In the end, Charlotte Repertory Theatre was so depleted – and so incompetent – that they didn’t even know how to say goodbye. Their valedictory press release, suffused with the maudlin negativity that has marked the company’s actions for the past 16 months, came out Saturday morning just before 10am. Faceless, gutless, and bitter. For a company whose lifeblood had been drama, it was remarkable that there was nobody left at the company who realized its power. Nobody ever summoned the press to cry out that Rep was on the brink of collapse. Appeals to the audience from Judith Allen at Rep’s last two productions were so tepid, you might have gathered that the company was temporarily hospitalized — rather than gravely comatose.
So it was cruelly apt that Rep’s final press release bore the headline: “THE POWER OF THE SPOKEN WORD — SILENCED.” For the Rep itself wasn’t speaking, hadn’t really been speaking for over a year as they trudged to their doom without any real artistic or administrative leadership.
Rep’s new board Chairman, Bill Parmelee, had shaken my hand once early in his brief tenure. His behavior quickly became hermetic as the company’s bottom line worsened. He still hasn’t returned the phone message I left for him back in December, even after I called him out on it in print.
It’s a mystery to me how a proud theatre company’s fate can wind up in the hands of someone with so little media or showbiz savvy. Perhaps mystery is too soft a word. It’s a travesty. A tragedy.
“It’s unfortunate that the spin being put on the Rep’s demise by some is that Charlotte audiences and donors are not interested in supporting high quality professional theater. That’s hogwash.” – Performing Arts Center president Tom GabbardIt was a travesty for an unbelievably loyal audience that, with I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change!, handed Rep its second-highest grossing show in its history to close 2004, surpassed only by the legendary production of Angels in America. The tragedy is what happened to the efforts of artists and craftsmen who poured their talents and passions into the Rep and, at its pinnacle, made Rep a company of national prominence.
“It is very unfortunate,” said Parmelee via the Rep’s final press release, “that there was little community support for a core cultural organization — The Rep — in our city. We feel that it is a tremendous loss to the quality of life for our entire region. Charlotte Repertory Theatre is the only accredited professional theatre in the region — it indeed is a major cultural loss that will be felt for many years to come.”
No, Bill. There was just too little stomach left in the organization to fight the fight. And too little passion for the art. Even cast members for the Rep’s final production, The Exonerated, were blindsided by the news that the company was shutting down. Phone calls came to them early Saturday morning, about the same time marketing manager Lisa Wilker was launching the fatal press release into cyberspace.
So amid promises that there would be future contact about subscriber refunds, which we now know aren’t going to happen, Parmelee went out flailing against a community that wouldn’t support a company the Rep board had suffocated. The reclusive Parmelee’s assertion — that there is “little community support for a core cultural organization” — is being roundly assailed in every quarter, none more forcefully than Performing Arts Center HQ.
“It’s unfortunate,” snapped PAC president Tom Gabbard, “that the spin being put on the Rep’s demise by some is that Charlotte audiences and donors are not interested in supporting high quality professional theater. That’s hogwash. It’s easier for some to blame the community rather than acknowledge the lack of vision and leadership that is ultimately the reason for the Rep’s demise.”
The last time Rep publicly referenced their financial plight was when they spread the good box office news early in January. “Despite the record sales,” the taciturn Parmelee revealed, “we still expect this year’s operations will result in a deficit.” Allen was named to head a committee that would produce a due diligence assessment, to be presented to corporate and community leaders by the end of February, determining “whether there is sufficient community support for The Rep to continue past the 2004-2005 season.” There wasn’t a word that Rep was on the verge of imminent collapse. In fact, it was only last weekend that the cast of Exonerated learned that their final performance of The Exonerated would be a death march — a macabre ending for a docudrama about Death Row prisoners who are vindicated after being wrongfully sentenced to die.
Up on Broadway, where the rites of showbiz are as codified as parliamentary protocol, setting a date when your show will close is a recognized marketing tool. Producers and publicists who know the game routinely issue such announcements in hopes of sparking a last-minute run on the box office. If such a spontaneous outpouring of audience response occurs, a follow-up press release announcing the show’s reprieve is at the ready. It’s a pretty standard maneuver.
Go to the Rep’s website today and judge for yourself whether the company ever sounded a sufficiently dire alarm. You don’t get a reprieve if you don’t ask for one. But then again you can’t offer a compelling artistic vision when you blithely gobble up artistic directors — and their salaries — to scrimp on payroll.
