Yes, it is where audiences go to see touring Broadway shows. Yes, it is a proven engine for downtown economic development.
But more and more communities are finding that a performing arts center can -- and must -- be more. The most successful of them have discovered creative means to accomplish their particular dreams. As all cities are different, so are their performing arts centers and the associations formed to meet their perceived needs.
Doug Kridler, executive director of the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, says the obligation "first and foremost is to represent the ideals more than the finances of a community." CAPA recently launched a discounted ticket program and is renovating a historic downtown theater primarily for smaller companies. New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark is making national headlines at the close of its first year for its success in reaching out not only to traditional ticket-buyers but to minorities and suburbanites.
"To put up a center with the idea to build nice restaurants around it -- that's a passive role," says Michael Hardy, executive director of Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts in Louisville. "You have to understand what a community is trying to accomplish." The question you want the community to be able to answer, adds Kentucky Center programmer Richard Van Kleeck, is, "What's different from before there was a center? What do we have what we didn't before?" Stepping forward as a community catalyst and community partner is risky. "But it's conscious risk," national arts consultant Steve Wolff says. "You take risks when you're looking for big payoffs."
In Columbus, when the Great Southern reopens in September, it will have 980 seats and be home to more than a half-dozen community groups, including a jazz orchestra, a light opera company, an Eastern European dance company and a gay men's chorus.
More than $9 million was invested in the restoration and, Mr. Kridler says, these companies "are achieving a major part of their dream -- to be a downtown performing arts organization. We're creating a great home that has marketing allure and value."
The rental rates on performance days break down to about $1 a seat for non-profit residents. Rehearsal - load-in days are half-price. From the beginning of the theater's planning, Mr. Kridler says, CAPA, which encompasses several downtown theaters, worked with resident companies' boards "helping however we could without interfering," to prepare for the higher costs of moving downtown. CAPA and the companies approached the local arts council and received a $60,000 marketing grant "to put the organizations in the facility in the minds of the public."
The reason CAPA has succeeded, Mr. Kridler says, is because the focus isn't on the facilities, but on the facilities as a means to an end.
"For us, a facility is a means to being an important part of the renaissance of downtown Columbus, a means to bring audiences and artists together.
"Non-profit doesn't have to mean non-progressive. There are community assets that we safeguard and nurture and enhance. This business has to look beyond four walls, or several sets of four walls."
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CAA HOLDS LOCAL KEY
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Who determines the vision of a non-profit performing arts center? "Absolutely, the board," says Elissa Getto, the second president and executive director of the Cincinnati Arts Association.
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Last year, CAPA was approached by the Contemporary American Theatre Company, a small professional company similar to Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, with a plan to take over scheduling and incubate smaller theater companies in a studio space managed by CAPA.
The plan worked for Contemporary American but not for the smaller companies that then came to CAPA and asked for help.
CAPA put in a bid to purchase a nearby church building to house smaller performing companies and CAPA's new education department. The bid wasn't accepted but, Mr. Kridler says, "we made a pretty extraordinary effort. There was a definite need and an interest in having our assistance. I sensed we could help them achieve a win while we would have a win as well." The next move is to be determined. CAPA's latest project was the February launch of High 5 Ticket to the Arts (the first High 5 was in New York) that makes $5 day-of-show tickets available to central Ohio students ages 13-18. More than a dozen leading arts institutions including CAPA, BalletMet, the Broadway Series and Wexner Center for the Arts participate. The tickets are available at Ticketmaster (which waives its service fees), schools, libraries and other community distribution points.
"We want to home in on a segment of the population that's becoming mobile. Money is the main barrier to their checking (arts) out," Mr. Kridler says.
Paying back in Pittsburgh
When the CAA (then Cincinnati Association for the Performing Arts) was formed in June 1992 to manage Music Hall, Memorial Hall and the Aronoff Center, there were already national examples of creative problem-solving.
First among them is probably Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. In 1987, the trust received an $8.5 million federal Urban Development Action Grant to help renovate the Benedum Center, which houses major performing companies and national Broadway tours.
The contract allowed the trust to pay off $5 million owed by providing free and discounted tickets to targeted audiences (seniors, children, students, poor) and free, reduced or waived rental fees to community non-profit organizations, at a rate of almost $800,000 per year. Eleven years later, the trust, in collaboration with other arts organizations, has exceeded the required UDAG repayment by $3.9 million.
The trust also has a tiered rental system in specified theaters with rates reflecting the operating budgets of the renting organizations. While the trust's performing halls all have union contracts (like the Aronoff and Music Hall), a separate contract was negotiated for the smaller Byham Theater used by community groups.
"Carol Brown (trust president) likes to say that small organizations keep us honest," says Pam Golden, the trust's director of community services. She works with board committees on community relations, education and multi-culturalism.
"We need each other. Small organizations can take more risks. We can provide some of the economic stability. We can't be all things to all people.
"None of us are in the arts to get rich," she says. "We're here because we believe we can make a difference."
High costs in Cincinnati
In Cincinnati, the costs of being in the 150-seat Fifth Third Bank Theater and 440-seat Jarson-Kaplan Theater have been a sore point with many smaller local arts organizations since the Aronoff center's opening in 1995.
Basic rent is reasonable (equivalent to Columbus' Great Southern), but a variety of other costs, including union labor, have been known to increase a bill by as much as 50%.
