TV: Off-Broadway's Cherry Lane Struggles with Economy

New York's theatre scene is big business for the city as Broadway contributes more than $5 billion a year to the economy with nearly 70 percent of ticket sales being made by people from outside of the five boroughs.

A handful of big-budget Broadway productions are already shuttering, as Hairspray, Monty Python's Spamalot and Spring Awakening, all Tony-Award winning musicals, have announced closing dates in January. A Tale of Two Cities, another splashy musical closed on November 9th.

Downtown, as the oldest, continuously running Off-Broadway theatre in New York, the Cherry Lane Theatre is one of the many businesses in the city that are beginning to feel the pressure of a collapsing economy.

The Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway communities in Greenwich Village are under threat by increasing rents. In September theatre companies in the Federal Archive Building on Christopher Street were hit with rent increases topping out at 500%, according to the New York Innovative Theatre Awards website.

The Cherry Lane's Artistic Director, Angelina Fiordellisi, has been working there since 1996 and currently finds herself hurting for money as she tries filling the 179 seat mainstage at 38 Commerce Street in the Village. "For the last two years we've been starting to feel where we are now in terms of the economic climate," she said. "We've had deficits at the end of the last two years."

One of her first orders of business, along with playwright Michael Weller and Susann Brinkley, was creating the Mentor Project, now in its 11th season. Mentors including David Auburn, Tony Kushner and David Henry Hwang, along with Edward Albee. These dramatists develop a mentoring relationship with up and coming playwrights.

The Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./NY) president Robert LuPone assists the Off-Broadway community through support and advocacy. LuPone is also the Co-Artistic Director of MCC Theater, and says for places like the Cherry Lane to stay afloat they must change how they promote their work.

"Targeted marketing is working more, so I still think there's the possibility of direct mail," LuPone said regarding traditional Off-Broadway marketing tactics. But, he does not believe general advertising helps, adding that when the MCC Theater is running a show, he might only take out one advertisement in a newspaper.

Meanwhile, Fiordellisi plans to use this time of financial uncertainty to dream up a new way of operating a small theatre. "I think that we're going to be okay," she says. "But at the moment it feels like an opportunity to step back and really examine how we operate."

For now, she hopes word of mouth will help drive some tourists downtown. BroadwayWorld's James Sims reports from the Cherry Lane Theatre.

For more information on the Cherry Lane, visit www.cherrylanetheatre.com and for more information on A.R.T./NY, visit www.offbroadwayonline.com. And for more from James Sims visit www.simsscoop.com/blog/.