David Babcock and Ed Koster act out a scene from the play "Hellcab" at Ann Arbor Civic Theatre auditions earlier this month. The show will be performed Aug. 21-23. (Photo by the writer.)

The woman is swaying in her seat, inhaling in a drunken hiss and dragging her feet along the floor. The driver stares straight ahead, looking mildly uncomfortable.

Grinning, her head wobbling slightly on her neck, she leans as far forward as possible and whispers loudly to the cabbie, “I looove you!”
The other people in the room – and the director, Paul Bianchi – laugh.

The woman and the man acting as the cabbie are seated in two chairs in the middle of the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre studio in downtown Ann Arbor – a high-ceilinged, mostly empty room with a wood-paneled floor and a piano at one end. It’s an evening in early June, and they’re auditioning for “Hellcab,” a play depicting a day in the life of a Chicago cab driver.

A day in the life of AACT itself is challenging in a different way. Like virtually all nonprofits, including those in the performing arts, the local theater faces some less-than-entertaining concerns this season. Although leaders of the theater say it isn’t in crisis, the nonprofit has made some cuts to save money, and is trying to get creative about ways to bring in revenue.

Performing Well, Despite the Economy

Overall, AACT has been “pretty lucky,” said Suzi Peterson, the theater’s managing director. They don’t depend heavily on grants for funding, which has helped, since that source has dried up somewhat as funders face their own financial struggles. And donations from individuals are on the rise. In fact, the theater’s membership and individual giving is higher than it’s been for the past several years, Peterson said. Membership giving and donations account for $20,000 of the past season’s $200,000 budget. Peterson said that’s roughly 20% more than last year and quadruple what it was in the year 2000.

“That sort of income is doing pretty well,” she said. “Our donors have been really supportive.”

However, corporate donations aren’t as strong. “It’s going to be a lot tougher this coming season,” Peterson said. “Companies just don’t want to let go of their money.”

Corporate donations accounted for about $50,000 of funding for the theater’s last season. That amount has stayed steady in recent years, but theater staff expects that it may drop next season. Corporate and individual donations (including grants, which Peterson said vary) make up 40% of the theater’s funding. The remaining 60% comes from ticket sales. Ticket sales have decreased somewhat, but they’re holding fairly steady. Peterson attributes this to AACT’s move to reduce prices last summer. “I think because of that, people were more able to afford seeing one of our shows,” she said.

Ann Arbor Civic Theatre isn’t alone in facing fallout from a struggling economy. Another local theater, Performance Network, announced in April that it needed $40,000 or it would close – an appeal that resulted in a rush of donations. Peterson said the Civic Theatre didn’t notice any impact from that situation – that is, it didn’t appear that donors shifted funding from their theater to Performance Network. And Civic Theatre workers wanted Performance Network to pull through. ”We’re all sort of in this – the arts business – together,” Peterson said.

As for sending out financial alerts of its own, Peterson said she didn’t recall ever doing that, although they have faced tough times in the past. ”We’ve had some lean years,” she said. “And we’ve definitely had some emergency meetings trying to figure out what to do.”

Final results aren’t yet in for the theater’s current fiscal year, which ends June 30. The theater’s main stage season (which includes large productions at the Lydia Mendelssohn and Arthur Miller theaters on the University of Michigan campus) runs from September to June. The studio series, which involves smaller productions, takes place in July and August.

Although the theater isn’t facing any financial crisis at the moment, Peterson said the staff has still enacted cost-cutting measures “just in case” there’s a drop in funds next season. Their goal is to turn out productions of the same quality for less money.

A little over half of their $200,000 budget is used for productions, and the rest goes to overhead. AACT doesn’t own the buildings it uses, so it has to pay rent. And there are salaries for its workers. The theater employs five paid workers. Two of them – including Peterson – work half-time. The others work only a few hours a week, Peterson said.

Advertising is one “really expensive” area that has been cut, Peterson said. The theater is looking for alternative, free ways to spread the word about their work, such as creating a Facebook page and further expanding the theater’s online presence.

They also save money on costumes by not buying new ones for each show. “Instead of buying costumes that we need, we have several volunteers that build new costumes themselves,” Peterson said. AACT maintains a costume shop – located in the same building as the theater’s studio at 322 W. Ann St. – where costumes used in productions over the years are saved for future use. Although they don’t keep all of their costumes because of space constraints, Peterson explained that they hold onto “really unique” ones. For example, they’ve kept some heavily beaded gowns that took hours of labor to create. They also keep costumes that were made for specific animals or characters in their productions. “There are some it feels like we reuse every year,” she said.

