Civic Theatre West Closes

The Sacramento theater community was rocked this evening by news that Civic Theatre West (CTW) was abruptly closing.

I had thought that, moneywise, CTW was the strongest musical theater in the local area. Looks deceive, I guess....

According to the Bee:

Stevens said the theater's continuing debt of $500,000 had become untenable, and the board decided the responsible course of action was to close its doors.

"We had continuing unpaid obligations, but no operational buffer," Stevens said. "The responsible thing to do is to stop operations rather than keeping the wheels turning and hoping against hope when it really can't be done."

...Last year, the theater company's annual operating budget was $1.1 million. Civic Theatre West also has one the largest children's theater workshops in the state, and had more than 1,200 subscribers for its season last year.

Let's see, if they were paying banks for these loans they had to be paying $2,500.00 per month, interest alone, minimum. If they were paying principal too, the amounts would be considerably greater, of course. That's a heavy burden, but not insurmountable - except that they were paying salaries too. And who knows how many other costs they had?

Sometimes, with community theater, it comes down to a will to live: the urge for survival. The 'responsible' businessmanlike thing to do may be to close the doors, but it's sometimes better to be the artist, stridently and willfully deny reality, and keep thrashing on nonetheless. Like that Elvis-loving Chilean miner who kept up his running regimen, when most people would have sunk into depressed torpor.

I knew this Malthusian moment was coming for the community theaters. Over the last fifteen years, the number of groups have proliferated, so that now the many groups are starved for audiences, talent, and money. And now we have the recession too. The weak, halt, and sick will start falling.

But it's hard to tell who the weak, halt, and sick are. It's like spotting the weakest person in a Haitiian cholera ward - truth be told, no one looks all that strong. As I say, I thought CTW was the strongest in the local area. Maybe it is, technically. But maybe it has the weakest will to live.