Round House Theatre to End Management of Silver Spring Black Box Theater

The Round House Theatre Board of Trustees released the following statement today regarding the future of the company's black box theater in Silver Spring:

"Round House will cease managing the County-owned black box theater in Silver Spring effective June 30, 2014.

A decade ago, the County asked us to help revitalize downtown Silver Spring by assuming management of the black box. We have been excellent stewards of the space in that time, keeping it steadily occupied by producing and presenting award-winning theater despite managing it during one of the worst economic recessions in history.

Now that the economy is stronger, we planned to increase our productions in the black box, hoping to build it into a world-class space dedicated to the development and production of new plays. In order for us to do so, we would need to alter time slots and to some degree reduce the amount of time that other arts groups would be able to use the space. A few of those companies believe that the black box is the only affordable space in Montgomery County, and that without as much access to it as they currently have, they simply can't survive. They brought these concerns to the County, and have asked the County to consider a Consortium approach to managing the space as an alternative to Round House's management, as our contract is up for renewal in 2014. Members of the County Council have told us that they'd like to take the next year exploring alternative management models.

We have spent the last six months making the case for why the public is best served by continued Round House management of the space. This has already taken vital time away from mission-related work. We cannot afford to spend another year defending our management of the black box, and we can't see any outcome to these negotiations that would result in Round House retaining the space in a manner that would allow us to build the programming that we want to do in the future. Therefore, after a thorough review of the options, we have given the County our one-year notice to terminate our management of the black box effective June 30, 2014.

We remain fully committed to utilizing the black box for the final year of our contract. Our educational programs and productions planned for the black box in 13-14 will continue as planned. Thereafter, we will move our annual Sarah Play, some of our summer educational programs for students, and our planned New Play Festival to our Bethesda theater. Although we will no longer be able to support resident theater companies like Forum, Happenstance and dog & pony dc, we hope that they will be able to continue performing in Montgomery County."

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