North Berkeley's Impact Theatre Closing After Twenty Years Of Pizza, Beer, Emerging Playwrights and Affordable Tickets

You would think that a theatre company that for twenty years has been developing new audiences by mounting youth-oriented plays by emerging writers with affordable ticket prices would be deemed worthy of a grant or two, but, as artistic director Melissa Hillman explains to the San Jose Mercury News, North Berkeley's Impact Theatre, located in the basement of La Val's Pizza, appears to be a victim of its own noble cause.

"We're stuck in a weird financial place because most grants require you to have an annual budget of $100,000 or more, and we can't make enough in ticket sales to grow. All that money to grow comes from grants and donations, and when we're doing new plays by emerging playwrights in a basement with pizza and beer, our audience always skews really young, and those people just don't have a lot of money. That was the audience we wanted, that was the audience we went for, and that was part of the whole point of keeping ticket prices accessible."

Typical fare at the Impact has included plays about "Dungeons and Dragons," cockfighting, pop idols, superheroes, serial killers and sea monsters.

"We're going to finish out our 20th season with Melissa's Looney Tunes-inspired 'Comedy of Errors' in February/March," says managing director Cheshire Isaacs, "followed -- probably in May/June -- by a movie-live theater hybrid of 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' by the same people who did 'Splathouse,' a double feature a couple of summers ago. Then we expect to vacate La Val's by the end of June."

Down, but not out, the pair intend to continue with their mission of providing productions for young theatre artists and audiences.

"We will be gearing up to launch Impact 2.0," says Isaacs. "What that is has yet to be fully worked out, but Melissa and I still feel Impact's mission of giving much-needed early professional experiences to up-and-coming artists is something unique in the Bay Area. We think we can further that mission by transforming Impact into a resource for other Bay Area theater companies, promoting actors, directors, playwrights and designers we think companies should know about."

"We've talked about bringing Impact-style Shakespeare to larger companies," adds Hillman. "Or to partner with a company with a new playwright. We're discussing what future Impact productions would look like. You can take much bigger risks when you're doing a one-off show than when you're doing an entire season and you have to support rent on your space."

Still, it's a remarkable feat to have lasted two decades with such a such a low-budget approach.

"We started Impact in 1996 around a table at Au Coquelet," Hillman says, referring to the Berkeley cafe. "We were trying to fill an unmet need for theater that really was for and about younger people -- people under 40. That audience was just not represented in the theater, so we just did it. We just started catering to this audience."

"It's been an incredible experience," she adds. "When I look back on it, the things that are the most important to me are the moments when I felt like I was of greatest service, helping people start their careers, helping people get seen, and doing plays that other people wouldn't do or couldn't do or hadn't thought to do. I always say if I had a coat of arms, it would be a pair of hands giving someone a boost up."

Visit impacttheatre.com.

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