Happy Hour to the Rescue

More from our Hard Times Survival Guide: Theatres lure younger crowds with cheap tickets and free booze, not just to earn money today but to guarantee an audience tomorrow.

Illustration by Andrew Saeger for City Arts

The economic clouds continue to gather around regional arts organizations, especially theatres. Even the biggest nonprofit theatre in the state, the once-luxuriant Seattle Rep, had to cut its budget by a third, cancel two plays and give staffers unpaid furlough days.

Though the number of nonprofit theatres has doubled in the last fifteen years, audience attendance has declined since 1992. The fugue roils. “Season ticket sales are down from last year,” says Issaquah’s Village Theatre’s executive producer Robb Hunt, in the apologetic manner of a waiter confessing the night’s special is unavailable. “About 8 or 9 percent.” He smiles. He’s been here before.

Hunt helped found Village Theatre, one of the region’s largest Equity theatres, in 1979. He sits in his office above its proscenium stage on Front Street in downtown Issaquah. Jawbreaker-size raindrops slap his window. The 2008/09 season’s fourth show, an original musical called Stunt Girl, about the true-life antics of journalist Nellie Bly, opened last night, and he’s been settling up with contractors all day. The season’s third show, The Importance of Being Earnest, got favorable reviews but did not hit its budget mark. Hunt’s eyes are a little glazed, but he’s charming. He smiles on cue and his handshake is warm. He refuses to play the same old tune.

He has many creative and successful funding resources at his command. Since the theatre has the highest roof in the valley, cellular providers rent tower space for more than the income of royalties for all the productions in the theatre’s Village Originals series.

The Village Originals, the theatre’s homegrown musical incubator, is no after-school program, by the way. The wildly-raved-about Next to Normal, Brian Yorkey’s musical about manic depression, which was just nominated for eleven Tony Awards, started in 2005 as a Village Original called Feeling Electric. It took Broadway by storm, and very much by surprise.

Of course, like a parent watching a teen land a free ride to Harvard, Hunt knows his pride in his offspring doesn’t guarantee trickle-down success for Village.

The theatre has not replaced the full-time folk who have left its marketing and administration departments; Hunt is devising ways to reduce production hours and share costs with other arts organizations; and there is still more to be done to guarantee fiscal solvency.

So, for the upcoming thirtieth-anniversary season, when Hunt mails out his new super brochure to, literally, a million people, Village will announce that it is doing something it’s never done before: reaching out directly to the vaunted and elusive twenty-one-to-thirty-five-year-old set. The initiative, known as “Curtain Call,” will be an actual, on-the-ground social network. No doubt there will be a Facebook analogue.

If successful, Curtain Call may not only cool recessionary fevers but set the stage for its future audiences. It’s intended to give updates to the typical baby boomer theatregoer and lure the young ones in, so when they grow up, have families and are looking for something to do, they will actually come to the theatre too.

“There’s massive amounts of funding for this idea,” says Hunt. Of course, he says, Village gets little of it because it’s in Issaquah, not in Seattle. But still he smiles. “We recognize we have to do it because every other theatre is doing it.”

He’s right. At 5th Avenue Theatre it’s the 5th Avenue Club. At Pacific Northwest Ballet it’s Backstage Pass. Seattle Opera has the BRAVO! Club; Seattle Rep, the Crew; Teatro ZinZanni, the Troupe; and Seattle Symphony, WolfGang.

These programs are simple and targeted at what people this age need most when peeling themselves away from their computer screens: low prices and the promise of schmoozing. In one way or another, arts groups all invite young professionals to spend their happy hours in close proximity to the performing arts. On May 27, the groups joined forces to host Spring Fling, a cheap-ticket fundraising gala for twenty- to thirty-somethings only. For $150, “Curtain Callers” get a season ticket plus pre- and post-show gatherings at nearby restaurants. And while Intiman doesn’t have a hipster club per se, they just cut straight to the booze and served complimentary White Russians following all performances of Crime and Punishment.

Capitalizing on a different vein of youthful interest, Seattle Opera has deftly tapped into the reality-TV culture. Confessions of a First-Time Operagoer asks an opera novice who has never seen a production of Wagner’s Ring to create a 10-minute documentary about his or her experience of witnessing the whole production, from rehearsal to final performance. The project helps satisfy the requirements of the Opera’s four-year grant from the Wallace Foundation, which focuses on building relationships with the community through technology.

OK, so theatres get it. New generation equals new programming, new messaging. But are younger folks buying it? Are they willing to invest in regional musical theatre? The national numbers say no, but that may just be more panicked swine-flu reporting. On the other hand, Village is still producing musicals like Showboat — the last production you’d associate with captivating new audiences. But it’s likely too early to tell.