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m_emerson_newsAn old article about Michael Emerson and his first break on Broadway that snivelusfriend of Michael Emerson Fan Board found. It's a good read.
The Florida Times-Union - Sunday, July 1, 2001
Author: Charlie Patton, Times-Union staff writer
For the fledgling Jacksonville Stage Company, it was not a very good year.
As bills piled up and actors went unpaid, ambitious plans for the company's first season kept being scaled back. A season that originally included six shows has seen only three reach the stage. And the company, which had once envisioned doing each new show five times a week for three or four weeks, scheduled the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit at the Florida Theatre for just three performances, then abruptly canceled the first performance hours before it was scheduled to begin.
Despite such problems, the Jacksonville Stage Company is still in business and a second season will take place, said Diane Moss, chairman of the company's board of directors. "The first year was a little bit too ambitious," she said.
"We tried to do too much, too soon," said Bob Pritchard, the company's founder and executive director. "I was creating what should have been our season five years from now. I was advised not to do that, but I was trying to bring Broadway-level theater to town. There wasn't enough attendance to pay for the productions."
Of course, theater companies come and go in Jacksonville and there's nothing particularly surprising about a new theater company struggling. But what makes the plight of the Jacksonville Stage Company of more than passing interest was its ambition to be something unique in the area. As initially envisioned by Pritchard and Deborah Jordan, the company's artistic director, the Stage Company was going to fill a niche in Jacksonville cultural life by being a professional repertory theater.
Like the Alhambra Dinner Theatre and unlike such community theaters as Theatre Jacksonville, Players-By-The-Sea and Atlantic Beach Experimental Theatre, the Stage Company proposed to pay its actors. But while the Alhambra is a profit-making venture that specializes in musicals and popular comedies, the Stage Company would be a non-profit venture doing artistically ambitious shows. Examples would be the Tony-winning Art and the Pulitzer-winning Wit, both of which it staged this season, and Death of a Salesman and Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, which were on the announced schedule but were not done.
The community theaters all attempt such ambitious fare at times, but theoretically a professional theater has an advantage since it can pay its actors. Thus, like the Alhambra, it can attract actors from other areas, induce some of those actors to make Jacksonville their home and allow actors living here to make acting a full-time profession.
Tod Booth, who owns the Alhambra, said he gave money to Pritchard to help start the Stage Company partly because a successful repertory theater would increase working opportunities for the professional actors, thus increasing the talent pool for the Alhambra.
Devlin Mann, who is an artist-in-residence teaching acting at Jacksonville University, cited Michael Emerson as an example of an actor who might still be working in Jacksonville if a professional theater company had existed locally. Emerson, who has built a solid reputation on Broadway and has worked in television and the movies, spent seven years acting in Jacksonville but finally left because he couldn't earn a living as an actor here.
"If you're going to demand the most from your actors, you need to provide them with a way to live," said Mann, who briefly served as development director for the Stage Company and acted in its first production, Art.
He has since resigned from the Stage Company and is mounting a production of Hamlet, using a mixture of local actors and actors from Los Angeles, where he spent eight years after graduating from JU. If Hamlet is successful, Mann said, it could lead to further productions that might eventually grow into a professional repertory company. "The only reason Michael isn't acting in Jacksonville right now is because he can't afford to," Mann said. "The only reason I can act here is that I can afford to."
In a telephone conversation from New York, Emerson said it's a far more difficult prospect to launch a successful theater group than most people seem to understand. "It's a really tricky deal to pull off. . . . Who's going to do the fund-raising? Who's going to run the business? You need more than actors. You have to have directors and designers. You have to build up some kind of infrastructure. . . . It's a business. People who start a theater company need to be mindful of where the money might come from."
Unrealistic dreams about building a theater company are hardly unique to Jacksonville, Emerson said, noting that he is constantly approached by New York actors with similar dreams. One group, he said, recently outlined a plan to raise $50,000 to start a company. "I told them, 'You need to get your foot set firmly first. Find a storefront, put something on for $1,500 first, and prove what you can do. If you have your reputation first, then money will follow."
