Putting a Face on the Future

Posted by Bruce Miller
The goal of the powers-that-be at Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV is to create a major regional theatre here in Central Virginia.

By “powers-that-be” I mean myself and Phil Whiteway, the Board of Trustees of Barksdale and the Board of Directors of Theatre IV, and our staff leadership. By “major” I mean a theatre that obtains national standing through reputable play selection, artistically excellent productions, the staging of world premieres, the transfer of successful productions to Off Broadway or other regional venues, a nurturing environment for the best of local professional theatre artists, and a welcoming environment for national talent.

A theatre as described above would have a major performance home that was itself an attraction. The annual operating budget would be six to seven million. In keeping with the nationally established model, about 40% of total revenue would come from contributions, and about 60% would come from earned revenue.

We know through strategic planning that the majority of our stakeholders, including audience members, contributors, volunteers, independent artists, and competing nonprofit theatres support this goal. The prevailing wisdom is that a major professional theatre benefits the entire community and theatre community-at-large by:
• presenting national caliber productions of important works,
• putting Richmond on the national map as a theatre city,
• providing gainful employment and benefits that allow and encourage outstanding theatre artists to come to or remain in Central Virginia,
• contributing significantly to the local economy,
• offering internship, volunteer and workshop opportunities that add to Virginia’s theatre education programs at the high school and college level,
• touring instructional programs to a broad cross section of Virginia’s elementary and middle schools,
• touring fellowship and entertainment programs to Central Virginia’s senior centers and retirement facilities, and
• sharing resources such as facilities, set and costume stock, and expertise, when possible, with smaller professional theatres in Greater Richmond.

This goal was not created or claimed by Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV. It was assigned to us by the Central Virginia Professional Theatre Task Force, which met regularly for two plus years beginning in 2003. The 17-member, independent Task Force was facilitated by Stephen Richard, Executive Director of Arena Stage. Members of the Task Force were recruited from Greater Richmond’s most respected theatre artists, educators, funders, ticket buyers, and civic and business leaders. The Task Force was assembled and funded with support from the Community Foundation and Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, precursor of CenterStage. The Task Force was formed following the collapse of TheatreVirginia, and assigned the responsibility of determining how Central Virginia should proceed in filling the gap left by TheatreVirginia’s dissolution.

After an extensive, independent, professional market study conducted by Shugoll Research out of Washington, D. C., the Task Force determined that the best way to advance professional theatre in Central Virginia was to build a major professional theatre of national standing on the foundations already established by Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV. These findings were turned over to the Boards of our two theatres, and accepted unanimously early in 2006.

The remainder of 2006 and all of 2007 were spent in extensive, comprehensive strategic planning. We hired Langford & Associates to conduct an independent development study in 2008. We contracted with Kelly O’Keefe and the VCU Brand Center to conduct an independent branding study in 2009. The results of the branding study were accepted in 2010. Silent development efforts have been underway ever since.

As I stated at the outset, our goal is to create a major regional theatre here in Central Virginia. That is our goal. We’re not there yet. We will never be able to achieve this goal alone. We hope to earn broad-based community support as we move forward into the future. We invite you to join us.

Not everyone agrees with the goal. Every once in a while we hear from someone who would like for Barksdale Theatre to remain small, behaving more like a community theatre than a major professional theatre. We listen to and respect all this input. We know that when changes are underway, the opinions of all stakeholders matter. We seek, value and appreciate your opinions. They will help us as we continue the hard work that lies ahead.

--Bruce Miller

Access - A Key to Success

Posted by Bruce Miller
One of the many wonderful things about theatre is that almost everyone likes it, from the Ivy League intellectual to the high school dropout. Of course not every Tom, Dick and Harry is going to be blown away by the same production. The show that is treasured by Tom and Dick is likely to be trashed by Harry and his lovely wife Harriet. But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who, if he or she were to keep at it for a while, wouldn’t find one show or another to love.

Jill may prefer Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia while Jack gets his kicks from The Great American Trailer Park Musical. But with theatre, each boy and girl who makes it up the hill is going to find, in pretty short order, those particular shows that rock his or her world.

So it’s been for centuries. Theatre prompted many a spirited gathering at the well in days BC just as it encourages vigorous water cooler conversations today. Theatre is not elitist and never has been. It’s populist. And theatre companies, especially nonprofit theatre companies, belong not to the select few, but to the community-at-large.

It follows then that each nonprofit theatre has a responsibility to be accessible to the broadest possible audience—welcoming everyone, excluding no one. This is an easy tenet to write into a vision statement or embrace as a core value. But on a day-to-day basis, a commitment to accessibility is devilishly hard to put into action.

At Barksdale, we are addressing accessibility through five focus areas:
opportunity for leadership,
diversity of programming,
reduction of financial roadblocks,
elimination of physical barriers, and
commitment to broad-based marketing.

