Fixing Buffalo:
Click here to read more about fixing BuffaloSurvival Without City Support
Western New York theater companies talk about the funding crisis.
By Heather Violanti
In the wake of the 2001 cultural budget cuts, local theaters, with no guarantee of the city restoring funding, must balance fiscal ingenuity with artistic integrity.
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“The loss of funding has forced us to be creative. We’re theater people, and if we can’t be creative, then who can?” says Richard Lambert, executive director of the New Phoenix Theatre, a small alternative company on North Johnson Park. The New Phoenix was hit especially hard.
“We’re one of the smaller theater companies in town, so funding from the city is more important to us than most. We were expecting a $1000 grant from the city to cover a new light board, and when it came time to borrow the money, the grant was pulled,” explains Lambert.
While Buffalo theaters remain vibrant, the loss of city funds has made them re-evaluate how they do business. “There’s not much money to pay the actors, the technicians and designers that you need to do a show,” Lambert says. “Some people may have to go back to a lesser salary, or sometimes a share in the box office as opposed to a salary. The important thing is to get the work done without an extensive budget. We have to be more innovative.”
Lambert suggests that companies will now have to solidify their artistic identities, to more firmly establish the audiences they serve.
“It’s going to make people rethink their programs a little carefully about how to be true to themselves while giving the people what they want, so they’ll return to the theater. It makes the identity of the theater companies more important,” he says.
The Kavinoky Theatre, located in a restored auditorium on the D’Youville campus, was greatly affected by the elimination of cultural funding.
“It had a devastating impact on us. We relied on the funding for so many things. It left tremendous holes in our budget, “ says Thomas Martin, director-in-residence at the Kavinoky.
“It’s had a direct impact on our selection of programs. We always select plays on their literary merit and importance. That remains true for this season, but we are also keeping an eye on broad commercial appeal, plays that have already interested our audience,” says Martin. This season, the Kavinoky will produce such literary crowd-pleasers as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sherlock Holmes: The Last Act and such lesser-performed, smaller cast works as David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre. They are also reviving My Fair Lady, a work first performed at the Kavinoky twenty years ago whose record still stands as the company’s biggest box office draw.
“My Fair Lady is perhaps the most literate musical ever written. Twenty years ago, it was the biggest box office draw in Kavinoky history,” says Martin.
Vincent O’Neill, founder and artistic director of the Irish Classical Theatre, points out that not only are theaters looking to chose plays that pack in audiences, they also have to find works that satisfy more limited production criteria.
“As we’re going through the season selection process, we realize we can’t do several plays with large casts, or plays that require a lot of building, or a budget allocated to wigs or furniture. So you can’t do a lot of period plays, either. We don’t have quite the same freedom to choose,” explains O’Neill. The Irish Classical Theatre’s new season includes two “period” pieces, Lady Windermere’s Fan and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, as well as more recent works with smaller casts, such as the seldom-seen My Sister in This House by Wendy Kesselman, a reinterpretation of the events that inspired Jean Genet’s play, The Maids.
Funding cuts won’t affect one local theater, Buffalo United Artists. The company, which specializes in alternative theater and theater for the gay community, refuses to seek city money.
“We don’t get any funds. We get our money through our box office. That’s the way we do theater. We’re one of the few companies that exclusively depend on audience support to survive,” states founder and executive producer Javier Bustillos, who formed the theater with friends ten years ago.
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Buffalo United Artists' Javier Bustillos.
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Bustillos reasons not seeking grants actually saves the Buffalo United Artists time and money.
“When we first started, we applied for grants like so many other theaters. But that takes time and requires staffing, so after a few years, we just thought, you know, why bother?,” he says.
Buffalo United Artists’ unique strategy works in part because it is a small company with a volunteer staff that does a limited amount of full-scale productions. While they manage to survive without recourse to grants and corporate sponsorships, for larger theaters, it’s a different story.
“Any time you lose anything in this economy, it will have a negative effect on an organization. The amount of funding we received from the city of Buffalo was not a huge amount of our total budget, but it’s not as if we have huge surpluses to make up for it. We had to find the money from somewhere else. We were able to get donations from individuals, and we were fortunate that ticket sales were good this year,” says Ken Neufeld, executive director of Studio Arena, the only theater in the city that is a member of the League of Regional Theatres.
While much smaller than Studio Arena, the Kavinoky turned to increased private donations, and more corporate sponsors.
“We needed to go to corporate sponsorship, more so than we used before, and private donations. We’ve stepped up on private donations and funds from the corporate sector,” says the Kavinoky’s Thomas Martin.
The Irish Classical Theatre also found individual donors to help fill the new gaps in their budget, but it was difficult at first.
“In the wake of September 11, many people understandably diverted funds to the Red Cross, the United Way, or other organizations in New York,” explains Vincent O’ Neill, the theater’s founder and artistic director.
The economic downturn after Sept. 11 also affected ticket sales, theaters’ main source of revenue. At first, sales plummeted. Later, they soared as audience members sought solace or escapist entertainment.
“For about two weeks after Sept. 11, our ticket sales were down. Then, people came back in greater numbers than before,” adds O’ Neill.
“Corporations who had been interested in buying out shows for events are slow to spend. They’re being more discretionary with their money,” he says.
Although theaters managed to find new funding sources, some adjustments were necessary to keep on budget. In order to ensure the immediate survival of their main stages, some theaters were forced to cut extra programming that once helped foster future artists and audience members.
Studio Arena eliminated some of their in-school programming, a decision influenced in part by the loss of city funding.
“We had some in school programming about the empowerment of the arts that we discontinued. Our decision was not directly related to the budget cuts, but it was influenced by it,” Neufeld says.
The Irish Classical Theatre ended their Sundays at Seven series, which helped foster new playwrights and directors.
“We had applied for a $15,000 grant for our Sundays at Seven series, which features world premieres of new plays and experimental plays normally not done elsewhere. It was a great opportunity for young actors, directors, designers who would normally not have the opportunity to produce plays elsewhere, as well as local playwrights,” says O’Neill, who hopes to reinstate the series in a future season.
Ken Neufeld believes the city should do more to support its arts organizations, or else they might lose a valuable resource.
“Should cities be supporting their cultural organizations? The answer is yes, if you believe that arts organizations help improve the standard of living and the quality of life within a community. These organizations are worthy of support. They’re the soul of the city,” he says.
“I think it’s extremely short-sighted of the city to decide that cultural funding is in sense expendable,” Neufeld adds.
In its fraught relationship with cultural funding, Buffalo is not unique.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, theaters across the nation, and in New York in particular, struggled to find audiences. The struggle continues today, with advance ticket sales down and patrons reluctant to journey to the off-Broadway theaters near the site of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Nevertheless, theater endures, whether the money is there or not. After World War Two, the great French director Roger Blin mounted a production of a risky new play, Waiting for Godot, in a small theater that had recently been a cafeteria. With little more than a papier-mâché tree, some tarp, oil cans, and a wedding suit borrowed from his father, he helped to create one of the most important productions of the century, and introduce an important new playwright, Samuel Beckett, to the world.
Theater artists in the city in Buffalo are striving to ensure their art endures as well, hoping to preserve their tradition for the future. Like the city itself, they survive.
“It’s always been tough to do theater in Buffalo,” Saul Elkin says, “but here we are.”
Heather Violanti, a native of Buffalo, holds an M.F.A. Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama. She has written about theater for The Buffalo News. Her plays have been produced in Baltimore, Maryland and at Buffalo’s Alleyway Theatre.
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