The theater also recycles props and wood and materials from its sets. “We’re just trying to find ways to build sets economically,” Peterson said.

Using email and the internet instead of paper to communicate with its donors and audience is another way that the theater saves money, since printing is expensive, Peterson said.

The one thing they don’t want to cut is their performances. “We don’t want to cut the number of productions we do because they’re important,” Peterson said. The past season included 13 productions: 6 main stage, 2 junior theater and 5 studio series. That’s 2 more productions than the previous year, which Peterson said is a response to more people wanting to direct shows.

Season tickets for the Civic Theatre’s next season are currently on sale, and Peterson said the budget for the next season is in place. And although they’ve made cuts just to be safe, she noted that the theater has seen a good response for next season already.

Actress and AACT board member Kathleen Beardmore expressed optimism for the upcoming season. “I just feel really good about this upcoming season and its ability to draw a variety of audiences,” she said.

Beardmore, who was on the play selection committee for the season, explained that this year’s lineup includes some well-known pieces – like “The Producers” – that are bound to draw people in. She said the selection of shows also represents a variety of themes, from lighter to more serious. “We’ve got a nice variety,” Beardmore said. “I think that gives us a chance to draw an audience from a variety of directions.”

In terms of cost-cutting measures, Beardmore said that the board looked at “both sides of the equation” – expenses and revenue. She agreed that the theater wants to preserve its wide variety of quality programming. “I think we have to be careful about not cutting too deep,” she said. “We don’t want to cut so deep that we change the essence of the organization.”

Instead, the theater is trying to focus on individual donors. Beardmore said AACT is fine-tuning its message to remind people of what they personally get out of the organization.

Second, the theater is looking to events other than shows for fundraising. They recently held a wine-tasting, for example. “We don’t have to just do things that center on performance,” Beardmore said.

Finding Value in the Arts

Peterson said she’s aware that several local arts organizations, including University Musical Society, are still waiting on grant money from the state that they may never get. “There’s a part of me as a private citizen, I understand the state is just in awful shape,” Peterson said. “But I don’t like the idea that the arts is the first to get cut.”

Following the “Hellcab” audition, Paul Bianchi spoke to The Chronicle and echoed Peterson’s sentiments about the importance of funding for the arts. Cutting arts funding from the state is “penny wise, pound foolish,” he said. “That’s seed money that grows.” He explained that many other businesses – such as restaurants and parking facilities – profit from cultural activities.

Peterson emphasized that theater and the arts play a vital role in the community in other ways. One of the ways the theater specifically impacts Ann Arbor is by exposing children to the arts through its junior theater program. “We’ve seen so many kids come into the program…not really knowing what the arts are,” she said. Those same kids come out of the program with not only a better understanding of the arts but more self-esteem and confidence from being onstage, Peterson said.

But a trip to the theater isn’t just good for kids. Many of AACT’s patrons have problems in their lives with finances or family or both. When they come to see a performance, they can spend two hours and “not have a care in the world,” Peterson said. She described the theater as having the ability to “lift you away from your struggles,” if only for a few hours.

Sha James, one of the actors at the “Hellcab” audition, said the theater offers a unique opportunity by bringing together people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. “If anything needs funding, I think it’s the arts,” James said. “Where else could I go and meet so many other different people?”

David Babcock, who also auditioned for the play, agreed that people should still make funding the arts a priority in hard times. “I know that it’s tough for everybody,” Babcock said. “But if people are regular givers to the theater, they should try to budget that in.”

Besides donating money, community members can help out the theater by volunteering. Whether it’s helping to sort out costumes or working backstage, there are many ways to contribute, Beardmore said. The theater has supporters and members from all walks of life and all professions, which Beardmore identified as one of its “greatest assets.”

“We have to keep a place in our world, as we face hard economic times, for the arts,” Beardmore said. “The arts are often where you’re seeing innovation, and if we don’t need that in our community, what do we need?”

Overall, Peterson said she’s nervous about the theater’s future but feels that it will pull through. After all, it’s already survived 81 years.

“We made it through this long. We’ve just got to stay hopeful,” Peterson said. “We have no idea what this next season is going to hold.”

About the writer: Helen Nevius, a student at Eastern Michigan University, is an intern with The Ann Arbor Chronicle.

Gulliblurr (Pat Oleszko) visits the PeePee Distillery in the A-cad-dummy of Sciences.

