With a grant-funded production budget that has not increased in decades, the Department of Theatre Arts’ Festival Playhouse Productions faces an uncertain financial future. For the first time, the 2017-2018 season saw the Festival Playhouse cutting one of three annual mainstage productions due to financial constraints.

The department’s present situation can be traced back to 1963, when a collaboration between Theatre Professor Nelda K. Balch and philanthropist Dorothy Dalton resulted in the creation of a summer theatre program that was funded by an annual grant of $25,000. At this time, the College was in session year-round. This yearly grant allowed students and faculty to work alongside equity actors and theatre professionals during a summer season. This equity summer season was discontinued in 1991, when the spending power of the grant had declined to a point where it was no longer feasible to pay for outside equity professionals.

Since cutting the equity summer program, the Dorothy U. Dalton Foundation grant has continued to fund the Festival Playhouse’s annual production budget. Director of Theatre Lanny Potts says that the grant pays for everything related to the production of Festival Playhouse shows: scenery, costumes, lighting, sound, marketing, guest artists, and printed materials. The Dalton Foundation also annually awards the department an additional $15,000 in grant money for maintaining production equipment. For the past 54 seasons, the Dorothy U. Dalton Foundation has been the primary supporter of the department’s production costs, with no direct support from the College.

According to research from Cody Colvin ’18’s Senior Individualized Project (SIP), “had the [Festival Playhouse’s] annual allocation been continually adjusted for inflation, it would now equal $200,000.” Because the value of the grant has never increased, the spending power of the production budget has consistently eroded; Colvin found that, today, it is worth roughly 10 percent of the original grant.

Because the value of the grant has never increased, the spending power of the production budget has consistently eroded; Colvin found that, today, it is worth roughly 10 percent of the original grant.

“It’s wonderful that the Dorothy U. Dalton Foundation has been so supportive consistently,” Company Manager Laura Livingstone-McNelis ’89 says. “But as prices continue to rise, that makes it more challenging each year to make those dollars work for us.”

Livingstone-McNelis says that the declining spending power presents unique production challenges for the Festival Playhouse. The department finds out whether or not they have secured the grant in the fall –– long after they have finalized and announced their season. “It’s always rather anxiety-producing for the department to make promises and wonder if we are going to be able to keep them,” Livingstone-McNelis says. Potts echoed this, saying that it is stressful “to plan a season not knowing if we will be able to fund it.”

Since discontinuing the equity summer program, the department has produced three mainstage (directed by a paid professional) shows each year –– until this season. Festival Playhouse’s fall production of Fun Home made this financially infeasible for the 2017-2018 season, according to Livingstone-McNelis. The department chose to sacrifice a third mainstage show in order to preserve the annual Senior Performance Series, which showcases student directors. This is the first time in the department’s history that a mainstage show has been cut due to lack of funds.

Contemporary musicals like Fun Home are especially hard to produce with the current Festival Playhouse production budget. They often require expensive music rights, compensation of professional musicians, and the construction of complicated sets. Colvin says that Fun Home was a show that “financially, [Festival Playhouse] really couldn’t afford to do. And yet, did we have any choice but to be the first college to do a five-time Tony award winning show written by an alum?”

For the 2018-19 season, the Festival Playhouse intends to produce three plays –– It Can’t Happen Here, Student Body, and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night –– but no musicals. Under their current budget, Livingstone-McNelis says that the Playhouse is generally able to produce a musical every other year.

Well-established plays and musicals such as Oklahoma are easier to produce because the rights are not prohibitively expensive. But both Potts and Livingstone-McNelis resist the notion that the Festival Playhouse should turn to producing these crowd-pleasers in light of their shrinking budget. Potts describes the theatre that Dalton originally sought to bring to the Kalamazoo community as “newly visioned or modern, engaging, gritty, and savvy.” The Festival Playhouse’s guiding motto reflects this original intention: Theatre that is always provocative. Theatre that is always thoughtful.

Throughout Festival Playhouse’s 54 seasons, their production expenses have never seen financial support from the College. The Dalton Foundation made the existence of Festival Playhouse possible, and has continued to be the sole force sustaining the department’s ability to stage performances. Potts explains that, “if we didn’t still receive that outside grant, truthfully, we couldn’t do plays. We wouldn’t have any money. Because the College isn’t putting money into our production expense category.”

Though the administration has never supported production expenses, Potts says that the administration has generously funded the department’s academic budget, which covers faculty salaries and classroom supplies. Still, the production budget is vital to the academic experience of theatre students. For theatre students, Potts says, “the real classroom is what happens in the production environment. That’s where the teaching, the learning, the problem solving, the community and team-building occurs.” Colvin says that production serves as an essential “lab time” for theatre students to apply their theoretical knowledge and gain professional experience.

According to Provost Mickey McDonald, the Office of Advancement has repeatedly requested increased funding from the Dorothy U. Dalton Foundation during the yearly grant application process. These attempts have not yielded any increase in the yearly grant amount. Besides the possibility of an increase from the Dalton Foundation, McDonald says the other available short-term solution is seeking out more grants. McDonald pointed to the department’s recent success at securing a grant from the local Marvin and Rosalie Okun Foundation to support community partnerships as an example of obtaining grants as a funding model. McDonald argues that the College’s proximity to a city with several active arts foundations makes the continued attainment of outside grants a viable solution, compared to fellow GLCA schools such as Hope College and Denison College.

McDonald also says that the option of “shifting the operating budget or adding institutional operating budget” to support the production budget is not out of the question. It is unclear what criteria would need to be met for the administration to decide that the Festival Playhouse production budget merits direct institutional support. From the administration’s perspective, this year’s cut mainstage show does not cross such a line.

It is unclear what criteria would need to be met for the administration to decide that the Festival Playhouse production budget merits direct institutional support.

Conversations between the Office of Advancement and the department have also touched on the possibility of creating an endowment to support the production budget. Potts says that in terms of long-term solutions, “the best way forward is to either create an endowment or to find an institutional funding model that would fund the production program.”

Colvin’s SIP research found that to generate a sufficient annuity, this endowment would need to be worth around 1 million dollars. He says that the possibility of an endowment is a “fantastic opportunity” that is “likely necessary.” However, he also notes that for such an endowment to be realized, it would need to be an institutional priority. In the meantime, Colvin resists the expectation that the department should continue to seek external funding to supplement their current production budget. As he sees it, “we shouldn’t have to fundraise. We shouldn’t have to raise money from anyone except from the College. The College should be paying for its theatre department –– it’s bizarre that they are not. They probably know that they should be.”

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All things considered, Colvin sees the current situation as “bizarre, but understandable.” For much of Festival Playhouse’s history, it had not been necessary for the administration to support their production budget. But while this was once understandable, Colvin sees this relationship as “no longer sufficient.”

“You cannot have an academic theatre program without a vibrant production program, and you cannot have a vibrant production program without an actively engaged academic program.”

Without a thriving production program, Livingstone-McNelis says that the College’s support of the department’s academic costs misses the point: “what good is learning to direct if you never get to direct? What good is learning to do scenic design if you never get to design a set on the Playhouse stage? What good is learning to act if you never get to do a show?”

Ultimately, Potts argues that “you cannot have an academic theatre program without a vibrant production program, and you cannot have a vibrant production program without an actively engaged academic program. They have to live hand in hand, side by side.”