City Circle Acting Company merging with Coralville Center for the Performing Arts

CORALVILLE - A City Council vote Tuesday cleared the way for a local acting company to merge with Coralville's 3-year-old performing arts center.

The Coralville City Council unanimously approved the deal uniting the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts and City Circle Acting Company. Officials said the move will strengthen the bond between the center and acting troupe, help streamline the process of putting on shows and bring in more revenue for the city-owned arts center.

'We're really comfortable and confident that this is the best thing for City Circle,” said Emil Rinderspacher, chairman of the group's board of directors. 'The fun part is putting on the show, but there's so much to it, and that's where we can use the center and the staff so we can really focus on the artistic piece of our mission, which is producing quality shows.”

Megan Flanagan, managing director with the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, 1301 Fifth St., said the merger, which would be similar to the center's collaboration with Young Footliters Youth Theatre, will see center officials handling the financial obligations while the acting company's volunteers can focus on the theater.

'There's been a lot of duplication of efforts over the last three years,” Flanagan said. 'Our hope is that we can kind of give it some stability by having most of the administrative duties done by performance center staff.”

City Circle Acting Company of Coralville was formed in 1997. A year later, the acting company officially was incorporated as a non-profit and formally adopted by the City Council. City Circle has been a resident community theater company for the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts since the center opened in August 2011. Before that, the acting company held shows at various locations including the University of Iowa's now-demolished Oakdale Hall and Coral Ridge Mall's Iowa Children's Museum.

The Coralville Center for the Performing Arts has seen increased uses every year for public and private events, rehearsals and tours.

The center had 200 uses in fiscal 2012, with 29 of those public events for City Circle. The acting company rented the center for 32 public events in fiscal 2013. The center had 291 uses that year.

In the most recent fiscal year, the center had 302 uses, with 33 public events held by City Circle.

City Circle has rented the center 10 weeks out of the year for the last two fiscal years.

With the merger, City Circle's funds will be transferred into a Coralville community fund where revenue and expenses will be managed at the city level, but will continue to be used to book and host performances, said Sherri Proud, Coralville Parks and Recreation director.

'City Circle will have an artistic program committee so they'll still be involved in the production and the selection and all of those facets that they are now,” Proud said. 'The big difference I see is going those extra steps to make sure that we're balancing both viable shows that will do well with artistic shows that may be artistically challenging and may not sell tickets as well, so we're really interested in finding that balance.”

While duties may shift, Rinderspacher said patrons need not worry: The acting company will remain focused on carrying on the values created 17 years ago by its volunteers.

'We are not in financial troubles at all, and that's one thing we want people to understand,” he said. 'We're really conscious of the City Circle brand, and we want to strengthen that brand.”