In 2005, Barksdale's Board of Trustees created and adopted a multi-year Accessibility Plan to help us organize our efforts and assess our progress related to our commitment to inclusion. We are now well on our way to enacting that plan. I invite you to join us in determining the extent to which our efforts have been successful or misguided, beneficial or detrimental to the overall strength of your theatre.

Over the next several days, I’ll be writing blog posts about what policies and practices we’ve put into place in each focus area, and what the results have been. Coming up first, we’ll discuss Opportunities for Leadership. Be thinking about that issue, and please comment on the upcoming postings if you feel so inclined.

Like all planning efforts, accessibility planning is always a work-in-progress. Hopefully we are learning from both our successes and our failures, and making changes accordingly. Your input is not only most welcome, it is invaluable as we attempt to build a theatre on the intellectual foundation of an entire community, not merely the opinions of a chosen few.

So, please read and respond to the previous post as well as this one. Until my next entry, I hope to see you at the theatre!

--Bruce Miller

Planning the Future of Richmond Theatre

Posted by Bruce Miller
I would like to post a question.

What do we as a community—artists, audiences and residents at-large—want Richmond theatre to look like in ten or fifteen years? Where do we see Richmond theatre connecting and contributing both locally and nationally?

For the sake of this exercise, don’t try to answer the question for anyone other than yourself. You don’t have to provide the full answer, only your own. Try not to be excessively practical to the extent that you fail to dream. Try to resist being shamelessly extravagant and wind up with dreams that have no chance of ever coming true.

Don’t worry about the current recession or a swine flu pandemic shutting down all places of public assembly.

Imagine a supportive and growing audience (that’s what we have), a vibrant talent pool (ditto), a conservative giving community (alas, ditto again), and declining media coverage (it doesn’t take much to imagine that, does it?). Build on these strengths; find creative ways to fix these problems.

How many theatre companies should there be, how big should they be, what types of plays should they be producing, how much should they charge, how should they promote their offerings?

You can comment anonymously or take credit for your wisdom and creative thinking. You can comment once and then comment again if something new occurs to you. You can focus on the big picture, or talk at length about that one aspect of Richmond’s theatre world that really blows up your skirt or gets your knickers in a twist.

Be kind—we won’t publish anything that is unduly negative toward anyone or any entity. But it’s OK to be constructive and critical. Cast a knowing eye.

Your vision, opinions, ideas and constructive criticisms will inform the ongoing strategic planning process at Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV. But you need not limit your discussion to Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV. In fact, you don’t have to talk about us at all, if you’d rather not.

This is your chance to have an impact and change the world.

I hope we’ll get lots of comments.

See you at the theatre!

--Bruce Miller

Looking at LORT, Crunching the Numbers

Posted by Bruce Miller
Over the last six years, there’s been a lot of fervent discussion about whether Barksdale should become a LORT theatre. Quite a few folks have been involved in these discussions, and all opinions are welcome.

LORT stands for the League of Resident Theatres, which is a membership organization comprised of the nation’s leading professional theatre companies. LORT exists for many reasons, but one of the most important is to represent the 76 member theatres in collective bargaining with the three artist unions: AEA for actors and stage managers, SSDC for directors and choreographers, and USA for designers.

It takes money to operate as a LORT theatre. To super-generalize, LORT regulations require higher ratios of union (AEA) actors than Barksdale uses currently. This would make it more difficult, at least philosophically, to hire non-union locals.

Those ratios are one big issue. Barksdale has a long standing commitment to Richmond-based theatre artists. Money is another.

TheatreVirginia was a LORT theatre. TheatreVirginia went out of business in 2002. There are lots of reasons why, but a fundamental reason was that as ticket sales and funding failed to grow, TVA could no longer meet the expenses of its LORT obligations.

The STYLE report card implied that Richmond’s current lack of a LORT theatre was one of the reasons for actors moving on to larger markets. As I've mentioned earlier, I'm not convinced that artists are leaving at a greater rate than before, and I'm even less certain that the lack of a LORT theatre is the reason for the departure of the ones who are choosing to move on. But we're very open to everyone's input as we continue to analyze the pros and cons of such a major decision.

The global view is this. I think there are at least ten metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) that are larger than Richmond and don’t have a LORT theatre: Sacramento, CA (#26), Orlando, FL (#27), San Antonio, TX (#29), Las Vegas, NV (#31), Columbus, OH (#32), Charlotte, NC (#36), Austin, TX (#37), Nashville, TN (#39), Jacksonville, FL (#40) and Memphis, TN (#41).

And there are plenty of great theatres that we all know and love that aren’t LORT. In Chicago, of the 55 AEA theatres, only three are LORT. And the 52 that are not include Steppenwolf, Victory Gardens, Chicago Shakespeare and Lookingglass. Closer to home, neither Signature Theatre in NoVA nor Wooly Mammoth and Studio in D. C. work under LORT contracts.

