Last issue, The Record began its special series on the local theatre scene.
Julie MacLellan talked to four local groups about their ability to survive - and thrive - in a challenging theatre market, looking at the dreams that began the companies and the ingredients that have been helping to make them a success.
This week, we look at more of the factors that are helping the local theatre scene to thrive.
Enter the community
Talk to members of New Westminster's theatre community for awhile, and you'll soon find a common ingredient to success: They're not in it for themselves. They're in it for an audience - and that audience is the reason they're able to do what they do.
Focusing on patrons first is important to the Vagabond Players, the city's longtime community theatre company.
A huge part of its success, said president Elizabeth Elwood, has come down to good old-fashioned contact. Along with the usual posters, newspaper ads and press releases, the company relies on a 500-name email list and a 1,500-name phone list to contact audience members before each show.
Elwood noted that there are plenty of ways for people to keep themselves entertained at home these days, with just about any show or movie at their fingertips. But theatre offers something more.
"Community theatre is going back to the old social outing where you actually get to go out and do something with people," Elwood said.
So far, their community focus is working - there are usually some shows in every run that fill the entire 140-seat Bernie Legge Theatre, and for the usual comedy or mystery, houses average about 100 patrons a night.
A sense of community has also been part of the success of Royal City Musical Theatre - which board president John Davies noted has benefited from being in a city like New Westminster.
"New West is a very strong type community that's a bit like Vancouver in that sense: it's a nice compact community with a sense of identity," he says. "People take a great deal of pride in their arts and their heritage."
The city's walkability and the Massey Theatre's central location allow people to easily make a night of it - without having to venture to Vancouver.
"That's what has allowed us to flourish over the years," he said.
Engaging the community is also part of the mission of City Stage New West, which works to bring professional theatre to the local stage.
The company has built its productions with community engagement components - a recent Freud-vs.-C.S. Lewis debate at the New Westminster Public Library, for instance, was part of the lead-up to Freud's Last Session. For its King Lear/Queen Lear season in 2012, it did community outreach programs with local seniors and youth. For its staging of Burning Up the Infield in 2011, it reached out to the local sports community.
"We've been trying hard to engage the community in all sorts of ways," said Pansy Jang, the group's secretary-treasurer and former longtime president.
Things are slightly different for the New Westminster-based Patrick Street Productions, which uses Vancouver theatres for its offerings. Previous homes have included the Cultch and the Norman Rothstein Theatre, and this year's season is at the new York Theatre on Commercial Drive.
But even in Vancouver, finding an audience hasn't always been easy for Patrick Street - not everyone is into the high-quality but less familiar musical theatre offerings the company has made its name on.
This year, the company decided to work to expand its audience base in a few ways - contracting a public relations company to give them more visibility, and staging two productions instead of just one. The first production, on now, is Out of a Dream - a Rodgers and Hammerstein revue created by Patrick Street's artistic producer, Peter Jorgensen, to pay tribute to the founding fathers of contemporary musical theatre.
"They're a known quantity," Jorgensen points out.
He's hoping that some of the audience who turns up for Rodgers and Hammerstein will be enticed into returning for its March production of Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins - and thus become part of Patrick Street's future audience.
"Hopefully we can encourage in even more people an appreciation for a different type of musical theatre," Jorgensen said.
Enter the talent
Jorgensen sums it up this way: "Much as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an entire community to raise a show."
It's a theme repeated by each of the theatre groups The Record talked to.
Most visibly, of course, there's the essential ingredient that makes a show happen: the performers.
Elwood admits that the community theatre group can find it a challenge to find performers. These days, she says, there's a thriving professional theatre scene, and of course the film industry, to draw emerging talent away from community theatre.
"They don't have the same need for community theatre for testing their wings," she noted.
Royal City Musical Theatre, by comparison, finds it relatively easy to recruit performers. Davies said the company is blessed, year after year, to have an abundance of talent turn out to audition. For this year's Annie, some 150 kids tried out for the lead role.
