About Face Faces the Music

BY Kerry Reid

Dildine and Metzgar

Bonnie Metzgar wants everyone to understand something: there are a lot of theatres that are potentially facing the same fiscal crisis that has come down hard on About Face Theatre.

As has been widely reported and discussed for the last month, the company is facing a budget shortfall of about $300,000, and has already postponed the planned production this spring of Ann Marie Healy’s What Once We Felt. An emergency fundraising drive is underway so that the company, which moved a year ago to the Center on Halsted’s Hoover-Leppen Theatre, can keep its doors open, pay its staff, and continue its programming, particularly About Face Youth Theatre, which offers a unique place for GLBTQ kids and their allies to explore issues of gender and sexuality in a safe environment. But if anyone thinks About Face has been particularly profligate or careless, Metzgar says, “There are a lot of other theatres that are in exactly the same position.” (The recent woes of San Francisco’s venerable Magic Theatre, which caught many in the Bay Area theatre community and beyond by surprise, seem to echo About Face’s current situation in some regards.)

Metzgar was named artistic director for the acclaimed gay and lesbian-oriented theatre company in May and moved to Chicago in July, leaving behind a post as director of the graduate playwriting program at Brown University. (Her managing director, Rick Dildine, also left Brown to join About Face this past fall.) When she interviewed to take over the job vacated by About Face co-founder Eric Rosen (now the artistic director for Kansas City Repertory Theatre), Metzgar was told that the company’s standing debt was “under $100,000.” That may sound like a lot, but Metzgar points out that About Face, which was itinerant for several years after leaving the Jane Addams Hull House Theatre and before moving into the Center, has had budgets over the years that have “ranged from $500,000 of the previous year’s budget, depending on where they were [producing] at,” and that the figure she was quoted wasn’t out of line for similar-sized companies. “It was not a big huge crazy amount of debt,” says Metzgar. However, when the economy plunged to the basement in September, About Face’s projected income, both earned and donated, took a big hit—and that debt ballooned quickly.

“In a year when all of your [fundraising] goals are going to be too low, that debt really becomes a pressing number,” says Metzgar. And unlike companies who have endowments or other assets such as a building or parcel of land that they can use to obtain a line of credit, About Face was at a greater disadvantage in seeking bridge loans during a bone-dry credit crunch. Additionally, Metzgar points out that, though the partnership with the Center on Halsted has generally been a good thing, About Face is “training a new audience to go to a new venue that isn’t used to going there.” In order to keep ticket sales up during last fall’s slump, the company slashed prices in half and offered additional discounts on top of that, depressing earned income. And Metzgar notes that their corporate funding numbers “are pretty much through the toilet.”

Metzgar points out that the company has revised its annual budget (their fiscal year begins Sept. 1) four times so far in order to tighten the belt. In addition to postponing the world premiere of Healy’s show until the fall, they eliminated a part-time position and cut part-time hours. Metzgar describes the current fundraising as absolutely essential in order to keep staff paid, with $200,000 as “immediate need. It’s a combination of what our needs are this year and [helps service] the existing smaller debt [of $100,000]. It won’t function as an endowment. It will be the tool we need when we have cash-flow issues—as every business in America does right now. We need that tool in order to stay flexible and viable.”

So far, a lot of the money that has come in has been online with small donations—Metzgar mentions one member of the youth ensemble who presented education and outreach coordinator Paula Gilovich with an envelope stuffed with small bills raised from friends. Metzgar also has a lot of national connections through her role as co-creator and co-producer of the 2006-2007 365 Days/365 Plays Festival (in which numerous companies nationwide presented short plays crafted on a one-a-day basis by Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks).

“With Rick [Dildine] and the board, I’m reaching out to national and local funders,” says Metzgar.

But the big-ticket fundraising can take more time—and the company wants to see $150,000 in donations by March 15 in order to keep moving forward. “I’m a lifelong arts leader who believes in what About Face does,” says Metzgar. “What I’ve been describing for the last few weeks is the same situation that so many other arts groups are facing in this crazy and unprecedented economy.” But she also feels confident that the theatre’s supporters will come through. “This is a beloved theatre community, and they rally for each other,” says Metzgar.

It’s undeniable that About Face (which just closed Metzgar’s production of John C. Russell’s Stupid Kids) has provided many significant productions for audiences in Chicago and beyond, including the Chicago premiere of Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, Patricia Kane’s hit lesbian comedy Pulp, and the first workshops of Doug Wright’s eventual Broadway hit I Am My Own Wife (which was later seen at the Goodman in 2005 with original star Jefferson Mays). If you’re interested in helping About Face stay afloat, visit www.aboutfacetheatre.com.