Quote:
Originally Posted by jsbertram
She was saying most of their problems were because they didn't control the space they were using (part of the QE Theatre centre), so they couldn't adjust their schedule to extend hit shows.
|
That's part of it. An even bigger piece is that whenever the City booked an event in the Playhouse during the day or on the day of the week when the Playhouse was dark it would be up to the Playhouse to 'strike' the set and remove everything from the stage in order to allow the booked event to come in. All of that labour, all of the storage costs, and all of the vastly increased cost of set development (since everything would have to be able to be broken down and moved instead of staying in place for the run of a show) came out of the Playhouse Theatre Company's pocket. That's an absolutely huge financial burden when you consider unionized technical workers cost $25-$50 an hour and require a minimum 4-hour call. If the set were struck after a night's show in order to be ready for the following day's daytime rental then the crews would likely go into OT. If the set needed to be struck after a two-show day like a Saturday then the crews could well go into double-OT by the time everything was struck at the end of the night. The structural deficit the Playhouse has endured for decades is because this asinine process of having to strike the set for each and every rental performance has been in effect for decades.
Not only will the direct impact of lost salaries be experienced, but the tens of thousands of theatre-goers who went downtown and ate at restaurants, drank at bars, paid for parking, etc., will be lost, too. If the Arts Club's Granville Island Stage were to close, for example, at least half the restaurants on the Island would go likely go under within a year; that or significantly curtail their hours. The arts may seem to be an extravagance but its essentially a loss leader to help other businesses succeed and bring options for entertainment diversity into our lives.
I sincerely hope that the Playhouse can be saved. I think that the company's finances would have immensely improved once it moved out of its expensive rented office and shop space and into its new home in the WCFC development. It's a real shame that project was on hold for so long. A couple of years' delay meant that the Playhouse's rental space had to be renewed on a short-term lease and I heard the owners of the building really put the screws to them and they had to burn through their bail-out money at a terrifying rate. I'm not a huge fan of taxpayer bailouts but the Playhouse, along with the Arts Club, are the two lynch pins of the Vancouver theatre community. Losing one will do immense damage to the arts sector and it has a knock on effect on the smaller, growing arts companies that act as incubators for talent and ideas.