Second act

Stage
The Seacoast Repertory Theatre stages a comeback

When Kathleen Cavalaro took over as the Seacoast Repertory Theatre’s interim executive director in the fall of 2014, the theater was in trouble. In debt, without an artistic director, and in desperate need of $50,000 to keep the theater open and mount a production of “The Wizard of Oz” that December, the Rep’s future was tenuous.

Now the Rep’s permanent executive director, Cavalaro says the most difficult thing — beyond fundraising, writing a new budget, and planning a season of shows — was repairing the theater’s reputation.

“When I came into this position a year ago, literally every single phone call (ended with) ‘No, we don’t work with the Rep anymore’ … from our neighbors to vendors in town to vendors in New York to licensing companies,” she says.

The last year has been challenging for Cavalaro and the Rep’s staff, but it’s also been fruitful. The theater is ending 2015 with a larger staff, less debt, and a host of collaborative projects in the works with other Seacoast venues and businesses. Miles Burns, who had been the theater’s interim artistic director for the last year, was named the permanent artistic director in late October, just a week after the theater announced its 2016 main stage season.

“It’s been the most challenging task of my life,” Cavalaro says. “It has not been easy. But it’s been the most rewarding one at the same time, which is why we’re all here.”

Close (curtain) call 

“When we first started last October, we had very few choices. There was pretty much one way forward: put on shows and get revenue flowing,” says Brian Kelly, the theater’s director of marketing and development and Cavalaro’s husband.

An emergency fundraising campaign brought in more than $50,000, enough to get “The Wizard of Oz” on stage and begin work on the Rep’s 2015 season. While work moved forward on “Oz,” Cavalaro and the theater’s board of trustees began a complete overhaul of the theater’s administrative side — they hired new staff, re-organized member and subscriber information, developed a new budget, and, within a matter of weeks, planned the season.

“When we started, we didn’t have a member list or a subscriber list; we didn’t even have letterhead or contracts that were editable. We had to recreate everything from scratch,” Cavalaro says. “If an essential person before left, the theater could easily have crumbled. Now we’re trying to work it so that, if any of us leave, anyone can step in and take over.”

In the last year, Cavalaro says, the theater has paid off about $100,000 of debt, roughly three-quarters of what it owes. Ticket sales have increased, and a tighter budgeting process has let the Rep lease a secondary space on Raynes Avenue in Portsmouth, where it holds rehearsals and houses the Portsmouth Academy of Performing Arts (PAPA), the Rep’s slate of classes and programs for kids and teens. The Rep also has storage space in Maine. The extra room allows the theater to schedule its main stage productions more closely together and provide more programs.

Part of the theater’s financial problems stemmed from its acquisition of the former Mill Pond Center for the Arts building in Durham in 2009. Town regulations prevented the Rep from hosting events at the site, and the theater put the building up for sale in 2012. The Rep still owns the building, though Cavalaro says a board member has “taken on the responsibility” of trying to sell it.

Directors and collaborators

The rebuilding process has been about more than just making the numbers work for a small nonprofit performing arts theater. According to Kelly, as an organization, the Rep has used the last year as an opportunity to have “conversations about what kind of theater we want to be and what our place is in the community.”

The result of those conversations has been more collaboration with other Seacoast arts venues and organizations. The Rep has partnered with 3S Artspace, which hosted some of the theater’s Red Light Series productions, and provided rehearsal space for the recent Blank Page Poetry event. Later this year, Burns says, the Rep and The Players’ Ring will co-produce his staging of “Hansel and Gretel,” the first time both theaters have worked together.

“Collaboration with other arts organizations was built into our mission statement before, and it’s built into our mission statement now, so we see it as a mandate. (But) it just makes sense. We can compete (with other venues) or we can cooperate,” Kelly says.

For Burns, the last year has been an opportunity to strengthen the theater’s artistic direction. Burns teaches many of the PAPA classes and says that the artistic director position is “a dream come true.”

“This year, I wanted to get new directors in. It kind of goes without saying, but I never realized how important directors are, and I want to get new people in here, as well as people who’ve worked here and liked it,” he says.

The 2016 lineup includes “Satchmo at the Waldorf,” about legendary trumpet player Louis Armstrong; “The Marvelous Wonderettes,” a musical featuring ’50s and ’60s pop songs; “Reefer Madness,” a musical inspired by the 1936 anti-marijuana film; and Neil Simon’s “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

The season is “based on what’s good in the theater, this space … there’s no other theater like it around here,” Burns says. Working with the space is important, but it’s even more important to build trust with performers, directors, stage crews, and audiences, he adds.

“We want to get to a point where we can do something like … a musical that nobody really knows and that we’d be afraid to sell tickets for … and the audience trusts us enough that they know when they leave, they’re going to feel good,” he says.

Looking back, moving ahead

According to Cavalaro, the Rep’s 2016 season is all about building on the successes of 2015. Earlier this year, the theater hired former Coat of Arms manager Mark Michael Adams as the front-of-house manager and Seraphina Caligiure as youth programming manager. Recently, they’ve hired Jerry Craven as technical director, a position that’s been unfilled for the last year.

“We’re receiving proposals from people who want to be here on staff and are pitching ways to help us cut costs … and it’s really cool to get those proposals,” Cavalaro says.

The theater’s production of “Oliver!,” directed by Burns and designed by Ben Hart and Brandon James, who created the puppets for last summer’s production of “Avenue Q,” opens later this month. Also this month, “Eat It Up,” the series of food talks with local chefs that began last year, resumes, though now it’s a collaboration with 3S Artspace and Block Six Restaurant. And in the immediate future, Cavalaro hopes that in 2017, the theater’s heating and air conditioning system can get a much-needed overhaul.

“I think we’re putting on better shows than have been here in a while,” Kelly says. “Just in terms of artistic merit and finding talent from further away and bringing them here, or better utilizing local resources. It feels like we’re building a company.”

Birchtree_Auction_2015_for_Sound_web