Jacksonville playwright Ian Mairs ran his own theater in Riverside for several years in the mid-'90s. But Mairs said he discontinued the Oasis Theater Project when he realized that to sustain and grow the theater would involve forming a board of directors and "spending 80 percent of my time fund-raising." That, he said, wasn't how he wanted to spend his energy.
Of the idea of building a professional repertory theater in Jacksonville, he said, "I think that people want it. But I think it is a matter of a lot more planning and vision. It cannot be based on self-promotion."
Booth said that while he initially gave money to the Stage Company, he became convinced that it had been launched for the wrong reasons. "Here's a man trying to make himself a living with everybody else's money," he said of Pritchard. "They need to start doing stuff that they can afford in such a way that they can afford it. He's burning a lot of bridges. . . . There's a lot of pretense on his part."
But Jan Wikstrom, who spent 15 years in New York as a professional actress and now teaches theater at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, defended Pritchard for taking a chance. "My hat is off to Bob and to the idealists. . . . I like people who go out on the end of a limb. I think he's doing a brave thing. But I think it's difficult."
Erik Hart, manager of the Florida Theatre, was one of the people who helped the Stage Company, giving it substantial discounts on his facility so it could stage a second production of Art and could do Wit. Neither show attracted an audience, but it wasn't because the shows weren't good, Hart said. "Artistically, their efforts were solid," he said.
But doing shows at the 1,900-seat Florida Theatre was probably a mistake, Hart said. "They thought the aura of the building would give some credibility. But in the end, the audiences weren't there. I'd love to see a repertory theater here. That's why I made some major concessions. But as much as I would love to have a company like that, I think the room is too big."
There were other mistakes, conceded Moss, the Stage Company board chairman. But all the actors have finally been paid and new plans put into place to make next season successful. "I think Bob and Debbie have the theater experience but need help with the business side," she said. "Bob's a typical actor, and the ego comes in a bit, but he's learning to listen to the board."
The struggles of the Stage Company as well as the failure of earlier local professional companies raise the question of whether the problem lies with the Stage Company or with Jacksonville.
Sarah Boone, executive director of Theatre Jacksonville, said what upsets her is that many people have become convinced Jacksonville just can't support a professional theater. "I don't want people to walk around and say Jacksonville can't do it just because this company is having difficult times," she said. "There was a time when people said Jacksonville couldn't support a professional sports franchise. What it will take to have a successful professional theater company is the right combination of managers and artists. Maybe that hasn't happened yet."
"I think certainly there is an audience of people who are looking for challenging, engaging work," said Robert Arleigh White, executive director of the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville. "But it will take a unique, dedicated and locally answerable sort of person to make it happen. Somebody who knows how to administer and fund-raise."
The problems of the Jacksonville Stage Company won't make it any easier, Mairs said. "They've made it harder for the next guy."
But Pritchard still believes there won't have to be a next guy. The Stage Company has arranged to move its productions into St. Johns River City Band's building, Historic Snyder Memorial, on Hemming Plaza when renovations are completed next spring. Until then, Pritchard said, he'll work on a business plan. "A thousand people saw Art, 1,200 saw It's a Wonderful Life. I think Jacksonville already has embraced us. Just not to the level we needed."
WHAT THEY'RE SAYING
I don't want people to walk around and say Jacksonville can't do it just because this company is having difficult times. There was a time when people said Jacksonville couldn't support a professional sports franchise. What it will take to have a successful professional theater company is the right combination of managers and artists. Maybe that hasn't happened yet.
--Sarah Boone, Theatre Jacksonville executive director
They thought the aura of the building would give some credibility. But in the end, the audiences weren't there. I'd love to see a repertory theater here. That's why I made some major concessions. But as much as I would love to have a company like that, I think the room is too big.
--Erik Hart, Florida Theatre manager
I was creating what should have been our season five years from now. I was advised not to do that, but I was trying to bring Broadway-level theater to town. There wasn't enough attendance to pay for the productions.