Regular Chronicle readers know we’re  big fans of the odd and inexplicable. That served us well on Saturday night, when we attended a performance by Pat Oleszko, visiting artist at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design.

In fact, “Gulliblurr Travels: A Space Oddity” drew a lot of other Ann Arbor absurderati to the Duderstadt Center’s Video Studio, including Dave Devarti, Elaine Sims (of the Ann Arbor Public Art Commission), and Shoshana Hurand (one of the lead FestiFoolers, taking a break before Sunday’s main event). We’d been alerted to this one-weekend-only show by Kath Weider-Roos, director of UM’s PLAY Gallery – she and her husband John Roos (of Roos Roast) were also in Saturday’s packed audience.

So what did we all see?

This floating city was one of many in the Video Studio's galaxy. Others included a giant yarn ball planet, the sun (with shades) and a Comet can.

In broad strokes, the performance riffed on Jonathan Swift’s classic satire, using that framework to poke fun at current political, social and technological foibles. At least, we think that’s what was happening – it seemed fitting that the show was held on the same day as Hash Bash.

Oleszko began the performance by reading from a book she said she’d found at the library doing research on Swift, a book she said we might have overlooked “in your search for…pornography.” The saga she read outlined what we were about to see illustrated during the evening: An interplanetary journey in which Gulliblurr encounters (among other things) an army of finger puppets led by the Dog King, Dorian Gray; Operation Enduring Fleadom; a giant bird that swallows Gulliblurr then proctile-vomits him back into outer space; several breathless inventions at the A-cad-dummy of Sciences; and Yahoos of a modern ilk.

What follows is an impressionistic and extremely limited sampling from the evening’s spectacle:

Gulliblurr begins his journey in the spaceship RumpleForeskin. The intergalactic trip is narrated in newscast format by artist and UM faculty member Holly Hughes, who comments as the spaceship lifts off: "Oh my god, the technology that's available to us at the University of Michigan – it's astounding."

Cameraman Michael Flynn (identified in the show's program as a "gizmatic") filmed the entire performance and constructed several of the set pieces. Behind him, an ocean (as represented by blue plastic bags) moves past in waves, with ships, fish and the occasional iceberg atop performers' heads.

Using an oversized fork, Gulliblurr prepares to pitch a pea at the Brobs (some particularly well-endowed), seen in the background.

Gulliblurr, just before being projectile-vomited out of the Quantum Leaper.

Gulliblurr is attracted to a Knight of the Living Dead.

In comments to the audience after the performance, Oleszko praised the more than 30 students and volunteers who collaborated on the show. ”I rode them like a  …  horse – they’ve worked harder than they’ve ever worked,” she said. “But look at the fantastic things they made!” She’s working with students this semester as the Witt Artist in Residence for UM’s School of Art & Design.

Oleszko said it pained her that the two performances (the other one was Friday night) were free – she’d rather have charged students a couple of bucks and adults $150 – then joked that it would cost the crowd $20 to get out. She also asked for volunteers to help “take down the house” – they needed to dismantle and remove the set that night, taking some of the objects to the Slusser Gallery and others, she said, to the dumpster.

“Thank you all,” Oleszko said in closing, “from the bottom, bottom, bottom of my art.”

Pat Oleszko, speaking to the audience after Saturday's performance.

Brian Hinz in the role of Baptist Minister, rehearsing "The Laramie Project" at Huron High School.

The stage in Huron High School’s theater is stark, as is the play that students are rehearsing: A community coming to grips with the murder of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, 11 years ago.

“The Laramie Project,” which opens Friday, was a choice that several students in the Huron Players theater group advocated for, says director BJ Wallingford, and one that he’s personally wanted to do for years. The play is not without controversy – it’s one that is frequently protested by the ultra-conservative Westboro Baptist Church, and were it not for efforts by the Ann Arbor Police Department, protesters would have descended on Huron High as well. More on that later.

At a rehearsal on Monday, actors went through their paces and the technical crew worked out glitches in lighting and audio in the school’s new theater, which opened last fall. The play itself is powerful, a challenge for both actors and the audience in confronting people with attitudes and beliefs that often differ fundamentally from their own.

“I don’t think it’s a gay play,” Wallingford said. “I think it’s a play about hatred.” Written by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, the play is based on hundreds of interviews they did with townspeople, reporters and others after Shepard’s death. It explores the hatred leveled against Shepard and homosexuals, Wallingford said, but the same themes would apply to hatred against other groups, including women, blacks, Jews or any minority that has been the target of anger and discrimination.