Barksdale Theatre at Willow Lawn’s current SPT contract allows for a higher ratio of non-union locals (the union uses the term non-professionals). Currently our seasonal contract requires that we issue AEA contracts to 60% of all cast members and 100% of all stage managers, with a cap of six AEA actors required for shows with casts of ten or more.

So what does LORT really mean? Well, for one thing, it gives you a seat at the adult table in terms of national standing. As Dave Timberline mentioned, David Leong at VCU would love to see us join LORT, because it would add more prestige to the resumes of his students who work with us.

You would not be off the mark to say that, in terms of “professionalism” and "national standing," SPT is one notch below LORT, and one or more notches above several of the other options that are out there. Barksdale Theatre at Willow Lawn is Richmond’s only SPT. Prior to 2001, Barksdale used AEA actors only in rare instances and employed them under Guest Artist agreements. Barksdale at Hanover Tavern still uses Guest Artist agreeements.

There are currently 76 major professional theatres that are members of LORT. Of these, 61 are located in MSAs larger than Richmond/Petersburg. One, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, is located in the 42nd largest MSA, only slightly larger than Richmond/Petersburg, the 43rd largest MSA (if you separate Washington D. C. and Baltimore into two MSAs). Fourteen are located in MSAs smaller than Richmond/Petersburg.

These 14 professional theatres, listed in order of the size of their MSAs, are:

Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, CT, the 44th largest MSA;
Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, CT, also in the 44th largest MSA;
Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, NY, the 46th largest MSA;
Geva Theatre Company in Rochester, NY, the 49th largest MSA;
PlayMakers Repertory Theatre in Chapel Hill, NC, the 51st largest MSA;
Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, NY, the 57th largest MSA;
Clarence Brown Theatre Company in Knoxville, TN, the 77th largest MSA;
Arkansas Repertory Theatre in Little Rock, AR, the 79th largest MSA;
Syracuse Stage in Syracuse, NY, the 80th largest MSA;
Portland Stage Company in Portland, ME, the 97th largest MSA;
McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ, the 134th largest MSA;
Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, AL, the 135th largest MSA;
Barter Theatre in Abingdon, VA, the 152nd largest MSA; and
Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA, the 301st largest MSA.

In an effort to compare apples to apples, we’ve been looking at these 15 professional theatres to see how they are able to afford LORT membership in communities similar to or smaller than Richmond/Petersburg. I encourage you to investigate these theatres yourself and join in our strategic planning.

More to come.

--Bruce Miller

Three Days at the Kennedy Center

Anne Murphy Douglas, President of the Board of Theatre IV, and Bennett Fidlow, new Board member at Barksdale Theatre, joined Phil and me for a three-day seminar with Michael Kaiser and others at the Kennedy Center. We returned yesterday afternoon after a highly informative, intensive and fun learning experience. We’re eager to put our newfound insights to good use here in Richmond.

For those who don’t know, Michael Kaiser (who also recently spoke at the University of Richmond’s Modlin Center) is a world-renowned arts leader. Prior to becoming President of the Kennedy Center in 2001, Michael served as Executive Director of the Royal Opera House (the largest performing arts organization in the UK), Executive Director of American Ballet Theatre, Executive Director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater (the world’s largest modern dance organization), and General Manager of the Kansas City Ballet.

Spending two and a half days with Michael feels a little like cramming a year of arts administration training into 20 hours. Part of his brilliance is that he is able to speak clearly and simply, boiling down his extensive experience and research into comprehensible two-hour sessions. His focus areas at seminars such as this include Building an Effective and Energized Board, Strategic Planning, and Institutional Marketing. Other senior executives from the Kennedy Center staff spoke from their areas of expertise: Business Management, Development, Technology and Program Marketing.

Phil and I have been in our positions for 32 years, and never have I felt more in sync with a speaker. In point after point, it was clear that Michael knew exactly what he was talking about. And the points he made applied not only to mammoth international organizations (the Kennedy Center has an annual budget of approximately $160 million) but also to large regional organizations like Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV (combined annual budgets of approximately $5 million).

If you’ve been to many seminars like this, you know that experts can sometimes speak for hours in a theoretical realm, offering little practical advice. Michael knows how to cut to the chase—how to identify the challenges we face and then offer specific suggestions on how to address these challenges. It really was a terrific learning experience, very validating, mind-stretching and informative.

Special thanks to the Virginia Commission for the Arts for funding our participation through their Technical Assistance grant program, and to Anne and Bennett for giving up their time to join us. This is one seminar that I think will pay off handsomely in the futures of Barksdale Theatre, Theatre IV and the Metro Richmond arts scene in general.