I was doing some more thinking this morning about the Pasadena Playhouse, and why it failed. Some of this was prompted by an article by Charles McNulty in the LA Times, and some is just my own thoughts. So what, in my opinion, led to the Playhouse’s demise:
- They didn’t treat their subscribers well. Essential to any theatre is a loyal subscription base. They are your regular patrons, and they provide a source of donations. So they need to be treated well. In recent years, the Playhouse just wasn’t doing that. Subscription renewals would go out in June, often before the shows were even finalized. The amount of the subscription was growing – last year, it was $402 per ticket for 7 shows for orchestra seats. The check would be sent and… nothing. You wouldn’t get the tickets or any news until late November, if you were lucky. Even in this crisis, there has been little communication (to date, there has been nary a call, email, or letter initiated by the Playhouse to subscribers about the closure). Regular and honest communication with the subscriber base is essential to making them part of the family, and essential for their support.
- Their mission was muddled. I look back at the seasons (especially since Sheldon Epps took over) to see if I could discern a mission from the productions, and I can’t see it clearly. Was their mission to produce new works? Revivals of old classics, reinterpreted? Push new musicals to Broadway? Promote minority and African-american themed works? Work in partnership with local theatre groups? The Playhouse has done all of thse, even in the same season. The mission of a successful theatre must be clear to patrons know what to expect and what to look for… and to be willing to try something they haven’t heard of. With a muddled mission, non-subscribers might not be tempted to try unknown properties.
- They didn’t have a school. When one looks at how people mention the Pasadena Playhouse of the past, it is less what was produced on the stage, and more that they learned at the Playhouse school. But the current incarnation of the Playhouse never provided that training group — it just presented productions. Providing the training ground is critical — not only to introduce new actors and technicians to the field, but to build that long term support. If an actor is successful because of their Playhouse training, they will turn around and support the institution financially. The administrators of the playhouse squandered that opportunity.
- They aimed for the spectacular. Look at the recent productions at the Playhouse that drew the audiences. They were the spectacular, the flash. They were the moving lights, the Ray Charles, the Lena Hornes. So when the Playhouse did something small and intimate, the audience drawn by the spectacular didn’t return. This goes back to the second point: they needed a consistent mission.
- They didn’t know what they wanted. My wife pointed out that sometimes they wanted to be a large house, and sometimes they wanted to be a small house. Until recently, the experimental stuff was on the mainstage. They also didn’t figure out what community they were going after: Was it the patrician theatre patron (their theatre trips might indicate so)? Was it the African-American community? Was it Pasadena, the San Gabriel Valley, the San Fernando Valley, or Los Angeles? Who was their competition: the Colony-sized theatre, the South Coast Rep-size, or the Center Theatre Group and the Pantages. They had trouble being the best at what they wanted to be, because they never really knew what they wanted to be.
The current incarnation of the Playhouse began in the 1980s, and rapidly found success with “Mail”. We started subscribing a year or so after that with “Down An Alley Filled With Cats”. We stayed with the Playhouse in approximately the same seats (G 23 and 24, although I think originally we were in 27 and 28) for the years after that, through shows that we loved (“Radio Gals”, “Heartbeats”) and shows that we didn’t like. There was only one show that we walked out on (a remake of “As You Like It”) in all the years. The patrons at the Playhouse ran from the famous to engineers like us, from regular theatre goers to first timers. The house managers became like family, to the point where they wanted to see a picture of our daughter instead of our tickets for admission. We will miss it.
We subscribe to a lot of theatres, and see a lot of live theatre. We love the subscription family of Repertory East in Newhall, and we’re part of the crowd at Cabrillo. We’ve become regulars at Meeting of Minds at the Steve Allen. But the Playhouse was special: it was the mid-sized house where we tended to see new plays in early productions. It will be hard to find an equivalent house to replace that.