Davies noted that young talents have a chance to develop their performing skills with RCMT - and it pays off.
"A lot of the best talent that appears on stage comes from New West," Davies noted. "That's a strong point for the cultural strength of New Westminster, is how many people are homegrown talent."
One of those homegrown talents, who starred in Royal City's Oklahoma! last year, is Sayer Roberts, who has gone on to star in Patrick Street Productions' Out of a Dream this year.
(And, in one of those only-in-New-West connections, Patrick Street's Jorgensen has also trod the boards with Royal City Musical Theatre, starring as Harold Hill in its 2005 production of The Music Man.)
Jorgensen describes Roberts as a "huge up-and-comer" and notes that finding young talents early in their careers is exciting. He said Patrick Street is drawing from an incredibly talented pool of music theatre professionals - performers who have limited opportunities to perform in musical theatre in Vancouver.
"The Arts Club tends to keep them somewhat busy, but that's not enough," he said. "It does feel great to be providing opportunity to people."
Providing professional performing opportunities is also key for City Stage New West.
"There is a lot of good community theatre around, but B.C. almost lacks respect for artists when it's their life," said Jang.
Jang herself is not a theatre professional - she's a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and an osteopathic practitioner - but she's passionate about keeping professional theatre alive.
"I've just loved theatre since I was a teenager," she said. Having become involved with the Raymond Burr Performing Arts Society and watching the Burr Theatre close, Jang was determined to make City Stage work. "I'd do anything to keep professional theatre in New Westminster. ... We wanted to provide a venue for working professional actors."
Finding artistic director Renee Bucciarelli - whose background is in classical theatre in the U.S. - was key to that mission.
"Without her, City Stage New West would not be where it is," Jang said. "It really is her vision."
Bucciarelli, in turn, says the city is ripe for a professional theatre company.
"New West is home to amazing professional artists," she said.
Enter the volunteers
All the groups will agree, however, that the talent onstage is just the tip of the iceberg.
Elwood offers up this simple one-word answer to the success of the community theatre group: "Volunteers."
Vagabond Players offers an honorarium to the director of each production, but otherwise all the jobs are done by volunteers.
Elwood rattles off a list of the "big jobs" - house management, box office, coffee bar, membership, play reading committee, technical director, stage management, props, social coordinator, set, publicity.
"Every big job, under it there are a ton of little jobs," she said.
Even something as seemingly inconsequential as coordinating all the recyclables is a vital part of making the Vagabond Players work.
"The big challenge is that the club is being sustained by too few people," Elwood said. "It's not sustainable unless we get more people taking on the responsible jobs."
The fact that Vagabond stages a full five-play season adds challenge, because there's very little down time between the end of one production and the start of the next. But cutting back on the number of plays produced would bring its own challenges: Each show pays for itself and for the overhead involved, and generally adds $2,000 to $3,000 to the group's coffers.
"It's keeping us in financially good shape, but it is a lot of work," Elwood said.
Bucciarelli said volunteer effort has been absolutely critical to keeping City Stage New West going.
"It can't happen in a vacuum," she says, noting that Jang and the other board members have been devoted to making it work.
Jang noted it's a big job for a small group of people.
"At any given time, two or three people are always wearing a lot of hats," she said.
The role of volunteers is equally key for Royal City Musical Theatre, which has a roster of some 125 people who donate their time - a list that's growing.
Davies pointed out that all the groups involved in making a production happen - the volunteers, the donors, the sponsors - have to remain engaged with the company and believe in its mission in order for the group to succeed.
That means the board is constantly finding ways to involve all of those groups in its work.
"Volunteers look for growth opportunities, to learn new skill sets," Davies pointed out. "Sponsors look for how we can assist them. Donors look for fiscal responsibility; they want to make sure we spend their donations wisely."
In the third and final part: Enter the innovators - new ideas for local theatre, and visions for the future.
