116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Theatre Cedar Rapids transitions into next century
Changes continue for troupe Grant Wood and friends founded
CEDAR RAPIDS — Grant Wood’s legacy not only is on view at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, it’s on view every time the doors open at Theatre Cedar Rapids.
Everyone who stands onstage and behind the scenes is standing on the shoulders of Eastern Iowa’s most famous son, who gathered his close friends in 1925 to perform “Cardboard Moon” in his studio at 5 Turner Alley in Cedar Rapids.
Their efforts brought the big-city Little Theatre Movement intended to preserve community theaters to Cedar Rapids — launching a local endeavor that would evolve over the next century into Theatre Cedar Rapids, said to be the state’s largest nonprofit producing theater, and fueled this year by a $3.5 million budget.
On the precipice of its centennial celebration, TCR, as it’s commonly known, is in a transitional phase as it seeks to keep up with demand to transform the more unused spaces within its downtown building to house classrooms, rehearsals and smaller performances.
It’s also addressing and reflecting changes in the business model for nonprofit community theaters, recently offering an honorarium for actors and technicians who traditionally have served as volunteers.
Off-site, the scene shop has moved out of the Cherry Building’s third floor and into a larger space with a first-floor loading dock at 407 Ninth Ave. SE. The 50,000-square-foot shop also has storage room for scenery pieces, some of which will be sold to other theaters, and another 25,000 square feet houses TCR’s costume shop. Costume storage for multiples of particular pieces, like uniforms, as well as hand props, is on the third floor of the Hach Building downtown. The theater leases those auxiliary sites, which total 100,000 square feet.
Main space
In 1983, the Linge family gave the organization its current home in the 1928 Iowa Theatre Building at First Avenue and Third Street SE. Small businesses occupied the peripheral spaces until the flood of 2008, when a capital campaign, donations and federal funds allowed the theater to renovate, re-imagine spaces and become the lone occupant of the five-story, 50,000-square-foot downtown building.
That $7.8 million building project included moving administrative offices to the second floor, creating the first-floor Linge Lounge, carving out new rehearsal rooms and adding the Grandon Studio, a lower-level black box theater with 85 seats. (The first-floor auditorium seats 550, and the newly added Out-of-Doors productions at Brucemore seat 250 on bring-your-own blankets and lawn chairs.)
Still, many spaces inside the main building sit empty. TCR is in the very early stages of mapping out a capital campaign to address an expansion within its footprint.
“We don't have room for our own demand,” said Katie Hallman, 38, of Cedar Rapids, TCR’s executive director since March 16, 2017. “TCR is doing so well. I feel tremendously grateful and certainly fortunate.”
With hard work, including the theater’s weathering and response to the pandemic, TCR was able to “keep moving forward,” she said. “We just continue to be on this trajectory of strength and sustainability.”
The theater is in the midst of performing “Something Rotten!” on the main stage. The 2015 Tony-winning musical is one of the most lavish and hilarious TCR productions in a recent run of shows where the bar keeps rising higher and higher for scenery, lights and costumes, as well as vocals and dance, all of which feed into the storytelling. The Feb. 9 opening night audience showered the actors and action with sustained applause and guffaws during and after each song-and-dance moment — often in the middle of the dialogue.
Price of art
High-level productions aren’t financed on the fly.
“Auditorium show investment is always in the six figures, averaging at about $200,000 per production,” Hallman noted, adding that shows in the Grandon Studio run about $45,000.
With higher production costs comes higher ticket prices, topping out at $75 for the recent holiday show, “The Wizard of Oz,” and $59 for “Something Rotten!” But 10 to 20 percent of all seats are priced at $25, as are all student tickets, Hallman noted, and at other price points in between. Tickets for the smaller studio shows run about $15 to $30.
TCR produces theater 42 weekends per year, Hallman said, as well as classes for all ages and abilities.
Funding comes 60 percent from earned income, which includes ticket sales, and 40 percent from contributions. Nearly 45,000 visitors come to the theater each year from more than 70 communities.
The honoraria for ages 16 and up, first offered to the cast and crew of “The Wizard of Oz,” is a welcome addition for cast members who typically rehearse most nights for six weeks, followed by another four weeks or more of performances, as well as for the crew members who tend to come onboard closer to production dates and stay through the run.
The “Something Rotten!” 25 cast members will receive $25 per show, totaling $375 apiece, and the 19 crew members will receive $20 a show, totaling $300 apiece. Some have opted out, preferring to volunteer their time, Hallman said.
But for University of Iowa student siblings Brandon and Karissa Burkhardt, of Coralville, the payment eases their financial costs on several fronts.
“Our biggest expense when doing a TCR show is gas,” said Brandon, 24, who will graduate in May. His sister, 21, has a few semesters to go before she finishes work on four degrees. Both are concentrating on performance and education.
Brandon has been in 10 TCR shows, with lead roles including the Prince in “Cinderella” and the Tinman in “Oz” before his latest leading role in “Something Rotten!” Karissa has been in eight TCR shows, beginning as a featured dancer and ensemble member in “Cinderella,” Esther in “Meet Me in St. Louis” and various dance duties and spotlights in “Something Rotten!”