--Bob Pritchard, Jacksonville Stage Company founder and executive director
The Florida Times-Union - Sunday, July 1, 2001
Author: Charlie Patton, Times-Union staff writer
For the fledgling Jacksonville Stage Company, it was not a very good year.
As bills piled up and actors went unpaid, ambitious plans for the company's first season kept being scaled back. A season that originally included six shows has seen only three reach the stage. And the company, which had once envisioned doing each new show five times a week for three or four weeks, scheduled the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit at the Florida Theatre for just three performances, then abruptly canceled the first performance hours before it was scheduled to begin.
Despite such problems, the Jacksonville Stage Company is still in business and a second season will take place, said Diane Moss, chairman of the company's board of directors. "The first year was a little bit too ambitious," she said.
"We tried to do too much, too soon," said Bob Pritchard, the company's founder and executive director. "I was creating what should have been our season five years from now. I was advised not to do that, but I was trying to bring Broadway-level theater to town. There wasn't enough attendance to pay for the productions."
Of course, theater companies come and go in Jacksonville and there's nothing particularly surprising about a new theater company struggling. But what makes the plight of the Jacksonville Stage Company of more than passing interest was its ambition to be something unique in the area. As initially envisioned by Pritchard and Deborah Jordan, the company's artistic director, the Stage Company was going to fill a niche in Jacksonville cultural life by being a professional repertory theater.
Like the Alhambra Dinner Theatre and unlike such community theaters as Theatre Jacksonville, Players-By-The-Sea and Atlantic Beach Experimental Theatre, the Stage Company proposed to pay its actors. But while the Alhambra is a profit-making venture that specializes in musicals and popular comedies, the Stage Company would be a non-profit venture doing artistically ambitious shows. Examples would be the Tony-winning Art and the Pulitzer-winning Wit, both of which it staged this season, and Death of a Salesman and Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, which were on the announced schedule but were not done.
The community theaters all attempt such ambitious fare at times, but theoretically a professional theater has an advantage since it can pay its actors. Thus, like the Alhambra, it can attract actors from other areas, induce some of those actors to make Jacksonville their home and allow actors living here to make acting a full-time profession.
Tod Booth, who owns the Alhambra, said he gave money to Pritchard to help start the Stage Company partly because a successful repertory theater would increase working opportunities for the professional actors, thus increasing the talent pool for the Alhambra.
Devlin Mann, who is an artist-in-residence teaching acting at Jacksonville University, cited Michael Emerson as an example of an actor who might still be working in Jacksonville if a professional theater company had existed locally. Emerson, who has built a solid reputation on Broadway and has worked in television and the movies, spent seven years acting in Jacksonville but finally left because he couldn't earn a living as an actor here.
"If you're going to demand the most from your actors, you need to provide them with a way to live," said Mann, who briefly served as development director for the Stage Company and acted in its first production, Art.
He has since resigned from the Stage Company and is mounting a production of Hamlet, using a mixture of local actors and actors from Los Angeles, where he spent eight years after graduating from JU. If Hamlet is successful, Mann said, it could lead to further productions that might eventually grow into a professional repertory company. "The only reason Michael isn't acting in Jacksonville right now is because he can't afford to," Mann said. "The only reason I can act here is that I can afford to."
In a telephone conversation from New York, Emerson said it's a far more difficult prospect to launch a successful theater group than most people seem to understand. "It's a really tricky deal to pull off. . . . Who's going to do the fund-raising? Who's going to run the business? You need more than actors. You have to have directors and designers. You have to build up some kind of infrastructure. . . . It's a business. People who start a theater company need to be mindful of where the money might come from."
Unrealistic dreams about building a theater company are hardly unique to Jacksonville, Emerson said, noting that he is constantly approached by New York actors with similar dreams. One group, he said, recently outlined a plan to raise $50,000 to start a company. "I told them, 'You need to get your foot set firmly first. Find a storefront, put something on for $1,500 first, and prove what you can do. If you have your reputation first, then money will follow."
