Shakespeare & Company Takes Action in Response to Financial Stress

At the request of Shakespeare & Company, an independent financial study of the Company has been performed by the Nonprofit Finance Fund under the auspices of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.  Now in its 32nd season, S&Co. is currently facing an unprecedented time of financial stress. Though the national economic downturn has indeed played a role, this stress has arisen, in large part, because of the particular pressures flowing from the Company's role as the provider of a unique and extensive scope of year-round services, and its responsibilities as the owner and steward of 33 acres in historic downtown Lenox.

Shakespeare & Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tony Simotes, Board Chairman Richard Mescon, Managing Director Nicholas J. Puma, Jr., Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer and Board member/Capital Campaign Director Michael A. Miller, has been working, and will continue to work, with all its stakeholders--patrons, employees, donors, lenders, creditors, elected officials, and the community at large--to achieve the necessary level of reinvention and redirection that is needed. For the Company to take the next steps, it was imperative to have a single compendium of financial information about the Company--a clear, credible and wholly independent summary of facts--from which to work. It is for this reason that the NFF study was commissioned.

The NFF report presents a forecast of Shakespeare & Company's future if it were to take no action to course-correct. Fully aware of that scenario, the Company has already taken action and has resolved to take all the necessary steps to alter its direction. The action items the Company has already begun to implement include continuing to streamline its operations, shifting more staff from year-round to seasonal status, eliminating some positions, and continuing a hiring freeze which was instituted earlier this year. Already, the Company has eliminated seven full-time positions and has instituted a 10% across-the-board pay cut. It will also be necessary to further restructure the Company's budget to achieve a better balance between necessary expenditures and available revenues in the long term.

The Company has initiated discussions with its primary creditor with a view toward restructuring its debt so as to provide more short-term flexibility and improved cash flow. These discussions are ongoing. At the present time Shakespeare & Company's total bank indebtedness is approximately $6.8 million.

"The big picture here is that the product we're producing is by all measures an unqualified success," says Artistic Director Tony Simotes. "In 2008 we earned our highest box office revenue ever. This season, we're on track to break that record. Our fall show is a runaway hit, selling at a rate about 25% better than even last year's show. The work onstage has been celebrated by the local, national and interNational Theatre community. We're in the schools again for the 21st Fall Festival of Shakespeare, working with over 500 students from across the state and into New York. Actors from around the world are right now earning academic credit in our Conservatory program, or gearing up for our month-long acting workshop in January. The most important thing to realize about the NFF report is that it's designed to be a snapshot of what might happen if we didn't take action. And the bottom line is, we already are."

Shakespeare & Company is still adapting its business model from the one it employed for the 23 years it was a tenant at The Mount to one that adequately deals with the issues wrapped into ownership of its Kemble Street property--an expansive and historically troublesome property whose difficulties have played a role in the dissolution of the three non-profit organizations who occupied it previously. In the nine years of its ownership, the Company has redeemed the property from disrepair, converting abandoned buildings into a theatre and an administrative office, restoring two condemned houses for residential use, renovating the Lenox School For Boys' old dormitory building to house the Company's employees and guest artists, and converting that school's field house into a production and performing arts center, including a 180-seat theatre.

While financial stresses--even major ones like these--come and go, the Company's enduring asset is its priceless store of intellectual property. Its work onstage has been celebrated by the local, national and interNational Theatre community and has long been considered among that of the leaders of the field--even a review of a Wisconsin Shakespeare Company in the Wall Street Journal this summer took care to note that the American Players Theatre is "to the Midwest what Shakespeare & Company is to New England, a troupe that sets high artistic standards and maintains them with effortless consistency." Shakespeare & Company's innovative Education Program was saluted by The White House in 2006 and recommended by a two-year Harvard University study for national replication. Its training programs lure actors from around the world. The quality of the product is not in doubt.

The Board, artists and staff of Shakespeare & Company are committed to doing whatever is required to continue its 32-year legacy as an important contributor to the economic, artistic and intellectual strength of Lenox, the Berkshires, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the nation.

Launching its 32nd season in the culturally-rich Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts in Lenox, Shakespeare & Company aspires to create a theatre of unprecedented excellence rooted in the classical ideals of inquiry, balance, and harmony; a company that performs as the Elizabethans did - in love with poetry, physical prowess, and the mysteries of the universe. With a core of over 150 artists, the company performs Shakespeare, generating opportunities for collaboration between actors, directors, and designers of all races, nationalities, and backgrounds. Shakespeare & Company provides original, in-depth, classical training and performance methods. The company also develops and produces new plays of social and political significance. Shakespeare & Company's educational programs inspire a new generation of students and scholars to discover the resonance of Shakespeare's truths in the everyday world, demonstrating the influence that classical theatre can have within a community.

For more information, visit www.shakespeare.org.

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