Financial squeeze at TheatreFIRST producing anxiety
Berkeley troupe facing pressures in post-COVID landscape
It may be the end of the road for TheatreFIRST. Or maybe not.
On June 30 the Berkeley theater company sent out an announcement from new co-artistic directors Victoria Evans Erville and Stephanie Prentice that the nearly 30-year-old company would be shutting down for financial reasons.
Like most other theater companies, TheatreFIRST (T1 for short) was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has produced only a few plays since its return to live shows at the Live Oak Theater. On top of that, their email says, “Upon negotiations this month to renew our lease of Live Oak Theater, the City of Berkeley made the decision to raise our monthly rate by 200%. Coupled with our other fiscal commitments, this unconscionable new financial demand has made it impossible for our company to continue.”
The next day, Erville received an email from Scott Ferris, the city of Berkeley's director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, indicating that the notice that T1 received was in error: “In an attempt to get you a number, staff sent you a ballpark estimate based on the last lease. Typically, we don't give out lease estimate numbers until formal negotiations have begun.”
The Parks and Recreation staff quickly reached out to schedule a meeting and get the ball rolling on lease negotiations. That means TheatreFIRST's continued existence is back on the table for now, but it's very much an open question.
Clive Chafer founded TheatreFIRST in 1994 as a company devoted to bringing international plays (especially from the U.K.) to the East Bay for the first time in a series of U.S. and Bay Area premieres. After years producing in various spaces in Berkeley, T1 repositioned itself as Oakland's theater company in residencies in downtown Oakland and at Mills College.
Chafer stepped down in 2008 and Dylan Russell took over as artistic director for just a few months before she and new producing director Allison Studdiford both resigned “as a result of philosophical differences on management-related issues” and Chafer returned to the helm on an interim basis. In 2009, Michael Storm took over as artistic director, shifting the company's focus toward a mix of better-known known plays alongside some new work.
T1 took over management of the Live Oak Theatre in 2012. The venue had been managed by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley for more than 30 years in exchange for free rent, but the Parks and Recreation department wanted a new tenant that would shoulder the burden of necessary renovations to the theater and lobby space at one end of the Live Oak Community Center. That turned out to be TheatreFIRST, which continued to rent the theater out to other companies between its own productions.
When Jon Tracy came in as artistic director in 2016 (soon changing his title to artistic facilitator), he and a new board radically changed the focus to entirely new work and committing to having all aspects of the company comprise at least half women, two-thirds people of color and one-third LGBTQ+ people.
In 2019 the city shut down Live Oak Community Center for a year to carry out seismic upgrades and renovations for accessibility, and TheatreFIRST moved to a temporary space near the Berkeley waterfront. Of course, COVID hit before that year was up, so it would be some time before the company's return to Live Oak.
In January 2021, Tracy turned the company over to new artistic director Brendan Simon as part of an initiative to develop and promote BIPOC artistic leaders that had been in the works for the previous year. Simon, Erville and Prentice then formed a new “leadership triad.”
TheatreFIRST returned to live shows at Live Oak in 2022. Last March, Simon stepped down and Prentice and Erville became co-artistic directors as the company's “first completely female-led, BIPOC leadership team,” as the announcement put it.
Three months after they took over came their announcement that “due to financial hardships, our time has come to an end.” There hadn't been any productions in the meantime.
If indeed it does turn out to be the end for TheatreFIRST, the company would join several others in the Bay Area that have gone under in the last few years, including Bay Area Children's Theatre, Dragon Theater, foolsFURY, Ragged Wing Ensemble, Main Stage West, Perspective Theatre Company, Those Women Productions, Bay Area Musicals and PianoFight.
San Francisco's EXIT Theatre had to close its longtime Tenderloin venue last year. The venerable California Shakespeare Theater isn't producing any shows this year. Hayward's Douglas Morrisson Theatre hasn't produced any theater since before the pandemic, and Tri-Valley Repertory Theatre has announced an “intermission” for at least the rest of this year. It's a trend that has been seen nationwide.
On July 14, TheatreFIRST posted an update saying the company and Berkeley officials “talked at length about the serious challenges facing the Bay Area theater community at large, and TheatreFIRST specifically.”
The talks reportedly focused on a potential new partnership between the troupe and the city.
“Although no new financial agreement has been made, we are hopeful that this level of open communication between T1 and the city will continue,” the update said.
Asked about the outlook for the future, Prentice wrote in an email, “An affordable rent will not save the company on its own — the theatre climate in the Bay Area is TOUGH. However, an affordable rent and potential theatre partnerships, community partnerships, business sponsors, and donations would create much-needed breathing room. As theatre artists we excel at working hard to find creative solutions in the face of adversity, but it's exhausting work. The support from our Bay Area theatre family this past week has been incredible. We will know more about what is possible for the future after negotiations begin.”