However, I was, many years back, the Business Manager for the Empty Space, during one of it last “help!” campaigns, and watched as that and other real “mid-sized” theaters disappeared from the scene with dismay. The infrastructure that Intiman represents certainly includes Equity level salaries to actors who might be forced to consider moving away, and also artisans who design, crew who build and other art-specific jobs (not including a marketing position where someone could find a different kind of marketing and still be marketing).

Good points were made about ACT, who had taken on a huge project to move into an enormous new space, but having done so – gotten in financial trouble – and done some outside-the-box thinking, has become a hot-bed of local support for imaginative and incredibly diverse programming through their Central Heating Lab and their ACT Pass program, encouraging monthly dues to see anything they offer on any of their stages. Talk about innovation!

Encouragement and pressure could be and should be mounted on Intiman’s board to alter their mission to localize and take advantage of the teaming artistic talent in town at their fingertips, and Ms. Whoriskey could redouble her efforts to learn more about the nuances of this very different town by immersing herself in what’s happening outside the boundaries of the Seattle Center.

But it would be good to recognize the cost of losing this specific institution from an infrastructure point of view. Having lost the Space, the Group, and several others, but having not yet had a complete tipping point (I don’t know why, but it seems to have been avoided), given the current arts defunding going on state-government and nation-goverment wide, it may be that we need all of our current institutions to keep the high level of talent that exists right now.

I’m not seeing much of that argument in this discussion.

Incidentally, I quite easily understood the other points Mr. Willey was making, but they since you seemed to be confused, I’ll summarize:
a) Mr. van Baker’s continued focus on Mr. Mullin’s opinion in his piece became incredibly annoying and made him sound petty and, whether or not he meant to attack Mr. Mullin, some of us obviously came away with that feeling.
b) Mr. Willey took issue with Mr. van Baker referring to what ‘we’ are talking about when we talk about the Intiman when many of the ‘we’ reading his piece don’t talk about it that way at all.
c) Mr. Willey took Mr. van Baker’s piece to be more of a plea to save the Intiman than an argument for why it’s still viable and worth saving.
d) Mr. Willey found the last two paragraphs of Mr. van Baker’s piece to be arrogant and snotty. (I guess I should assume that one was obvious to you, but I thought my point would be as well, so…..)
e) No one asked him, but Mr. Willey does not feel the Intiman is worth saving. If he hears any good arguments to the contrary, he might think otherwise, but Mr. van Baker’s piece didn’t do it for him.

Voila! Not saying I agree with each and every of Mr. Willey’s points, but I can say I very much understand what they were.

All that said, I will also say I completely agree with you on many of the points you’ve made in subsequent posts, particularly on the subject of Mr. Whoriskey. I’ve said this before, but “I’ve been supremely annoyed with her ever since the over the top ‘oh my god, Seattle, how very LUCKY you to are to have THE Kate Whorisky deigning to bring her insight and leadership to the Intiman!’ piece in ‘Seattle Woman’ magazine. I was quite taken by her failure to say one solid word about Seattle or it’s already thriving theatre scene – or the artists working in it.”

There I’ve said it.

But you make some excellent points. And I appreciate you making them.

I also appreciate what everyone is doing in the experimental on-line models. So much so that I co-wrote a play about it. :-)

We’ll keep on keeping on, I guess. I suspect no matter what happens to us, we’ll all outlast those who care less about this city, its news and its theatre.

Cheers!
Paul

As to the points you bring up, Paul: when it comes to funding, the Intiman can ask people you, for instance, can’t. Is it possible that the $1 million to bail them out will come at the expense of the Rep or SAM or something? Possibly, but slightly doubtful. It would be hard to prove that the money they receive would have gone to someone else.

My point though, and part of this happened in email with Michael, was that even if the money’s not, I think there is a finite amount of goodwill. The Intiman is going to beg, but compared to say ACT, which branches out a lot, they’re very insular. The chances of gaining much traction are sort of low at this point, because it really is just doing it’s own thing. Sheila Daniels is gone, Black Nativity is moving on, they’re looped out of most of the ecosystem. Even so, if it does get traction, it’ll be a distraction from more pressing issues, eating goodwill and bandwidth to save an organization that hasnt demonstrated anything approaching competent management.In general, I’m totally in agreement dude.

I for one am pissed at the failure of any of the people at the regionals to assume a leadership role. Kate Whoriskey has notoriety and some moral standing because of her work–I’d love to see her stumping to sabe 4Culture, who’s in existential straights and who, if I’m not mistaken, helps fund people like you, Paul. It pisses me off that not only does she skip out on local events and basically ignore what’s going on here, but furthermore is now stealing thunder from worthier groups with better standing and longer histories of competent management.

Is that enough?

I say archetypal because some people wanted ACT to die when they heard about its debt issues, no questions asked. Also, I’m well acquainted with the how hard the staff at Intiman has been working for the past years to keep things going in very difficult times. They’ve moved from unpaid furlough weeks to looking at 4-day weeks, and it was jarring to hear someone calling for their general unemployment. That part felt personal to me.

My point remains that anyone who argues that the Intiman’s economic distress is reason to close it would be doing ACT no favors. Even the loss of one $5-million theatre would be a huge blow to the confidence of donors in the arts community, not to mention the concomitant loss of services to other, smaller organizations. Knowing how competent and hard-working the Intiman staff is in general (management breakdowns aside), I have little faith in your notion that any other, smaller theatre in Seattle could simply step in and take over.