Jacksonville playwright Ian Mairs ran his own theater in Riverside for several years in the mid-'90s. But Mairs said he discontinued the Oasis Theater Project when he realized that to sustain and grow the theater would involve forming a board of directors and "spending 80 percent of my time fund-raising." That, he said, wasn't how he wanted to spend his energy.
Of the idea of building a professional repertory theater in Jacksonville, he said, "I think that people want it. But I think it is a matter of a lot more planning and vision. It cannot be based on self-promotion."
Booth said that while he initially gave money to the Stage Company, he became convinced that it had been launched for the wrong reasons. "Here's a man trying to make himself a living with everybody else's money," he said of Pritchard. "They need to start doing stuff that they can afford in such a way that they can afford it. He's burning a lot of bridges. . . . There's a lot of pretense on his part."
But Jan Wikstrom, who spent 15 years in New York as a professional actress and now teaches theater at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, defended Pritchard for taking a chance. "My hat is off to Bob and to the idealists. . . . I like people who go out on the end of a limb. I think he's doing a brave thing. But I think it's difficult."
Erik Hart, manager of the Florida Theatre, was one of the people who helped the Stage Company, giving it substantial discounts on his facility so it could stage a second production of Art and could do Wit. Neither show attracted an audience, but it wasn't because the shows weren't good, Hart said. "Artistically, their efforts were solid," he said.
But doing shows at the 1,900-seat Florida Theatre was probably a mistake, Hart said. "They thought the aura of the building would give some credibility. But in the end, the audiences weren't there. I'd love to see a repertory theater here. That's why I made some major concessions. But as much as I would love to have a company like that, I think the room is too big."
There were other mistakes, conceded Moss, the Stage Company board chairman. But all the actors have finally been paid and new plans put into place to make next season successful. "I think Bob and Debbie have the theater experience but need help with the business side," she said. "Bob's a typical actor, and the ego comes in a bit, but he's learning to listen to the board."
The struggles of the Stage Company as well as the failure of earlier local professional companies raise the question of whether the problem lies with the Stage Company or with Jacksonville.
Sarah Boone, executive director of Theatre Jacksonville, said what upsets her is that many people have become convinced Jacksonville just can't support a professional theater. "I don't want people to walk around and say Jacksonville can't do it just because this company is having difficult times," she said. "There was a time when people said Jacksonville couldn't support a professional sports franchise. What it will take to have a successful professional theater company is the right combination of managers and artists. Maybe that hasn't happened yet."
"I think certainly there is an audience of people who are looking for challenging, engaging work," said Robert Arleigh White, executive director of the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville. "But it will take a unique, dedicated and locally answerable sort of person to make it happen. Somebody who knows how to administer and fund-raise."
The problems of the Jacksonville Stage Company won't make it any easier, Mairs said. "They've made it harder for the next guy."
But Pritchard still believes there won't have to be a next guy. The Stage Company has arranged to move its productions into St. Johns River City Band's building, Historic Snyder Memorial, on Hemming Plaza when renovations are completed next spring. Until then, Pritchard said, he'll work on a business plan. "A thousand people saw Art, 1,200 saw It's a Wonderful Life. I think Jacksonville already has embraced us. Just not to the level we needed."
WHAT THEY'RE SAYING
I don't want people to walk around and say Jacksonville can't do it just because this company is having difficult times. There was a time when people said Jacksonville couldn't support a professional sports franchise. What it will take to have a successful professional theater company is the right combination of managers and artists. Maybe that hasn't happened yet.
--Sarah Boone, Theatre Jacksonville executive director
They thought the aura of the building would give some credibility. But in the end, the audiences weren't there. I'd love to see a repertory theater here. That's why I made some major concessions. But as much as I would love to have a company like that, I think the room is too big.
--Erik Hart, Florida Theatre manager
I was creating what should have been our season five years from now. I was advised not to do that, but I was trying to bring Broadway-level theater to town. There wasn't enough attendance to pay for the productions.
--Bob Pritchard, Jacksonville Stage Company founder and executive director