“Commuting a half-hour each way to and from rehearsal adds up pretty quickly, but it is something we are happy to pay in order to have the opportunity to perform with such a wonderful theater company,” Brandon Burkhardt said.
“Almost all of the performers are also rushing from work or school to rehearsals every night, so we sometimes grab food or a snack. The honorarium also makes it possible for us to not have to work extra hours somewhere else that would interfere with rehearsal times.”
And, with his experience as a testament, being able to get involved in theater can change lives.
“I have grown up in the theater and it has helped to make me who I am,” Burkhardt said. “Having grown up around so many adults made me mature quickly, but I learned about everything that goes into making a production and have loved every minute of it.
“My favorite part is the sense of camaraderie, humor, dedication, and hard work that I’ve always felt as a part of every ‘team’ of actors and crew, and the great joy we all feel when it comes together and we get to perform in front of an audience.
“Theater has taught me how to build a schedule, stay motivated, stay on task, and work towards a final goal, and it has helped to steer my life into the path that I am on now.”
Hallman sought advice on honoraria from her own nationwide theater network, cultivated during her years in Minneapolis, New York City and New Orleans. Offering it to community players is becoming the norm, she said, while still allowing troupes to function as nonprofits.
“This was put together with a ton of thought and analysis — like a crazy amount,” she said, “because we really want to do right by the community. The whole reason we exist — and the whole reason any 501(c)(3) exists — is to be in service to their community. …
“I was told early when I got here (that) ‘volunteerism has changed, and we can’t get volunteers for XYZ.’ And that is true. But I think the reality also had shifted where volunteerism is not free — that it is a privileged and barrier-ridden activity. (An honorarium) is a gesture to acknowledge that there are child care costs, there are gas costs, there are food costs — there are real tangible expenses that people take on when they volunteer their talent,” she said.
Coming home
Jake Stigers, 55, of Cedar Rapids, is the longest-tenured actor in the current show — his 24th show — having jumped aboard “Big River” in 1991. He left Cedar Rapids for Chicago in July 2000, and returned to his hometown in 2014.
He’s seen the building’s physical changes, from the addition of a spiral staircase to the basement on the right side of the stage, making it less disruptive to run from side to side, to the revamped cast and crew amenities in the basement green room and dressing rooms, and the larger, accessible rehearsal spaces upstairs.
From the acting point of view, Stigers said the professional staff members “who build the sets, make the costumes and play in the (orchestra) pit are really high caliber … and lift the actors to a higher level than they thought they could perform.”
Also when he came back to town, he found “an embarrassment of riches as far as theaters for actors and for audiences, and there was tons of support in this area” for troupes like TCR, Revival Theatre and RHCR Theatre in Cedar Rapids and Giving Tree Theater in Marion. “What city has that?”
Matt Hagmeier Curtis, 41, a theater professional now living in Boston, was tapped to return to his hometown to direct “Something Rotten!” He found a place full of changes since his student days in Youtheatre touring shows and main-stage productions like “Hello, Dolly,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “Tommy.”
When Curtis started attending TCR shows in his childhood, something opened up inside of him — something that made him want to pursue theater from middle school onward.
He continues to reap those rewards working in the educational realm, as the content and marketing director for the Educational Theatre Association, a national organization for theater teachers, which also runs the International Thespian Society and its summer festival.
“I really believe that making theater makes us better people,” he said. “Things that are really hard to quantify academically, like problem-solving skills, collaboration, empathy, having a sense of a greater working toward a greater good. These are qualities that a lot of executives in finance, in research, in science — they look for these things. In theater, they’re intrinsic. If you if you make theater, you get those skills, and you're constantly working on them to hone them.”
When he returned to town to direct “Something Rotten!,” he felt “relief that everything is on-site now” for rehearsals. No more seeking out church basements and other community spaces in which to rehearse while other shows were rehearsing or performing at TCR.
“It was also wonderful to see this new renovation of the lobby area, and really maximizing and making it more comfortable for the patrons who spend time here,” Curtis said. “The lounge is a great addition. It allows the theater to be seen from the street level, and show that there's really something going on down here.”
He also appreciates the efforts to bring in guest directors, “which is exciting because I think it keeps it fresh.”
“I think that (actors are) seeing different ways that directors work, that artists work and create together, and the different vibes you can get in a room, or the different styles of acting technique that they might use as a resource. So I think that the community is being enriched through just exposure to different professionals,” he said.
He was gone during the flood years, which drove TCR from its home for 20 months while it staged productions at other locations. He is thrilled with the way the theater returned to its refurbished home, calling it “important to the downtown revitalization.”
“The fact that the theater was displaced for a couple of years … and found its way back, I think has led to what you're seeing happening in downtown Cedar Rapids.”
A moment in time
As Theatre Cedar Rapids looks toward the next 100 years, the organization and its leaders must live in the present, with an eye on the past as well as the future.
“My job is to be a steward in this moment of this theater’s long history,” Hallman said. “I take that very seriously. It is not lip service and it's not a talking point, because this place is so much bigger than all of us. So all I can do is do my very best, and charge the board and my staff and our teams in everything we do, to just do our very best to ensure the future of this place that none of us will be around to see.”
Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com
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