Illustrations by Craig LaRotonda
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It's opening night of White Christmas at the 5th Avenue Theatre, and the cast has come out for the grand finale. The actors fill the stage wearing holiday outfits of red and green, as resplendent, if also slightly dorky, as a catalog cover. They've nailed the Irving Berlin tunes with the determined proficiency of so many master carpenters, and as they begin the reprise of the title number, suddenly it begins to snow, right here in the theater, tiny clumps of soap bubbles drifting into the audience. The crowd loves the effect and the show, and almost before the curtain comes down, they're on their feet applauding wildly.
As I file out with the happy chattering audience, hearts filled with yuletide cheer and heads full of infectious tunes they'll be stuck with for weeks, I also detect a warm glow of satisfaction that comes when a Seattle show has been well received. It's the confirmation of a civic truth, one as well established as the rain, the coffee, and the awful traffic.
Here it is: Seattle is a theater town.
I know this because I've read it for years in airline magazines, tourist brochures, and every local guide book (including one I wrote back in 2002). Recent figures from Seattle's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs reveal that our Creative Vitality Index Score is a full 5.2 times the country as a whole! (The index measures things like arts organization income and employment.) "Obviously, this is a community that values and supports the arts sector," said the office.
Oh, maybe we're not New York or Chicago, the home of theaters like Steppenwolf and artists like David Mamet, William Macy, and John Malkovich. But we have five large professional mainstages: the Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman, ACT, the 5th Avenue, and the Seattle Children's Theatre. Touring musicals and the occasional play take up residence in two splendid Vaudeville-era houses, the Paramount and the Moore. Dozens of smaller fringe theaters produce in venues scattered throughout Capitol Hill, downtown, and farther abroad. And there are respected midsized operations like Taproot, Book-It, On the Boards, and Seattle Shakespeare.
Even New York took notice of us recently, handing a 2006 Tony award for Best Regional Theater to Intiman. The Wedding Singer, an adaptation of the Adam Sandler movie which premiered this past January at the 5th Avenue, was also nominated for Best Musical. "This tells the world what we already knew," Michael Killoren, director of Seattle's arts office, told Variety when the Tony nominations were announced. "This is an important theater town. Creativity is in the water in this city." (Of course, The Wedding Singer isn't really a product of Seattle or its water. Like Hairspray before it, the musical was created by New York producers and brought in for a tryout in front of Seattle audiences.)
Knowing all this, surrounded by happy theatergoers in a holiday mood, and having watched, worked in, and thought about Seattle theater for the past 12 years, why was I so melancholy? Why did I find myself again questioning that civic truth that we're a great town for theater? Why is it that every theater person I talk to, administrators, artistic directors, and artists, all feel the same thing—that it's getting harder to produce theater in Seattle?
It could be because our theaters keep closing.
"When they sent out the press release about the closing, I honestly think the board believed that no one would really care all that much," says Allison Narver, the artistic director of the Empty Space, which was shuttered in October after 36 years.
The company had weathered severe financial problems just two years ago, and had since cut its staff and number of shows in a season, and, most crucially, moved from its longtime Fremont home to a rent-free space on the campus of Seattle University. The company's first two plays of 2006—solo powerhouse Lauren Weedman's Bust and Paul Mullin's Louis Slotin Sonata—seemed to be a sign that the company was back in business, serving up popular provocative stuff as good as anything they'd produced in the past 10 years. Weedman sold out several performances, and while Mullin's show didn't do quite as well, critics were enthusiastic.
But at the Monday, Oct. 23, board meeting, there was an ominous addition to the regular attendees: a bankruptcy lawyer. Two nights later, at a second meeting, the board asked for Narver and her managing director to leave the room, took a vote, and decided to close the theatre. By week's end the press release went out and the Space was officially history.
It was only the latest, but perhaps the most heartbreaking, in a steady string of closures over the last decade that has included numerous midsized theaters (the Group, the Bathhouse, Center Stage, Alice B.) and scores of smaller companies, as well as the Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival. Tallying up the gain and loss columns on Seattle theater, there's just no question that we have lost more venues, more companies, and more artists in the past decade than we have gained. The newest casualty may be Capitol Hill's Northwest Actor's Studio, a somewhat dilapidated but beloved rental for numerous small fringe groups. In early December, the managers announced they were $25,000 in the hole, and have been holding a series of fund-raisers, including burlesque shows and live bands, to raise the cash.
