In late July, Movers & Makers invited the leaders of Cincinnati’s “Big Four” professional theaters to join arts writer David Lyman for a chat. There was no agenda, other than to discuss the state of Cincinnati theater.
The four:
D. Lynn Meyers, producing artistic director of Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati since 1995
Brian Isaac Phillips, producing artistic director of Cincinnati Shakespeare Company since 2003
Blake Robison, producing artistic director of Playhouse in the Park since 2012
Bridget Leak, producing artistic director of Know Theatre since May 1
The conversation – nearly all of it on the record – rambled easily from subject to subject. For the most part, they all want the same things: more audiences, more funding and a prosperous Greater Cincinnati theater community.
NOTE: Comments have been edited for clarity and length.
Lyman: Each of your theaters occupies a niche in Cincinnati theater. So could we start with each of you describing how you view your theater’s place?
Meyers: We say that we’re a theater with a conscience. We are defined by where we are. That was born out of somebody choosing to buy a building in a neighborhood that nobody wanted to go to. Even today, the 1125 (Vine St.) address genuinely pushes what we do onstage. In one way, we are in a luxurious position. With 182 seats, I can take some chances that others can’t. And if I sell less than 182, but I still sell 100, I’m still OK.
Phillips: We are the theater that’s bringing Shakespeare and the classics to life. Also, we’ve been trying to contribute new works to the classical canon with our commissions and world premieres. One other thing that sets us apart is that, for 30 years, we’ve used a resident ensemble as the heart of our acting company. That has brought a lot of people to Cincinnati, and hopefully helped grow the creative community along with everybody in this room.
Robison: We call ourselves Cincinnati’s National Theater. That may seem highfalutin, but we have the resources and the broad shoulders to bring the best of American theater to Cincinnati in a way that some others perhaps cannot. The other part of our mission, which is equally important, is to elevate Cincinnati artists to the national stage. And you can see that not only in the casting of certain shows, but also in the work we’re doing with our arts and culture incubator. We’re always asking ourselves, what can the Playhouse do that none of the other companies in town can accomplish? We have many different audiences to serve. So we’re not as branded as just a new-play premiere theater or a classics theater or an experimental theater. We’re trying to do a little bit of all of that. It sounds like a cliche, but there’s something for everyone in the Playhouse season.
Leak: I have the benefit of being the smallest of what I like to call The Big Four. I think there’s a great benefit to that. We have the opportunity to do something that y’all maybe can’t do and maybe wouldn’t choose to do. That gives us a great amount of freedom. I also feel like my job is to serve the local actors, the local designers and, ultimately, the broader community. Employing local artists was our founding principle. That’s the niche that I’m trying to figure out and navigate.
Lyman: And where does the biggest of the big – the Broadway in Cincinnati series – fall into all of this? Do you view them as the competition?
Robison: Not at all.
Phillips: It’s a completely different beast, because it’s a presenting house, bringing in commercial productions from out of town. I think the biggest way that we factor them into our planning is that if there is something that they do, we will know that a large majority of the Cincinnati audience will have seen it. And so perhaps we have to wait for it for a while.
Meyers: The best thing about all of this is that we all actually speak with each other. We share information. We collaborate. We help each other.
Robison: Remember the half-season that we had to be offsite? We staged our shows at The Carnegie and the Incline (Warsaw Federal Incline Theater) and in the Jarson-Kaplan at the Aronoff Center? That was fantastic. Everybody wanted to step up and help. I don’t know if that would have happened in another city.
Meyers: People are honest here. If I say “Are you going to do this?” Blake will say “yes” or “no” or “maybe, but not now.”
Leak: Open communications like this are almost unheard of in other places.
Robison: It’s pointless for a bigger theater to hold onto a title “just in case.” I would rather let it go so that the city can see the play even if we’re not the ones to do it.
Phillips: That collaborative spirit in Cincinnati is bizarre to people outside of our area code. Several years ago we did “One Man, Two Guvnors.” Before we did it, there was a chance that Playhouse was going to do it. But Blake gave me a phone call and said “We’re not doing it. Go ahead.” So we called up Dramatists (the company controlling the play’s production rights) and told them that the Playhouse has let it go. They were flabbergasted that we had communicated with each other.
Meyers: I think it has to do with respect. There is mutual respect built on the knowledge that everybody at this table does really good work. And that’s different than if you’re in a city where people are taking advantage of people or gouging them with tickets or pretending to be something they’re not. That’s just not the case here.
The conversation turned to the lingering impact of the pandemic, everything from press coverage to money – grants, contributions and ticket sales.
Leak: We just had this conversation recently. What do we do if there are no reviewers? There are the writers from the League of Community Theaters and the Sappy Critic.
Phillips: But you almost have to be inside the theater scene to know that that type of coverage exists. They don’t have the same impact as reviews that land on people’s doorsteps. I know newspapers are struggling. But there’s nothing that has the same impact. It is a challenge to not have that kind of consistent coverage or reviews in a more traditional format.
Robison: I feel for the playwrights. This is not a community where anyone’s review is going to sell $50,000 worth of tickets. But it matters to the playwrights because they’re trying to get their plays done somewhere else. If they can walk away with a nice, decent review, that’s huge for them.
