Arlo Guthrie Benefit Earns $23,000
Shakespeare & Company Rallying Support
By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 10, 2009
While a final tally is yet to be completed S&Co states that it took in some $23,000 from the Guthrie event. The artist donated his fee.
In the lobby after the show Simotes greeted me with a bear hug and thanked us for coming.
Of course I asked him for an update hoping for some specifics. He was open in discussing progress with the bank to renegotiate the loans. The process is on going with good will and productive communication from both sides. But he also expressed frustration in terms of one step forward and two back. Mostly he described having some agreement, sitting on it, and then a lag of time before getting all of the required players back to the table.
While offering no actual figures the mood he conveyed was one of measured optimism. It is not the first hump that the company has endured in its long history but the first on his watch. He took over from founder Tina Packer, in June.
With humor I asked him, what were you thinking of in taking over the company? Didn't you look at the books?
There was a kind of flipped out humorous response to that. An over the top laugh and outburst that conveyed the idea of "Hey, Show Biz." It could have been a scene from The Producers. There is indeed something just wonderfully mad and irrational about theatre people. It's why we didn't all become doctors, lawyers, and yes, bankers. But the struggles of the arts drag us into getting up to speed on business and finance.
We focus on the art, which is the point, but also have to keep an eye on the bottom line. The S&Co season is yet to be announced. The good news is that, yes, there will be one. With fewer productions than the absolutely madness of 18 that Tina turned over to Tony to administrate last summer. The last show of the 2009 season Cindy Bella a new work based on Cinderella opens on Friday, December 10 and runs through December 20. The first show of the 2010 season Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) directed by Tina Packer and starring Elizabeth Aspenlieder, will run from January 29 through March 2. Don't be surprised if it returns for an encore during the summer season.
Last year, for the first time during the winter season, S&Co had a hit with Aspenlieder in the one woman show Bad Dates. When it went on to the Merrimack Theatre in Lowell the role earned Aspenlieder the prestigious Norton Award. The success of that experiment has encouraged S&Co to risk bad weather with another winter production. The hope is to have S&Co active year round. That makes both artistic as well as fiscal sense.
This season we will come to experience Tony's style and preferences. He comes with his own contacts. Olympia Dukakis, for example, is a FoT who is likely to appear in her rewrite of Shakespeare's The Tempest. It is also anticipated that Tina Packer will kick start the season with her rendering of Shakespeare's Women. A home grown S&Co star, John Douglas Thompson, who appeared for two seasons in Othello, is anticipated to play the lead in another Shakespeare play. He received rave reviews for his recent New York production in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones. So it promises to be a trimmed back program with some real gems and surprises. Can't wait.
Below is the press release from S&Co regarding the Guthrie benefit.
Shakespeare & Company celebrated a successful benefit event featuring Arlo Guthrie this past weekend. The Saturday evening concert enjoyed a very full house in the 406-seat Founders' Theatre, with a paid attendance of 339, plus employees and members of the S&Co. family. The box office yield was over $23,000. Most audience members stayed for a post-show dessert reception, with sweet treats donated by Savory Harvest Catering Company.
Additional contributions to Shakespeare & Company's internationally renowned performance, education and training programs came from a robust list of local businesses who served as co-sponsors of the event by providing a percentage of business done this weekend to S&Co. Final contributions from each participating business have not yet been tallied, so the complete yield from the benefit weekend is not yet known.
Event co-sponsors, who generously contributed to S&Co. this weekend, include Alta Restaurant and Wine Bar, Berkshire Harvest, Betty's Pizza Shack, Bizen/Kaiseki, The Cornell Inn, Dreamaway Lodge, Firefly, Haven Café & Bakery, Jonathan's Bistro, The Lion's Den at The Red Lion Inn, Cranwell Resort & Spa, The Village Inn and Zinc.
Guthrie performed a solo set on acoustic guitar, old favorites like "The Chilling of the Evening" and "In My Darkest Hour," newer songs like the Hurricane Katrina response "In Times Like These," favorites of the folk tradition like "St. James Infirmary Blues," and a vigorous audience sing-along with "My Peace," a set of previously unpublished lyrics by Woody Guthrie set to music a few years ago by his son. Guthrie responded to thundering ovations by returning for two encores.