Pearls with pajamas — new look for arts galas
Annual glitzy fundraisers for theater groups, others go digital
Before Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s annual Ovation gala officially began on Saturday, April 18, swanky jazz by Marcus Shelby played as a slideshow cycled through images of donors. Guests chatted about their drinks: “Piña colada over here!”
But the party, which raises up to 15% of the company’s contributed revenue each year, wasn’t at the RitzCarlton, as originally planned. It was livestreamed on Vimeo.
Guests were making drinks from home, with Berkeley Rep suggesting “userfriendly and forgiving” cocktail recipes on its website. Conversations took place on a chatroom sidebar (much of it dedicated to tech support queries about how to hear the live stream’s sound). As for apparel, we were to don our “most elegant loungewear,” instructions bade. Managing Director Susan Medak, addressing attendees from her home, led the way, pairing pearls with slippers.
Just as coronavirus concerns are preventing arts patrons from gathering for live performances, so are they forestalling inperson galas, which often generate a significant portion of organizations’ annual fundraising, via ticket sales, raffles, live and silent auctions, and fundaneeds (whereby organizations list particular needs, such as a show’s costume design, that donors can sponsor).
San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera, which are both scheduled to host their major fundraising galas in September, have so far held off on making major changes, according to spokespeople. But many theaters and other organizations celebrate in spring, and rather than cancel their parties, they’re getting creative about what galas can look like in the digital realm.
American Conservatory Theater plans to host its virtual fundraiser, Spring Forward, on May 2, hosted by Anthony Veneziale of “Freestyle Love Supreme” and featuring actor BD Wong as well as performances by the casts of “The Rocky Horror Show” and “Poor Yella Rednecks,” both of which were canceled because of the outbreak.
Already, many organizations have migrated their parties online. Smuin Contemporary Ballet had just days to reinvent its gala, which was originally to take place at the Galleria at the San Francisco Design Center on March 15, the day before San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the city’s shelterinplace order.
Development Director Deb Glazer surveyed her board and donors during the week leading up to the event. Although many encouraged the company to proceed with the inperson gala, “I really didn’t want to make them have to make the choice of feeling like they were almost obligated (to come) because they were so committed to us,” she says.
In a matter of 48 hours, she and her team put together a video to send to gala guests, featuring archival dance footage, some material from the band that was going to perform at the party as well as a message from Artistic Director Celia Fushille. Most ticket holders donated the cost of their tickets rather than asking for refunds, and the event wound up grossing $267,000 of its $500,000 goal. Smuin delayed its auction — no one was in a buying mood that weekend, Glazer says, especially for travel lots or timesensitive items, such as concerts — but it hopes to reopen the auction at a later date.
For Ovation, Berkeley Rep dropped auctions altogether, reports Development Director Lynn Eve Komaromi — partly for the same reasons Smuin did, and partly because Berkeley Rep had time to more fully reinvent its gala. The company decided to invite everyone who has donated since the outbreak hit. “I didn’t think an auction would strike the right note of inclusivity,” Komaromi says.
Instead, the gala featured a conversation among new Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer, Medak and longtime Berkeley Rep artist Anna Deavere Smith, who was Ovation’s honoree, as well as a live performance by Shelby, who collaborated with Smith on “Notes From the Field” in 2015.
“I don’t think any of us are in the mood for a party, truthfully,” Komaromi says. “We’re really in the mood for celebrating what’s important to us — and why art is important to us right now.” She viewed the event as “an opportunity to tell our story.”
Rebecca J. Ennals, artistic director at San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, says that her company’s gala is as much about coming together and celebrating as it is about fundraising. She estimates that the party generates $65,000 to $70,000 of the organiza
tion’s $1.3 million annual budget.
As news made it clear that S.F. Shakes’ gala wouldn’t be able to proceed on Saturday, April 18, as planned, Ennals, her staff and board members formed a “gala pivot committee” to migrate the event to a digital platform. The resulting event — a Virtual Royal Affair on April 1820 — featured Shakespeare charades played and virtual gala tables in the form of Zoom breakout rooms, so guests could still have smallgroup conversations.
Among the company’s auction items was a private concert, direct from Ashland, Ore., by actor Amy Lizardo, who’s now with Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “People really want to go to Ashland right now, and they can’t,” Ennals says. With the concert, “A little bit of Ashland could come to you.”
Preliminary results on Tuesday, April 21, as donations were still rolling in, suggested S.F. Shakes will gross approximately $53,000 but will net more than in most years, since it got a refund on Marines’ Memorial Club, the venue it had originally booked for the live event. The same is true for Berkeley Rep, which exceeded its gross goal of $900,000 by more than $40,000, and Marin Theatre Company, which netted 108% of its goal for Virtual Gala53, an online auction held April 36.
“We didn’t know how people were going to respond to things,” says Angela M. Colombo, Marin Theatre Company’s director of development. “There was a little bit of talk: Are people going to want to go on trips and buy restaurant gift certificates at a time when they can’t really imagine themselves doing that thing?”
The answer: “by and large yes,” Colombo says, reporting that 95% of their items were sold during the threeday auction.
But Marin might have benefited from holding its gala weeks later than Smuin did, after patrons had time to get used to sheltering in place, and once directives from officials no longer seemed to be changing hourly. Still, that success taught her that “people are hopeful. They want to think about being back to quoteunquote ‘normal,' even if that will be a little bit of an adjusted normal.”
“Every year we talk about the structure of the gala and whether it’s time to think about alternatives,” she adds. The virtual gala showed that “folks really want to support our organization and will do so in whatever type of medium we give them. It gives us something to think about for the future of galas.
That’s not to say that all Marin Theatre Company’s future fundraisers will be digital, she notes, but this year’s “was an interesting exercise to see what people would come out to support.”