Arizona Theatre Company Closing?

For this blog post I wanted to take a step back and address an issue that is currently happening in the theatre world. Arizona Theatre Company, the state of Arizona’s official theatre, announced on Monday June 27^th, that they may have to suspend their 2016-2017 season and the company might have to shut down temporarily or even permanently. This is due to the over two million dollar debt that the theatre has accumulated over the past several years. This is saddening to several theatregoers because this season would have completed the theatre’s 50^th anniversary of show runs. However, there may be some light at the end of this company’s tunnel.

The theatre announced early this morning (June 30, 2016) that there might be a sizable donation made by board member Mike Kasser. Kasser guarantees that he will be putting down a $1 million donation towards the company’s fundraiser, cutting their debt in half. This guarantee brings some hope towards the 2016-2017 season, since the company has made a statement that if the debt can be erased, the season will not be suspended. On top of that, a private donor has committed $100,000 to assure that the company’s day-to-day activities still continue. The main question on many thespians’ minds is how did their debt become this large?

According to David Goldstein, artistic director of the Arizona Theatre Company, the debt has been an accumulation of the Great Recession. It started in 2008, and built all the way up to $1 million by 2013. In an interview with AZ Central, Goldstein stated that the company “can’t contain it any longer” (Goldstein, 2016). This fundraiser, if they can manage to complete it, will put the company at break even. They would be starting from the ground up, and it will allow them to build a fresh start.

The Fundraising deadline has been extended from July 1^st to July 15^th,  for more information or if anyone would like to make a contribution please visit the company’s website, or email at support@arizonatheatre.org.

Digital Age Digital Page

For this month’s blog post I wanted to focus on publishing in the theatre industry. As far as this matter goes, most individual books published in the theatre industry are sold as perusal scripts. Perusal scripts are full in length but have not yet been licensed for a production. While the end goal of these scripts are to be sold into performance productions, licensing fees are taken for every single individual performance. At the end of the day, however, most of scripts written are made in a performance-centered type of mind-set. A new type of publishing for the theatre industry that has come about in the past couple of years is the idea of publishing scripts on a digital platform.

In Kimberly Lew’s article From Stage to Screen: Theatre Publishers Going Digital, she discusses a new trend that has been coming about where publishers are offering their scripts in an eBook format. Lew claims that the first theatrical publishing company to do this was Original Works Publishing (OWP), where they offered many of their titles on Kindle’s platform, as well as some acting editions. OWP explained that in doing this, they cut down on production and distribution costs and were able to put the scripts in their reader’s hands almost immediately after an online purchase. Since the success of OWP’s eBook launch, other theatre publishers have hopped on the bandwagon. 

The idea of scripts being published digitally kind of goes hand in hand with some of my previous posts about how the theatre industry is slowly but surely progressing into this digital age. With the online streaming of performances, and now scripts available by eBook, these are new ways for the theatre world to stay relevant in an age where it seems to be falling behind. It’s a great stepping-stone for the theatre world and it will hopefully help create exposure for several playwrights that want to put their works out there.