BWW Interviews: Interview with Former Balagan Executive Director Jake Groshong on the Closing of Balagan

There's been much speculation surrounding Balagan Theatre and their financial woes since the announcement of their closing and the canceling of the rest of their season. I recently sat down with former Balagan Executive Director Jake Groshong, one of the men in the center of it all, to get his take on the situation.

How much were you involved in the decision to close the theater?

I was told immediately before the press release went out from the Board and not consulted prior.

Was there a time when you saw the difficulties starting financially?

If you work for an arts organization as long as I have, building it out of nothing, you are always betting on the next show, trying to build from each success and recovering from each loss to move forward. Debt doesn't magically appear, but can amass quickly - which is what happened with the one-two punch in October 2013 of losing the Erickson Theatre and the losses with our second show. By leaving the Erickson, we lost our bar and rental revenue, which were a very significant portion of our income. In that same month, we suffered significant losses from "Carrie: The Musical" when AEA told us the Moore Theatre was classified as a LORT D Theatre - something that STG was also not aware of and dramatically increased our productions costs.

These came to a head at the same moment and we had a choice of canceling the rest of the season with significant losses or soldiering on and hoping that our plan for two heavily enhanced new works, strong fundraising and conservative producing goals for the remaining season would put us back on track.

Unfortunately, not one of Balagan's shows made any money last season - something that had never even come close to happening before. Each show in the prior season was profitable and we were used to that success. We tried many plans through the year - we searched for a new home, we threw fundraisers, we came in under budget on nearly every show - but nothing ate into the debt as we had no programming income, which went dramatically against what we had budgeted.

From all outward appearances the theater seemed to be doing well, was that a misapprehension?

I think that we were doing extremely well artistically, which unfortunately doesn't immediately lead to financial success. The fact is we weren't making money on our productions last year, which was transparent internally.

There's a lot of talk about people saying that they haven't been paid from past shows (actors, directors, other theaters, etc.), is that true?

I can't speak to who is currently owed debt and who isn't, that information is most up to date with the new Executive Director and the current board. In April of this year, we focused on having our managing director handle our finances and reporting, while I focused on long-term planning and success. Of course we talked about debt outstanding, and I knew there were a few artists that had not been paid. However, it was never a question of if they'd be paid, it was when they would be paid.

We spent most of the summer paying off individual debts and ended up paying off a lot of them. We reached into our own pockets to pay for production costs, donated back many paychecks, and personally loaned the theatre large sums of money, but the closure makes it impossible for us to get those remaining artists their due. These are friends and people I spent years with and who helped build this company. This is the great tragedy of this closure and what I am struggling with the most.

Do you think the theater tried to grow too much too fast?

When Louis came on board he took on the tasks of continuing to program exciting and bold theatre, develop new theatre for the company, push the theatre into the national conversation and raise the money to do it. That was the direction we wanted to take the theatre, and while we succeeded in most of these areas, the theatre's loss of space made these goals unattainable. It was simply too expensive to produce our brand of theatre without the model we created at the Erickson and without the bar and rental income that were such a significant portion of our budget.

There's been talk of a lack of transparency on the finances between the staff and the board. Can you speak to that? Do you feel there was transparency?

Financial transparency is vital to the success of an arts organization. We made changes in the beginning of the year to provide more transparency between staff and the board by appointing a Managing Director to handle finances and reporting. The Board always had the right to ask for whatever reports they wanted in addition to the reports they were given.

If you could do it all again are there things you would have done differently?

I have been going over and over what we could have done differently, mistakes made, ways we could have foreseen obstacles. I would have tried a different approach after we left the Erickson. I would have pushed harder for Board committees to meet. I would have spearheaded a public funding appeal. There's always things we would change had we the opportunity.

What now? Is there any hope for reviving the theater and what about the people out there that still have not been paid?

I can only hope the theatre finds new life and I'm sure that is something that will be explored eventually. In the meantime, I want to celebrate our successes, learn from our mistakes, and continue to support the theatre community. I started the theatre eight years ago with the goal of bringing new people into theatre with thrilling programming and to show the incredible talents Seattle had to offer. I think we achieved that for a long time, longer than I thought possible in this economic climate, and in the end the theatre had a really rough season financially with more losses than we could have possibly planned for. For those that have not been paid, I am going to do what I can to get them what they were owed. Balagan was meant to support artists, not take anything away from them. I myself am owed more than any individual and plan to release that debt in hopes of pushing all resources toward the artists that worked so hard for the company.

I hope that people remember what was achieved by Balagan. Though things didn't work out in the end, we touched a lot of lives in incredible ways and I am forever grateful to everyone who had a hand in it.