"Inside The City" Interviews Mark Ferreira

Interesting interview with Mark Ferreira in "Inside The City":

Soon after his endeavors in medicine ended, he was hired to play piano for a season of shows at Garbeau’s Dinner Theater. Three seasons later, in 2007, the then-owner approached then-25-year-old Ferreira about buying the business.

“I said yes. I mean why not?” he says with a boyish shrug. “I was—and I think still am—the youngest dinner theater owner in the country.”

But his age, or lack thereof, didn’t stop Ferreira and his business partner from going on to break every record in Garbeau’s 28-year history within the first season.

“When we took over, we tried to modernize it,” he recalls. “Their previous model had been big, classic musicals—which are great—but we have a bar. I didn’t see martinis and the Von Trapp kids [from The Sound of Music] mixing particularly well. What we had to do when picking shows was think, ‘Could I have a cocktail and enjoy this show?’ We decided that ‘comfortably edgy’ was our best bet.”

That gamble paid off for two and a half years before the economy changed his luck.

“It’s ironic to think about it now,” Ferreira says with a smirk, “but before I bought it, the previous owner asked me what scared me about owning a theater. I said, ‘Four-dollar gas and a full-scale recession.’ I don’t want to say I caused the recession, but ... ”

Ferreira’s all-too-prescient prognosis was indeed what proved to be the company’s downfall.

“When gas hit four dollars a gallon in March 2008, our attendance dropped significantly—and never really recovered,” Ferreira says. “When money’s tight, people stop eating out and supporting the arts. When you’re both in one, it’s nearly
impossible to survive.”

Though he calls Garbeau’s “a true victim of the economy,” Ferreira has all but abandoned his ambitions.

“Small businesses are the backbone of America,” he says, “and that’s what theaters are. I think what the community needs to do now is let their cliques fade away and be so in love with their art that they learn to work together.”

I've heard Mark discuss his "$4.00/gallon of gas" theory several times to explain Garbeau's demise, but I'm not persuaded it's correct. After all, DMTC in Davis would seem to be similarly-exposed to gasoline price increases (3/4 of DMTC's audience resides outside Davis; half in Sacramento). DMTC and Garbeau's are both along freeway alignments on the edge of the Sacramento metropolitan area (same goes with Magic Circle in Roseville as well as the Woodland Opera House in Woodland). Yet, at least with DMTC finances, I didn't notice an attendance shock in early-to-midyear 2008 corresponding with the gasoline price increase. Mostly I was surprised by the complete absence of a sign of such an effect.

It may be that DMTC suffered its recession early. DMTC lost about 10% of its audience just with the move to the new theater in late 2005, and the slow return of these folks may have compensated for the absence of others driven away by high gas prices. Many theatergoers are extremely casual about their attendance, so when the venue changed, they simply lost track of where the company went.

During the New Year's Eve Gala this weekend, for example, I met one of these people: a Davis resident who had participated in YPT shows at DMTC in the 90's, but simply lost track of the theater company, and discovered only last week that the company still existed. If participants can lose the theater, why not the general public?

But part of it too maybe the older demographic DMTC tends to draw on - wealthier and less-vulnerable than the 'comfortably-edgy' demographic Garbeau's was shooting for.

I have no idea what Garbeau's finances were like, but I remember hearing radio ads when Garbeau's reopened under the new management. I remember staring at the radio, aghast and agog at the use of precious money for such a speculative purpose, money that might well have been borrowed, for all that I knew. I understand the magic appeal of advertising - all the community theaters need it like oxygen - but it's just too damned expensive! So, I wondered about the use of money.

Clearly, Garbeau's experienced a sudden shock in 2008, and Mark is probably correct in attributing the shock to gasoline price increases, but the shock passed by the fall of 2008 and the audience didn't return that quickly. Could it be that the real estate shock slammed the Rancho Cordova/ Folsom area far harder than the other corners of the Sacramento metropolitan area? Or were younger people slammed far harder than older people? Or was there an artistic component: shows that didn't have the widespread appeal of the big musicals couldn't pull the audience back into the theater in time (comfortably edgy became un-comfortably edgy under the gun)?

Mark refers to cliques with what sounds like a bit of exasperation, but comfortably-edgy and clique-y are close cousins: hard to get one without the other.

I don't know the answers, but this is an interesting interview with a great guy!