Arizona Theatre Company Receives Award from Piper Trust

The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust has awarded Arizona Theatre Company and Actors Theatre of Phoenix a $150,000 grant over a two year time period. This grant will allow these professional theatre companies to explore possible collaborations, either artistically, administratively or both, to better fulfill the missions of both organizations.  La Piana Consulting from Emeryville, CA will be helping through these investigations, explorations, discussions and possible implementation.
 
"We are thrilled to get this opportunity to actively explore collaborative ideas with our colleagues at Actors Theatre," said ATC Artistic Director David Ira Goldstein. "Matthew Wiener and I have been colleagues for over twenty years and our companies have had many other informal ties over the past fifteen years. Given our complementary missions and artistry, it certainly makes sense to explore ideas to work together artistically or operationally to best serve our diverse communities across the region. By giving us the means to creatively examine these shared opportunities, the Piper Trust has led the way in a tight economy through these visionary and generous grants."
"New models are certainly needed to ensure the long term stability and sustainability for all not-for-profit arts and culture organizations in this changing economic climate," addEd Matthew Wiener, Actors Theatre's Producing Artistic Director.  "Due to the history and leadership of both companies we are uniquely situated to explore a possible strategic alliance that will enhance our collective work on stage and expand educational and outreach services to our communities.  This exploration has the potential to create a new model for other arts and culture organizations around the country."
 
The Piper Trust awarded 11 grants totaling $1.2 million through its Arts Restructuring and Transformation Fund (ART Fund). The one-time arts and culture initiative resulted from redirecting remaining grants funds from the wind-down of Metro Phoenix Partnership for Arts and Culture (MPAC) in April.  Thirty-seven previous Piper arts and culture grantees were invited to apply.
 
Piper Trust awarded the grants to develop new business models, streamline internal processes and create strategic alliances - all intended to help organizations increase revenues and reduce costs. The focus of this grant is to explore an alliance building on strengths and programming of each theatre.
"Arts and culture institutions have received body blows from the economic downturn," said Judy Jolley Mohraz, PhD, Piper Trust president and CEO. "Piper trustees wanted to support arts organizations as they change the way they do business now and well into the future."
"The organizations invested a great deal of time and thought in these projects, and the final proposals we received were of high quality," said Carol Kratz, Piper Trust program director who supervised the ART Fund process. "The Trust provided consulting assistance from LaPiana Consulting to help finalists develop proposals that were as inventive yet pragmatic as possible."
 

For more information about the participating organizations visit their websites:  Arizona Theatre Company at www.arizonatheatre.org, Actors Theatre at www.actorstheatrephx.org, or for more information on the Piper Trust visit http://www.pipertrust.org/.