Victoria Good playing the role of Marge Murray, and Gulia Chernyak as Alison Mears. This is not a musical, but they do sing a song.

Students have been working on the show for two months, with each of the 23 actors taking on several roles. (In the original production, eight actors played nearly 70 parts.) They use minimalist props or costumes – a hat, a Bible, a backpack – to indicate their role change. The only real piece of set scenery is a fence, evoking the one that Shepard was tied to when his attackers left him for dead, after brutally beating him. (At Monday’s rehearsal, the crew was still working on the fence in the theater’s workshop – benches served as a substitute on stage.) Wallingford said they kept the set simple, not wanting to gloss over the content by prettying up the stage.

The content of the play has provided fodder for some deep discussions among the cast, Wallingford said. It’s been a way to examine beliefs, to try to understand views that differ from your own, to reflect on the consequences of hatred, he said: “We’re doing what we hope the audience will do.”

Some of the technical bits are challenging, as are some glitches of the new theater, which seats about 200. On Monday, for example, the air vents above the stage had opened automatically, letting in light and cold air – Wallingford wasn’t sure how that happened, but he wasn’t particularly surprised, either.

Nor was he surprised when Westboro Baptist announced plans to protest “The Laramie Project.” The church typically targets any production of the play – their leader, Rev. Fred Phelps, is featured in the production – and they were on hand to protest when the University of Michigan performed the play in 2005. What Wallingford was most concerned about was a counterprotest – he’d heard from people in the Ann Arbor community who wanted to demonstrate against the Westboro group, and he feared that things could get out of control.

Someone at the Ann Arbor Police Department (Wallingford wasn’t sure who) contacted the church and persuaded them not to protest. The Chronicle was unsuccessful in finding out who took that step – we weren’t able to reach anyone at the AAPD who knew about it.

“The Laramie Project” will be performed at Huron High School on Feb. 6-7 and Feb. 13-14 – all shows begin at 7:30 p.m. More details are on the Huron Players website. After the performances on Feb. 6 and 13, there will be a reception with the cast and the school’s Gay and Straight Alliance.

Lyndzii Stevens as Romaine Patterson.

Will Deakin as Matt Mickelson. In the background: Rachel Evans as Trish Steger and Meghan Cleary as Barbara Pitts.

Katie Marenghi as Stephanie Johnson.

Nick Richardson as Stephen Belber, and Olivia Gramprie as Zubaida Ula.

Dan Ehrlich as Jedadiah Schultz, Megan Wesner as the waitress, Micah Warschausky as Greg Pierotti, and Allison Punch as Leigh Fondakowski.

Susan Pollay rehearses for Sunday evening's show at Performance Network. Her roles are Speaker #12 and Speaker #6. In real life, her role is executive director of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

They aren’t bound for Broadway – with roles like “Man with a Monstrous Chin” and “Laundress Vicky” – but on Saturday morning about a dozen folks from the community joined professional actors at Performance Network Theatre to rehearse for a benefit show of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” to be performed Sunday night, Dec. 21.

The script is a new adaptation by David Wolber and Joseph Zettelmaier, and is directed by Wolber. It is a “staged concert reading,” meaning that the cast will read from scripts during the performance. The show, a benefit for the nonprofit theater group, begins at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

The Chronicle dropped by to catch a few minutes of the rehearsal, which started at 9 a.m. We got there at the end of Act I, just as WUOM’s Charity Nebbe was breaking up with Scrooge, played by PN regular John Seibert. (She was gentle about it.)

Here are a few photos from the morning’s theatrical workout.

The rehearsal room at Performance Network. From left: Heidi Bennett (Ghost of Christmas Past), John Seibert (Scrooge), John Hansen (Speaker #10), and Terry Heck (narrator).

Director David Wolber gives some notes to Charity Nebbe, who reads the role of Scrooge's former fiance, Belle Fezziwig.

Jesse Bernstein, Jim Kosteva and Susan Pollay wait for their turn to take the stage during Saturday's morning rehearsal. Bernstein, president of the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce, plays Man with a Monstrous Chin and Speaker #2. Kosteva is UM's director of community relations, and plays Third Man and Speakers #1 and #4. Pollay, DDA executive director, is Speaker #6 and #12.

Former Ann Arbor mayor Ingrid Sheldon was waiting to read the role of Laundress Vicky and Speaker #14. In the foreground is Russ Schwartz, who plays Peter Cratchit.