That said, I’m largely incorrect in calling ACT and Intiman “mid-size”–the Intiman’s intimacy fools me, it does have over 400 seats. It’s just that the Bagley Wright seats almost twice as many.

As far as the SunBreak becoming the hard-hitting, hard-drinking investigative team of your dreams, if I had the resources for that, the non-profit sector is not where I’d devote my time and energy. In this instance, you had your say, I simply to wanted to rebut. I will be curious to see if the Intiman can work out a way to survive; I hope they do.

One quick point. I’ll concede that hard arts funding may not be a zero sum game. (I reserve the right to ask later for some proof of that.)

However, what I do believe is a very limited resource that we all share is our good name as artists. There are honest brokers and there are dishonest ones. I believe there are some deeply dishonest dealings going on at Intiman and they are not limited to Brian Coburn’s actions. So I am asking Sunbreak to look into that.

The reputation of “show people” has never been particularly respectable. Such is our lot. But I, for one, would rather not have my reputation tied to the kind of corporate malfeasance more fitting for a hedge fund.

Simply put: the trust account is finite and currently endanger of being overdrawn. Once it runs out, we can all have a happy snarky time arguing over the dregs. We’re all super smart and insightful after all, but can we actually do something to save the remains? I’m really asking, with the understanding that my original yes or no question has been ignored twice now.

So seriously. Can we? Can we do more than talk amongst ourselves?

Because honestly, the folks that are either going to manage the save the Intiman or sink it really don’t care how smart or snarky we are. It’s my opinion they don’t care about us at all.

Will you ask the questions? Does the Sunbreak do that? I really honestly don’t know, so I’m asking.

Cheers!
Paul

1. I agree with the comments about the theater size. I think Michael is comparing them in a way that most people wouldn’t, to say the Paramount and the 5th (which is a weird case in and of itself). For most people in the arts, we have three regionals which are of comparable size and represent the top tier of professional theater work in town as producing institutions. Budget wise and seat-wise, they’re all comparable and probably should be described as “large” not “mid-sized”. But that is, as Jose notes, a quibble with nomenclature. Not unimportant, per se, but not necessarily the heart of the argument.

2. I actually will disagree with Michael also about his response to Paul Mullin, even accepting that Paul is pretty combative. I respect Paul for that. As MvB knows, no theater is going to go out and make reasonable decisions about whether or not it should continue to exist. NO organization does that. So I think Paul is absolutely correct to try to offer a counternarrative not designed by the Intiman’s damage-control spinning (and poorly at that) marketing department. Furthermore, I think he also made a couple other points. One, Mullin admitted that it sucks. But he still thinks we should let them sink. I agree, actually. Not because I think they’re guilty of particular arrogance (again, it’s marketing people), but because it doesn’t matter. People in the arts are way too susceptible to doomsday scenarios–Paul’s right in that institutions come and go. If there’s a need following Intiman’s demise, another theater will come up. This happens pretty regularly. And if there’s not a need, well, we know.

3. To defend Michael, though, there’s an implicit point he often makes but doesn’t always state in these articles where he seems to play the foil to all the artists who are constantly critiquing the regional theaters. Namely, he’s saying that there are audiences for the work they’re doing. People who very engaged in the artform often blame these places for not doing the work we think is important or cutting edge, but there is certainly the argument to be made that the money they collect and the audiences they have demonstrate that they’re giving people what they want. Everyone from Mullin up to the head of the NEA are complaining that regional theaters have become either a workshop for Broadway bound shows or a profitable source of income for Broadway exports, which is true. But maybe we can all admit that this is what their audiences want. We tend to treat theater as an art, and implicitly say it should be indifferent to what its potential audiences want. It’s ironic then that at the same time we’re also accusing these institutions of something like crass commercialism–maybe we’re right on that point; maybe they are just giving their audiences what audiences want. In the same way that more people will turn out for Hollywood blockbusters than independent film, more people will probably always go to a Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway wash like “Ruined” than NewsWrights United. That’s not a quality judgment, mind you, it’s just an acknowledgement of audience realities.

4. With all that said, there are a lot of issues involving the business model, which are harder to determine. Michael’s right and Paul’s technically wrong vis a vis funding: arts dollars aren’t a zero sum game. Given that most of the money to save the Intiman will likely come from large donors (if it comes), that means the majority of it would not have otherwise the ecosystem. However, I absolutely agree with Mullin’s intent: again, losing the Intiman is not the end of the world, and he’s right to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t shower them with goodwill. I certainly have no interest in making saving the place a cause for us, to try to rally the community’s interest and support, which may not generate revenue directly but is probably crucial to winning over big donors by demonstrating that the community wants to see the place saved. And the reason I’m not interested is because I don’t trust them. The institution is messed up from the top down. The board is clearly out of touch, as are the senior managers. What Paul calls arrogance I call spin trying to make up for spectacularly dropping the ball. I just don’t think that this institution deserves the trust of the community to manage itself, and that’s very legitimate. And contrary to the people beating him up for this post, Michael makes that argument towards the beginning. The fact that this is being managed by an interim staff, the fact the board is incompetent, and the fact that we won’t have anything approaching an explanation for gross accounting failures until AFTER we have to give money…all of those are pretty damning.