Englert Theatre in Iowa City sticks to its mission

IOWA CITY - 'We're about to enter a real busy period,” said Andre Perry.

Perry, executive director of Iowa City's Englert Theatre, was reviewing the next few months' schedule at the venerable 1912 landmark - bluegrass mandolin master Bela Fleck for that evening, classic rocker Dave Mason, veterans such as Arlo Guthrie and Graham Nash, and April's Mission Creek Festival and its five-day lineup of indie rock, world music, rap and writers' talks.

'We're here to serve the community,” Perry said of the eclectic lineup. 'We're always just riding that line between the known and the unknown.”

Perry and his staff maintain close contact with talent agents and bookers, seeking to find the perfect match between artist - whether up-and-coming or veterans - and 730-seat venue. The Englert has more dates to fill now that it's not hosting performances for the University of Iowa's Hancher Auditorium since its new building reopened in September 2016.

While the new Hancher was under construction, its performances were hosted at venues across the region, from the Englert to City and West high schools, churches, the Riverside Casino and outdoor sites.

Englert hosted its last Hancher performance in fall 2016.

'They were all over the place, so we were part of that, to keep the brand alive,” Perry said. 'We definitely established a pretty strong relationship.”

'We did everything we could to keep that spirit going, and we did,” recalled Hancher executive director Chuck Swanson. ”The Englert was definitely a dear friend to us.”

The Hancher shows delivered some welcome revenue to the Englert, reopened in 2004 after a five-year closure while it was purchased from the city by its not-for-profit organization and renovated.

'When the floods hit in 2008, the Englert was still pretty young,” said Perry. 'It's still a young organization, where something like Hancher has been around 40 years.

'It helped a lot, just as a sustaining factor.”

In its first year after losing the Hancher shows, the Englert recorded an $82,000 loss on performances in 2017 after turning a similar-sized profit the previous year.

'It's an illustration of the volatility of the market,” Perry said of those figures. 'Things can be going really well, and just a couple of things going wrong can throw the whole off the year.”

The not-for-profit Englert has an advantage a for-profit or city-owned venue doesn't: a base of more than 2,300 donors, up from just 200 in 2010. Donations typically cover about 35 percent of the theater's expenses, according to Perry.

Another not-for-profit advantage is the pool of about 300 volunteers the Englert can call upon to staff shows. Perry said six to 15 volunteers may work a show.

'We are deeply appreciative of that commitment from our community,” he said.

Where does that leave the Englert when it comes to booking performers? Perry mentioned the just-booked March 27 Steve Earle show.

'A great Englert show because he's been an outlaw, country, folk, Americana artist who's always done his own thing,” Perry said. 'He's got his own voice.”

But Perry said hosting lesser-known acts is key to the Englert's mission, leading to its hosting Mission Creek and the fall Witching Hour festival.

'I'm all about building the audience for artists,” he said. 'Our goal is to have all the different groups who make up this community come through the doors once a year.”

An ecosystem

Perry sees the Englert as a small but key venue in the Corridor's bigger performing-arts scene.

'In the market, we want there to be a good balance of venues,” he said. 'If all you have is three 1,800-seaters, then you're competing against each other all the time. It's an ecosystem, and I'd say each entity leans on each other a little bit.”

'Everybody fills their own niche,” Hancher's Swanson said. 'We all really do different things, but we all are working in the same world.”

At the other end of the I-380 Corridor, 'our sales folks are out chasing any genre, any size (show),” said Michael Silva, executive director of VenuWorks Cedar Rapids.

Ames-based VenuWorks manages four city-owned venues - the U.S. Cellular Center, the Paramount Theatre, the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena and the outdoor McGrath Amphitheatre.

Silva and Jason Anderson, general manager of the Paramount in downtown Cedar Rapids, agreed they tend to book acts that are more mainstream than a typical Iowa City show.

'What we're booking is more what Cedar Rapids buys,” Anderson said.

For the 1,700-seat Paramount, that often means touring companies of Broadway shows and Orchestra Iowa performances, including its opera and ballet collaborations. Still, he noted recent successful shows by the Avett Brothers and Jason Isbell.

'They're not maybe the mainstream radio-played artists, but they have huge followings,” Anderson said.

The Cellular Center can seat up to 7,500 people for concerts. That's considerably less than bigger venues in Des Moines and Moline, but Silva said he's found success recently by going small.

The center's Club 5 shows, launched last fall, host up to 1,500 fans in a club-like setting with convenient bars and no assigned seats.

'There's a niche in the market for standing-room-only-type clubs for 1,000 people,” Silva said. 'We figured out how to reduce the size of the arena so it looks like you're walking into a small club.”

Debuted in October by the rap-rockers Hollywood Undead, the next Club 5 show will be a May 16 date by Nineties rock stalwarts Stone Temple Pilots.

'It took us awhile to come up with the concept and sell it to the agents in Nashville and Los Angeles,” said Silva. 'But once we booked one (show), it did quite well.”

It's another option in the area's performing arts scene.

'The arts are just a great recruitment tool for our region, and even more important a great retention tool,” Swanson said. 'It's the quality of life, and the arts are a big part of that.”