"It has worked out differently than we had planned," says Dudley Taft, board chairman of CAA since its inception. The center doesn't make a profit off the small local companies "but we have to turn the lights on."
The intent has always been to be user-friendly, Mr. Taft says, "to the extent we can be and serve both interests."
Cincinnati Shakespeare moved out of the Fifth Third because rent was more than $45,000 a year. Downtown Theatre Classics happily has moved into the Jarson-Kaplan and would like to reserve more dates.
Cincinnati Public Theatre incurred debt when April shows didn't attract audiences and has reduced its planned presence in 1998-99 from five to two productions.
Contemporary Dance Theatre has completed its third year in the Jarson-Kaplan and is still looking for an audience. For 1998-99, CDT will move some of its season from the Aronoff.
"We can't afford to stay for everything," CDT artistic director Jefferson James says.
While the CAA is working on joint marketing with surrounding restaurants, there hasn't been any "direct discussion" of doing any marketing with the center's smaller tenants, CAA vice-president Steve Loftin says.
"There's no particular reason," he says. "I don't think they're interested."
"We've never seen our responsibility (to community arts groups) as that strong," Mr. Taft says. "We manage facilities as best and economically as we can." To do more, he says, "would be a huge step."
Marketing, he agrees, "doesn't fall into our aegis. Maybe the (Cincinnati) Institute (of Fine Arts) has a role in that." The difficulties that smaller arts have had in using the Aronoff have eased considerably, says Elissa Getto, who is the second president and executive director of CAA. She arrived after the first full season of the Aronoff Center for the Arts.
"As everyone learns how to use the facility," she says, "they've gotten smarter, they don't need two days to load in.
"It's about relationships. We do bend over backward to work with people who want to use the space. It's all about what's your attitude."
Involvement in Newark
Education now is a mandate for most performing arts centers. "It's the ultimate bottom line," Mr. Wolff says. "People need to be in seats 10 and 20 years from now. Generation X and the generation before never created the habit." As president of AMS Planning and Research in Connecticut, he is consultant to many U.S. performing arts centers, including Newark's and the Aronoff.
For New Jersey Performing Arts Center, education is a major component, so much so that the program began more than four years before the center opened in October 1997.
"We stumbled on to that," center president Lawrence Goldman says. "We became aware as we talked to other heads of centers." As it turned out, the early commitment "made us real and active, it put some substance on our message that we wanted to work closely with the community. It made us more believable," he says.
So there was "Mural Magic," which invited 150 schools to use standardized paints and panels to create murals for the construction site. The center provided study guides; it became a six-month project.
At the unveiling, kids came to the site by bus for a celebration that included school bands, hot dogs and a parade led by Newark mayor Sharpe James.
"We can't just be satisfied to just give people an experience. We want informed, educated audiences," says Stephanie Hughley, vice president for programming.
At the top of her wish list is a series about the process of art that would take people through the developmental stages of readings, workshops, showcases in theater, dance and music.
Already in place is an annual World Festival.
Because "we're so socially segregated in this country," she decided to start with Portugal and its language, which is shared by cultures in Europe, Africa and South America.
"People came in droves," she says.
In 1999, the spotlight will be Pan-Africa, encompassing the Caribbean, Africa and the Americas.
Ms. Hughley also wants a series that develops work. It's "just a couple of hundred thousand (dollars) from happening," she laughs. Actually, she's not waiting for the money for a preliminary project. She's bringing in acclaimed performing artist Ping Chong, who been exploring the immigrant experience by interviewing different U.S. cultural communities. In Newark, he will learn the answers to questions like, "What did it mean, coming to America? What have you encountered?" His discoveries will turn into a performance work in November.
"The whole idea of art," Ms. Hughley says, "is to instigate, provoke, evoke. You want to give a child a blank piece of paper instead of a coloring book so that child can see who he is and create a space for himself."
The work, she says matter-of-factly, is "long-term, tedious, labor intensive."
Now calls are coming in from around the country asking, "How do we do what you're doing?"
"Each community is very different," she says. "You have to be open to listening to the voices of the people. And people have to speak up. If I can't hear your voice, I can't use you.
"Every city has these issues, but I don't see enough people doing anything about it. You have to commit dollars, not just conversation. Board leadership has to want it."
Appropriate for Cincinnati
What about Cincinnati?
"Cincinnati is a very "considered' city," says Mr. Wolff, whose company was consultant on CAA's first long-range (five-year) strategic plan, completed in February. "In some communities, a zealot is not a good thing."
"Maybe (the people who spearheaded the Aronoff) didn't have the vision of other cities, but it's the appropriate vision here," Ms. Getto says.
"What's happening is very exciting. It's exciting being a part of the whole downtown renaissance. It's taking time, but this community is seeing this organization evolve."
The long-range plan came with a refined mission statement, and if she had to give a definition of what CAA is, Ms. Getto says, "It's a manager, a presenter, an educator."
Some centers, Ms. Getto says, are "vessels" for programming. "The really excellent (centers) in this country have an expanded vision of serving needs, they want to be able to help create the cultural palette of the community."
All the elements "are here" to make it happen in Cincinnati, she says. "This community has taken great strides in embracing the vision, in creating a space big enough to embrace small and regional artists" as well as national headliners.
What it comes down to, she reiterates, are relationships, "the ability to interface. You don't need a whole bunch of new ideas. "The best ideas come off of what already exists."
