Happy Anniversary!

For arts organizations, anniversaries are an occasion to celebrate success, plan for the future—and, of course, alert the media. Here at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, more than twenty-five arts organizations have dutifully informed us that they are celebrating an anniversary in 2008, a number high enough to raise even the most jaded editor’s eyebrows.

When it comes to anniversaries, longer is better, of course, which makes this year particularly media-worthy. The oldest arts organization in the Twin Cities, The Schubert Club, is celebrating its 125th year in existence. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is having its fiftieth birthday this year, as is Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop, which is still brave but hardly new. VocalEssence, the choral ensemble started by Philip Brunelle, is still going strong at forty. To commemorate this milestone, VocalEssence will throw a birthday party hosted by Garrison Keillor, who celebrates A Prairie Home Companion’s thirty-fifth anniversary next year. A slew of theater companies—Frank Theatre, Red Eye Theater, Illusion Theater, Ten Thousand Things—are celebrating one milestone or another, and many others in the disciplines of dance, visual arts, literature, and performance are hoisting the champagne this year and hoping that many more such toasts are in their future.

While it’s always nice to celebrate artistic achievement, every arts organization in the Twin Cities knows that success is anything but guaranteed. Indeed, there have been several reminders this year that survival itself is a challenge, no matter how many glowing reviews and awards an outfit accumulates. Theatre de la Jeune Lune, one of our most artistically adventurous and popular theater companies, won a Tony Award for best regional theater in 2005 and should have been celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year. Instead, Jeune Lune is closing its doors and selling its building to service a debt load that had ballooned to more than $1 million.

Other organizations have felt the squeeze as well. Earlier this year, the venerable Oak Street Cinema—the primary venue for art films in the Twin Cities—was sold to developers by the Minnesota Film Arts board. In July, the Minnesota Center for Photography announced that it was shutting down. And at the Southern Theater, longtime artistic director Jeff Bartlett, a friend and mentor to many, was let go to make way for a new governing model that the Southern’s board of directors hopes will pull the theater out of debt and make its future more secure.

Such trials and tribulations are nothing new. After all, interesting Twin Cities theaters, galleries, and dance companies come and go all the time, and a certain amount of financial peril seems to be endemic to the arts. Most artistic ventures only last a few years, and the ones that survive often do so by the skin of their teeth.

Indeed, virtually every arts organization that has been around for any length of time has had financial difficulties or flirted with insolvency at one point or another. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra may be fifty years old, for example, but it has found itself in a deep financial hole quite a few times, in each case digging its way out by cutting musician salaries, firing staff, rallying community support, and taking other drastic measures to survive.

“When I came to the orchestra thirty-one years ago, we did run-out tours to different cities and set up residencies all over the place just to make sure we had work,” says Tom Kornacker, a veteran violinist with the SPCO. “It was a very seat-of-the-pants organization. Sometimes, on tours, we couldn’t afford hotel rooms so we had to room in people’s houses.”

According to Kornacker, the SPCO’s fortunes turned around significantly in 1980 when Pinchas Zukerman took over as artistic director, which led to a great deal of growth and acclaim, which in turn led to money troubles in the early 1990s. “It seems like there’s a downturn every ten years or so,” says Kornacker, who is crossing his fingers that the SPCO’s current success continues. Such dynamic artistic partners as Dawn Upshaw, Joshua Bell, and Roberto Abbado have brought new vigor to the ensemble, he says, though the recent retirement of longtime managing director Bruce Coppock due to cancer is a shock the SPCO is still absorbing.

Other organizations, such as Frank Theatre, survive by operating so lean and close to the bone that financial collapse could be just a show or two away. “Honestly, one of the reasons we’re looking at a twentieth anniversary is because we’ve kept the size of the organization manageable,” says Frank Theatre founder and artistic director Wendy Knox. “The office is in my home, we only do two shows a year, and we live within our means.” Buying a building and creating an institution have never been part of the plan, says Knox. “In order to have the luxury of doing the kind of work we do, we have to be flexible,” she says—and that means accepting certain limitations, most of them budget-related.

Dudley Riggs is no longer an active member of Brave New Workshop, the iconic comedy troupe he founded in 1958, but he has seen his share of ups and downs as well. When asked whether he expected BNW to last fifty years, his response is instant and emphatic: “Heavens no! Even after fifty years, you get a little nervous about suggesting that there will be a fifty-first year.”

