SEATTLE: Ebook-It Repertory Theatre has introduced plans to stop operations after 33 years. The literary-inspired theatre intends to shut following the run of its present manufacturing of David Greig’s Solaris, tailored from Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 science fiction novel and directed by outgoing creative director Gus Menary, which opened June 17 and runs via July 9. Ebook-It encourages audiences to come back and help its closing present, as income and donations from this manufacturing will go towards artisans and employees whereas the theatre prepares to shut for good.

“In our board vote, we unanimously handed a movement to start the method of closing Ebook-It,” mentioned board secretary Becky Monk in a press release. “All of us nonetheless imagine within the artwork type and may’t assist however hope that we’ll see a present within the Ebook-It narrative model on a Seattle stage once more….However our focus proper now could be to shut with out undue hurt.”

Season subscribers who’ve already purchased tickets to the 2023-24 season can request and obtain a full refund or select to donate their funds to help the corporate via the top of the present season. Ebook-It’s leaders say they are going to be pursuing fundraising alternatives over the following few months to shut the hole between current accounts payable and closing closure, they usually anticipate retaining as much as three staff for a number of months to assist the group sundown gracefully.

Ebook-It Repertory Theatre was based in 1990 by co-artistic administrators Jane Jones and Myra Platt with the mission of remodeling nice literature into nice theatre and provoking a love of studying via stay, communal experiences. Ebook-It’s distinctive narrative theatre storytelling method, during which the prose of literary works is spoken in addition to staged, garnered greater than 150 authentic variations and reached 60,000 Okay-12 college students in Washington colleges yearly via its devoted Arts and Training program.

Jones and Platt stepped down in 2020, making method for a brand new chapter beneath creative director Gus Menary and then-managing director Kayti Barnett-O’Brien, who left in 2022. She was then succeeded by Jeannine Clarke, who additionally stepped down earlier this month. Menary introduced plans to relocate to Chicago at this finish of this season, after directing Solaris.

Ebook-It employed interim creative director Kelly Kitchens in March to take over for Menary, and says in its closure assertion that the board was “totally invested in strategic planning for the corporate’s future and the 2023/24 season, in addition to exploring new sustainable enterprise fashions.” Sadly the corporate struggled to make achievable income projections, and was in the end unable to generate enough assets given a gradual viewers return to stay, in-person performances, decreased ticket gross sales, and restricted particular person giving. Ebook-It’s price range usually depends on simply 30 % ticket gross sales, with the remaining prices sponsored by particular person giving and grants.

Ebook-It says its expertise is just like theatre organizations throughout the nation that proceed to steadiness rising manufacturing prices and makes an attempt to supply livable wages with an unsure monetary mannequin and donations that haven’t returned to pre-pandemic ranges.

Along with its 18 everlasting employees members and greater than 267 forged members, designers, dramaturgs, artisans, technicians, administrators, and writers, Ebook-It supplies store area, scenic constructing, paint providers, and different scenic help to native nonprofit theatre corporations, in addition to offering assets to colleges and different group organizations. These providers at present help roughly 5 to 6 native theatres per season.

The theatre had reportedly begun outreach with different teams within the trade to strategize new methods of working collectively and sharing prices, and says “there was a situation the place Ebook-It may come again with a stronger, extra sustainable mannequin.” However the theatre’s assertion provides “that might solely be possible if that technique included paying a livable wage, assembly essential protocols that defend artists, using understudies, buying reasonably priced rental, rehearsal, and venue area, and constructing a dependable funding mannequin.”

“That is an extremely tough choice to make,” mentioned board president Christine Stepherson in a press release. “We all know the reverberations this may have on the theatre trade on this city, on actors, stage managers, stage technicians and crews, writers, administrators. We want mid-sized theatres akin to Ebook-It for the complete eco-system to flourish. We’ve got a dream workforce of artisans and employees at Ebook-It who imagine in our mission and have gone above and past, we have now a small however devoted board, however we don’t at present have a mannequin that works.”

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