Phillips: I’m not sure reviews ever killed us. But a preview? Last season, the only preview article we were able to get was for “The Rewards of Being Frank.” We doubled our single-ticket goal for that because everybody got excited about it going to New York. This is not just a Cincinnati challenge. There was nothing to cover during the pandemic as far as live theater events. So it was easy to get out of that habit.
Robison: It’s not just the press that has gotten out of the habit. Audiences have, too. People will still come to titles they recognize. But getting anybody to buy a ticket for a play they haven’t heard of is harder season by season.
Leak: Audiences want to know that if they’re going to spend money on a babysitter, on tickets, on parking, they want to know that in exchange for giving up all of that, they’re going to have a good time. That is the transaction they’re expecting.
Phillips: There are different ways to measure recovery. When it comes to our audience, we are back to the level before the pandemic. But we would have grown. So we’re actually behind where we would have been had the pandemic never occurred. Subscriptions are down while single tickets are up. That was happening before the pandemic, but it has accelerated. I’m glad that people are still coming. But I wish we had the same level of commitment that we did before.
Robison: The other thing that has accelerated is burnout. A lot of people have just left the field.
Leak: It feels like there is a generation of people stepping into roles who are not yet trained professionals.
Robison: Before the pandemic, when we had a job open up in our production department, we would probably have 30 applications. We’re lucky if we get four now.
Phillips: I have no proof behind what I’m about to say. But I think we’re moving into a significant moment in our industry. When Arena Stage and Cleveland Play House and the Guthrie and these places started the regional movement, most cities across America didn’t have theaters like that. So people bought into the idea. But now the theaters have been here for decades. That donor base is retiring or passing away, and their children and grandchildren take it for granted. So we need to make a case for why their support is so essential. Just because we’ve been here for 60 or 70 years, there’s no guarantee we’ll be here for 70 more.
Robison: It’s not just the theaters, but all the civic institutions in cities like this were built up by a certain generation of families. There was a sort of a civic focus. But the next generation has global concerns. So their children and grandchildren, it’s not that they don’t like Cincinnati, but they want to deal with world hunger and global warming. The philanthropy becomes spread out. That’s a serious, serious issue.
Lyman: So where do you go from here?
Phillips: I’m not really sure. What does the future look like beyond just being able to use social media, being able to use direct mail? What is the next way in which we can reliably talk to our audience to inform them specifically about programming that does not have title recognition? I don’t have an answer.
Robison: I think social media has changed everything. We don’t spend a dollar at the Cincinnati Enquirer anymore. Literally not a dollar. But we’re spending everything we have on promoted Facebook and Instagram posts and all that stuff. That’s just how people are consuming things now.
Meyers: But it’s expensive if you want to promote posts. I mean, you can only depend so much on your own Facebook and Instagram posts. But yeah, print doesn’t happen. Now, that’s not to say that we still don’t do ads in other people’s programs and things like that. But social media is different. And it’s actually created a job, which is somebody to manage the digital and video side of things.
Robison: We were very fortunate at the Playhouse. We were opening a new building. And it was a huge opportunity to press this giant “refresh” button on patterns that had been ingrained for decades. We started fresh and said, let’s schedule this one for five weeks. Let’s schedule this one for three weeks based on what’s going to be popular and what’s maybe a little more challenging. Now, there is no “standard run” at the Playhouse, and I think we’ve benefited from that.
Meyers: We did something similar. Not by changing the length of the runs. But by doing five full shows instead of six, we’ve built in buffers so that if something was selling exceptionally well, it could run longer. Also, it means that we’re not killing the staff like we used to.
Leak: It’s given people more flexibility, more of an opportunity to respond to their audiences. We don’t have the same flexibility as the Playhouse. But I’ve learned from all of these good folks. So I built in a week of possible extensions for my holiday show. If it does as well as I hope it will, I think I can do that extra week. So it’s sort of buffered into the season.
Lyman: Speaking of the coming season, is there one production that you are especially excited about?
Phillips: “Fat Ham” (Sept. 6-22) is the one for us. I’ve already got some older patrons saying
“I can’t believe you’re doing that.”
I tell them that’s OK – you come see “Frankenstein.” But when it comes to attracting new audience members and younger ones, too,
I think “Fat Ham” will be the one that does it.
Robison: For us, it’s “Rutka” (Oct. 13-Nov. 10). And it’s not just because it’s a pre-Broadway musical. Since it’s a story told from a teenage point of view, I think it will hold special interest for younger audiences. Not just teens.
Leak: Our big one? “Blerds”
(Short for “Black nerds” – runs April 4-19). We’ve already sold out two student matinees, which is completely new for us. We’ve never done student matinees before. So not only is it a great play, but it is one that is helping us move into exciting new territory.
Meyers: I want people to see “The Garbologists” (Sept. 14-Oct. 6). I love it. And I love the fact that it’s just not what anybody thinks it’s going to be. It’s two unlikely people in a garbage truck. Maybe it’s a love story? Well, no, it’s not. Oh, somebody’s Black, somebody’s white. Maybe it’s a race story? No, it’s really not. It’s just surprising and different and cathartic. And if you see it, I don’t think you’ll ever look at somebody blocking your way with a garbage truck the same way again. At least that’s my hope. You know me – I like surprising people.
ensemblecincinnati.org, cincyplay.com, cincyshakes.com, knowtheatre.com
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