Over the years, Riggs and company have been evicted from three different spaces, come close to bankruptcy countless times, and, during the Vietnam War, even survived a campaign by Charles Stenvig, Minneapolis mayor at the time, to shut the place down. “We did a show called Viet Nam Follies that some people objected to,” Riggs recalls. “They said we were subversive and amoral. First, they wanted us to take down our red, white, and blue sign. They said it was unpatriotic. Then, the city council wanted to put us out of business. They said we were a threat to young people.” The theater came close to folding a number of other times as well, Riggs says, surviving only because the troupe rallied and managed to put together a live-or-die show that sold enough tickets to keep it afloat.

When an organization has been around for so long, it’s easy for Twin Citians to start taking it for granted, slipping into a mindset that it will always be there. But the truth is that when community support erodes and people stop coming to shows, the invisible hand of the marketplace slaps arts organizations down as hard as any other business. All kinds of factors might converge to close an arts organization, but those that survive over the long haul all have at least one thing in common: They have found what works for the audience they serve and stuck to it.

At the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, continually defying expectations has been the secret to a forty-year run of success, says resident artistic director Michael Brindisi. “The biggest misconception about us over the years is that Chanhassen is where old people go to see theater. But the reality is that it’s the diversity of our audience—students, corporations, young couples, and families—that keeps us alive.”

For the largest dinner theater operation in the country, maintaining the quality of the food and theater is also a top priority. “One of my favorite things to do is to take people who think we’re just another dinner theater and blow them away,” says Brindisi. “It’s not just the quality of our shows; the food is important too. For instance, I’m always on the warpath about bread. Why? Because bread is the first thing people touch when they come here, and I tell everyone here that the show starts the second our guests walk through the door.”

Frank Theatre’s Wendy Knox says that, in principle, running a theater isn’t much different than running any other business. “The key is to have a clear mission, stick to it, know what you’re good at, and play to your strengths,” says Knox. “As soon as you start duplicating someone else’s mission, you’re in trouble.”

Of course, in addition to being persistent and good, it also helps to be lucky every now and then. When Philip Brunelle started his choral ensemble VocalEssence, he decided to bet on the unlikeliest longshot imaginable. “The very first year, I was thinking that I wanted to start with a bang. I didn’t know him, but I called Aaron Copland,” recalls Brunelle with a laugh. “I told him I was starting a choral organization and I invited him to come and conduct a program of his choral music. He said, ‘Young man, no one has ever asked me to conduct my choral music, just my orchestral music. Whatever date you have selected, I will clear my calendar and be there.”

However it’s done, surviving long enough to celebrate an anniversary, be it the 5th or 125th, is a notable accomplishment for any arts-related endeavor. As is always said, the Twin Cities is fortunate to have so many organizations and institutions that can count their success in decades. Still, it’s worth remembering that even our most respected and enduring arts organizations operate on a leaner budget than most people realize. To all the arts organizations in the Twin Cities that have endured through the years, we at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine wish you the happiest of anniversaries. 2008’s Fall Arts Preview is dedicated to you—for without you, there would be nothing for us magazine folks to write about.

A Toast To . . .

The arts organizations celebrating an anniversary in 2008! They are listed below, in alphabetical order, followed by the number of years they have been contributing to the local arts scene.

Barebones Puppet Collective: 15

Bedlam Theatre: 15

Brave New Workshop: 50

Bryant–Lake Bowl Theater: 15

Chanhassen Dinner Theatres: 40

Ethnic Dance Theater: 35

Forecast Public Art: 30

Frank Theatre: 20

Hijack (contemporary dance duo): 15

IFP Minnesota (film): 20

Illusion Theater: 35

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre: 35

Jawaahir Dance Company: 20

JazzMN Big Band: 10

Mill City Museum: 5

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden: 20

Minnesota Jewish Theater Company: 14

Minnesota Film and Television Board: 25

Minnesota Fringe Festival: 15

Minnesota Landscape Arboretum: 100

Minnesota Zoo: 30

9 x 22 Dance Lab: 5

Nordic Roots Festival: 10

Red Eye Theater: 25

Red House Records: 25

Stages Theatre Company: 25

Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra: 50

Ten Thousand Things Theater: 15

Theatre de la Jeune Lune: 30 (RIP)

Theatre in the Round: 55

The Cedar: 20

Twin Cities Jazz Festival: 10

VocalEssence: 40