companies and audiences are thrilled
with the new space.
Thompson says a fund-raising campaign is planned with a goal of $1.5 million,
half to pay off the existing loan and the other half to create an emergency
fund or endowment to cushion any future lean years.
The reunion wasn’t all romance. “There were, and still are, difficulties,” says Thompson, executive director of Sixth Street Playhouse. “Blending two companies with very different cultures is a continuing challenge. It was as though we liked the apartment, so we moved in together. Maybe if we were smarter about it, we would have taken our time, gotten to know each other better first, worked out all the details. But if we were smarter about it, I don’t know if we would have pulled it off. If we’d stepped back and really looked at it, we might have said, ‘This is insanity.’ But we just jumped in with both feet—well, all four feet. And it worked. Once we were in renovations, there was no way to go but right through the middle.”
“It all happened remarkably quickly,” agrees Cain. “In two years we found the site, raised enough money to make it go, turned a warehouse into a theatre and merged two companies, all while putting on two full seasons. The energy and excitement was amazing. But it took all our energy to get to opening night. We should have spent more time working out the nitty-gritty details about what would happen the morning after.”
So far, so good
Sixth Street Playhouse opened to sellout crowds in February 2005 with an SRP
production of “Mame.” AT followed on its heels with a well-received
production of “[sic].” The new theatre has a bigger thrust stage,
a new control booth for sound and lights and even an orchestra pit. “You
can tell that it was designed by someone who understands live theatre,”
Thompson says. “The front of the house and the back of the house are
exactly evenly divided. Both parts are on separate lighting and heating systems,
so you’re not freezing out the audience to protect the cast from heat
stroke.”
The lobby is the same size as the stage, 44 feet wide and 26 feet across, and the shop area is the same. “We have three break-out areas that we can rehearse in,” Thompson adds. “We have eight shows a year. When one closes, we have one week of load-in, one week of tech and a half week of previews, so we’re consistently building or in rehearsal for multiple shows.”
The house seats 185 people with lots of legroom (more than three feet) and a raked auditorium floor to keep clear sightlines. Backstage, the actors no longer huddle in a hallway between acts. There is a dressing room, rehearsal space and an area to build and store sets.
Key factors evaluated
“When Santa Rosa Players searched for a new permanent venue, we realized
that there were very few, if any, suitable spaces available,” says Zainer,
current president of the Sixth Street Playhouse board. “The cannery space
was ideal. It’s a good size, and it has location, historical significance,
charm and character.”
“When the two companies started talking, it was all about the space,” says Thompson. “One thing led to another, and it became evident that a merger would be more fiscally responsible, because then we would have economies of scale. But we had to figure out a way to keep both brands intact, and each company’s mission intact.”
They decided to create one board and a staff that handle finances, operations and fundraising for both companies, but each company has an artistic director responsible for maintaining the integrity of the organization’s vision.
Creating an equitable financial arrangement for the two companies was easier than it sounded. “The groups were remarkably similar financially,” says Thompson. “Actors Theatre was bringing in a little more because they were doing more productions, but Santa Rosa Players was doing musicals, so they had the potential to bring in more. We looked at the financial records for the past 10 seasons and averaged them out, and the board did an analysis measuring the pros and cons, and the pros so outweighed the cons that it became really evident that this could work. But the location was the catalyst.”
What turned out to be more challenging was blending the cultures of the companies. “The two companies were run so uniquely,” explains Thompson. “Santa Rosa Players was very board-driven. Many of their artists were on the board, so they were used to making decisions together, as a group. Actors Theatre had a board that was the fund-raising mechanism and fiscal oversight, but they had hired a staff to make the decisions on a day-to-day basis, so combining those two cultures was challenging. It still feels sometimes like there are too many cooks in the kitchen.”
“It was a major challenge merging a community volunteer-based company with a professionally staffed company and finding ways to accommodate both without com-promising either organization,” agrees Zainer. “The Sixth Street Playhouse keeps the branding and image of each company separate so that Santa Rosa Players continues to produce mostly classic musicals and Actors Theatre continues to produce mostly contemporary plays. They complement each other.”
Board, staff shakeout
Board members from both companies were invited to join the board of the Sixth
Street Playhouse. Two members left. “We also had some staff that burned
out,” says Thompson. “Every fairy tale has a happy ending, but every
fairy tale has a monster. That was our monster. The development staff took
it first, because they were already in action.”
Sixth Street Playhouse has six part-time staff members: a finance director, a manage-ment director, an artistic director for each of the two companies, a development director and a technical development director. The theatre also has a volunteer box office manager.
To resolve conflicts, Sixth Street Playhouse created a flow chart of responsibilities, a move Thompson says probably should have been done earlier. The board spent more time than anticipated defining what each board member and staff member is responsible for and where the decisions are made, but the efforts seem to be paying off. “It started with a love for the space, but now we’re starting to develop a love of each other for what we bring to the table,” says Thompson. “We try to admire and adopt the best practices. But it’s not completely painless yet.”
Cain agrees that the space and financial benefits were clear from the beginning, but recognizing each other’s strengths took a little longer. “In retrospect, I think that each group brought such different and valuable strengths to the table. I don’t think this would have been possible at all without combining not just our finances but our individual strengths, as well as tremendous reservoirs of energy from every member of both companies.”
Unexpected benefits
Although there were unexpected obstacles, there were also some unexpected
benefits. The combined companies can go after rights to bigger shows. Their
volunteer base has grown. Audiences are starting to cross over. The Sixth
Street Theatre offers subscriptions to either AT, SRP, or both—but subscribers
to AT, for example, get tickets to one free SRP performance, and vice versa.“And
the cast members are now crossing over more than ever before,” says Thompson.
“It will be great to see what fruit that exchange of creativity will
bear.”
“It all began with Santa Rosa Players needing to find a permanent home, and ended up as a wonderful merger of two great companies,” says Zainer.
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