The Players

Terry Heck: Narrator

John Seibert: Ebenezer Scrooge

Malcolm Tulip (UM assistant professor of theater): Jacob Marley

Heidi Bennett: Ghost of Christmas Past, Speaker #19

Aaron Moore: Ghost of Christmas Present, Speaker #20

Ralph Williams (UM English professor): Ghost of Christmas Future

Phil Powers (Center for Michigan founder, former UM regent): Bob Cratchit

Carla Milarch (Performance Network executive director): Mrs. Cratchit

Sabra Satz-Kojis: Martha Cratchit and Intelligent, Fine Lad

Russ Schwartz: Peter Cratchit

Latifa Almohaer: Belinda, a Cratchit Girl

Aviva Satzrkojis: Tiny Tim

Ellie Serras (former Main Street Area Association executive director): Fran, his sister

Joseph Zettelmaier: Fred, his sister’s son

Sarab Kamoo: Fred’s Wife, Speaker #5

Jerry Lax (former Ann Arbor city attorney): Charity Gentleman #1, Speaker #7, Man with Red Face

Norm Herbert (former UM treasurer): Charity Gentleman #2, Speaker #8

Jim Kosteva (UM director of community relations): Third Man, Speaker #1, Speaker #4

Jon Bennett: Mr. Fezziwig, Speaker #18

Janet Torno (Performance Network director of development): Mrs. Fezziwig, Speaker #13

Charity Nebbe (WUOM host, children’s book author): Belle Fezziwig, Speaker #17

Brian Thibault: Belle’s husband Tut, Speaker #16

Jesse Bernstein (Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce president): Man with a Monstrous Chin, Speaker #2

Mike Cichon: Another Man, Speaker #3

Chelsea Sadler: Charwoman, Speaker #15

John Hansen (former state representative): Old Joe, Speaker #10

Ingrid Sheldon (former Ann Arbor mayor): Laundress Vicky, Speaker #14

Tom Whalen: Speaker #9 and #11

Susan Pollay (Ann Arbor DDA executive director): Speaker #6 and #12

Sarab Kamoo, left, who stars in "9 Parts of Desire" opening Sept. 18 at Performance Network, talks with Ginny Archer at the theater group's open house.

With its first show of the season opening Sept. 18, Performance Network Theatre threw itself a party Sunday evening to highlight this year’s upcoming productions.

The set was an after-hours Downtown Home & Garden, and amid the tools and hay bales, performers, playwrights and directors were on hand to give brief talks about their shows.

Sarab Kamoo will kick off the season in “9 Parts of Desire,” a one-woman play about the lives of several Iraqi women. Noting that she is of Iraqi descent, Kamoo said the play is especially meaningful for her to give voice to the struggles of women in that country.

Dom Kenney plays bass as part of the student jazz combo from the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts. Not pictured (but key to the evening's musical entertainment) are Milan Griffes on keyboard and Josh Fendrick on drums.

Playwright Kim Carney spoke of how her comedy “Geoffrey & Jeffrey” was inspired by an Ann Arbor couple, Charlie Sutherland and Jim Posante. This will be the world premiere for the play, which runs from Nov. 6 through Dec. 28.

“I hope it comes to fruition like it is in my mind,” Carney said. “It’s a first production, so we’ll see!”

Husband-and-wife actors John Seibert and Terry Heck will star in “A Feminine Ending,” which runs from March 5 through April 12. “You learn a lot about each other when you share the stage…and soap,” Seibert said.

Other shows during the season are Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” ( “We think I’m playing Guildenstern,” joked actor Malcolm Tulip); the Tony Award-winning “Fences”; “A Picasso” by Jeffrey Hatcher; and Robert Hewitt’s “The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead.”

This was the first season-opening reception that Performance Network has held in its 27-year history. Also new this season is the Community Collaboration Project, which pairs shows with local nonprofits. For one performance of each show, proceeds will benefit a nonprofit doing work that relates in some way to the theme of the play. “9 Parts of Desire,” for example, is paired with the Arab American and Chaldean Council on its Oct. 23 performance. Artist Director David Wolber said that Performance Network has done this kind of thing in the past, but not in a formalized way for each play.

Actor Malcolm Tulip, left, talks with Performance Network board member Steven Klein at Sunday's open house.

Left to right: Michele Carroll-Pearce, Rose Mary Nehra and Ellen Woodman enjoy the outdoor area at Downtown Home & Garden during Performance Network's open house.