Rep never really grasped that reinstating (Rep founder Steve) Umberger was the only option they had in the wake of McGuire’s megalomaniacal regime.Rep fatally changed course and embarked on its journey to self-destruction when their arrogant board, under the leadership of J. Michael McGuire, dispatched company founder Steve Umberger and his ace marketing cohort, Keith Martin. But it wasn’t until they strong-armed Michael Bush out of Charlotte that McGuire & Company sealed their doom.
They began with a move that was even more tactless and clueless than the clumsiness last weekend. While a star-studded production of Jar the Floor was still in rehearsal — and a full nine days before the Observer was slated to do a Sunday spread on the show — Rep amputated the final week of the run. To further bolster their bottom line, they canceled a revival of Fully Committed and curtailed the runs for every other show on the season’s subscription. Proving there truly was something rotten in Charlotte, Rep delivered the coup de grace by bailing out of a co-production of Hamlet.
Broadway producers would have been scratching their heads over that one. Increasing revenue by decreasing performances? That just doesn’t compute. Yet McGuire, armed with specious projections, vigorously defended the company’s counterintuitive moves.
Couldn’t he see that opening up Hamlet by day to school audiences could have turned the show into a cash cow? Well, no, he couldn’t. Tickets would have to be offered at a discount, he bleated weakly. Yeah, in a hall he’d already paid the rent on.
Assassinating Hamlet was a direct affront to Rep’s producing partner, Syracuse Stage, precluding any similar collaborations in the foreseeable future. Similarly, by smothering Jar the Floor in the womb, Rep had hamstrung Michael Bush’s ability to continue attracting top-drawer Broadway talent to Charlotte.
When Bush resigned, Rep was doomed — effectively destroyed by McGuire and his delusions of grandeur. Last December, marking the anniversary of Bush’s departure, I bluntly advised: “Rep’s board should get down on its knees and grovel at Umberger’s feet, begging him to return on whatever terms he chooses.”
Yet Rep rejected Umberger’s plan to lead the company toward recovery shortly before Umberger walked out on The Exonerated, a production he was slated to direct. Rep never really grasped that reinstating Umberger was the only option they had in the wake of McGuire’s megalomaniacal regime.
Bush knew it better than anyone. We had lunch in Manhattan on December 21, two days after the Observer ran a large “Can the Rep Survive?” feature. When I repeated what I had written the previous week — that Rep, in rejecting the life-raft offered to them by Umberger, had sealed their fate — Bush nodded his agreement.
“Listen, there’s no one in the business that’s going to go down there and take that position without talking to me,” he said, “or without talking to Steve. I was aware — there was always some little bird or angel sitting on my shoulder, going, ‘If they did this to Steve, they can do it to you.'”
Of course, Rep’s clueless board had too much pride to admit that Umberger was their only hope. They had reversed course by extending the run of I Love You, You’re Perfect and reaping substantial financial rewards. But they never acknowledged that curtailing their previous season had been the essence of stupidity. Then again, these are folks who thought the best way to go out was to blame everything on a supposed lack of community support for theatre.
Rather than turning their backs on professional theatre in Charlotte, the PAC’s Gabbard offers assurances that intensive conversations are scheduled with his board this week. Though currently committed to a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Wilmington, Umberger is also indicating an eagerness to talk.
Nor has defeatism spread to Charlotte’s fringe theatre scene in the wake of Rep’s demise. John Hartness has been one of the pioneers on the local scene, establishing the first truly new theatre outpost for Charlotte when the Off-Tryon Theatre Company opened in NoDa in 2001 — and finishing the final year of its NoDa lease in the black.
“This is not as dark a time for the arts in Charlotte as many will say,” Hartness insists, “but it is a golden opportunity for people to step forward and elevate their own work. Hopefully some of us will be able to do that. With or without the backing of the powers that be.”
For Rep’s final season, brochure expenses were discreetly cut so that graphics were reproduced in humble black-and-white, juiced up with slashes of burnt orange. The photo used for The Exonerated, Rep’s last gasp, was sadly prophetic and emblematic: a worm’s-eye view of a jail cell. Cold, punitive, and without a recognizable person in sight.
That’s pretty much how — and why — Rep gave up the ghost.
In December, as a full year passed without the prospect of a new artistic director, I closed my observations on Rep’s dubious milestone by writing, “Maybe a swift collapse — rather than a long, drawn-out death spiral — is the best thing that could happen.”
Well, it did happen. Now it’s time for the spurned artists and theatergoers of Charlotte to prove me right.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2005.
