looking back at our season ... ... and it looked pretty good

W hen season ends each year, local arts venues typically take a look back and assess how things went. What were the highlights? What didn't do as well as expected? What were the best-attended shows?

W The answers are as varied as the venues themselves.

Times are tough all over, and arts venues nationwide have been hit particularly hard. The Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, N.Y., closed earlier this year, and the Seaside Musical Theater in Daytona was recently forced to shut down for the summer, canceling five shows.

Has a difficult economy with record foreclosures and rising food and gasoline prices hurt local arts venues this past season?

"We're the canary in the coal mine," says Scott Saxon, general manager of the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall. "We're the first to feel it. The first money anybody cuts out is the disposable entertainment money. We had been feeling it all the way back to the end of last season.

"But overall, we were happy with the season, compared to where it could've been, when we read how bad the economy in general was. We tried very hard, knowing the economic condition, seeing it coming. We tried to make smart choices with affordable shows for the public, to give people an opportunity to come out as much as they possibly could and still put gas in their car."

Season highlights included "Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy," which was so popular, the venue added a ninth show.

"It did very well," Saxon says. "People raved about it. We sold about every ticket to all nine performances. A fantastic week for us."

The show opens on Broadway June 16.

"People can say they got to see them here first," Saxon says.

"Spamalot" did very well for the Mann Hall, as did "Rent," which played for one night and "virtually sold out."

Other highlights of the season included concerts by the Moody Blues, Willie Nelson, George Jones, and Liza Minnelli.

"Liza is a legend; her show was well-attended," Saxon says. "It was a great show, people really enjoyed it. Any time you can have a legend on the stage, it's a coup."

COURTESY PHOTO "Anything Goes" was a big hit for the Broadway Palm Dinner Theater. Comedians such as Lewis Black, Kathy Griffin and Ron White did well too. Due to demand, the venue had to add a third show for Ron White, and even though it was Griffin's second performance at the hall within a year's time, patrons keep asking the venue to book her again.

Some of their best shows didn't sell out, though. For example, "Irving Berlin's White Christmas" was an artistic success, but not a financial one for the venue. People who attended raved about it: the staging was innovative, the singing and choreography superlative, and many of the actors had appeared on Broadway.

And, one of the highlights of the year wasn't a show, but an awards ceremony: the Lee County High School Musical Awards, which recognized outstanding performers in local high school musicals.

"It's something brand new to the market," Saxon says. "It was very well received and the participation was great from the schools."

As for the season overall, Saxon compares it to a stock portfolio.

COURTESY PHOTO Clint Black wowed crowds at The Naples Philharmonic. "Some are up, some are down," he says.

As long as at the end of the year you have "Theatre, more up than down, you're OK. We certainly felt the effects, I can't say we didn't. But we're pretty optimistic that we weathered the storm, the worse of it."

The Broadway Palm Dinner The- on the other hand, enjoyed an outstanding season, which they consider the half-year of October through March.

"We had a phenomenal season," says Will Prather, the theater's owner and executive producer. "Revenues were up 20 percent and our attendance was at the highest levels ever in that time period in 15 years. We were very fortunate. We hit our stride with the shows we were offering."

The venue opened with "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change," which did well. The season continued with "Buddy," an annual Christmas show, "Guys and Dolls" and "Anything Goes," which Prather describes as "the capper for us."

"Stones in His Pocket" was a hit for Florida Rep. "Anything Goes" was one of their top-10 selling shows out of all the shows in the theater's history.

"Cabaret" held its own in April, but then sales grew soft in May when the snowbirds left, Prather says.

"We are gravely concerned about the next six months," he adds. "With the local economy, it's not going to be easy this summer."

They've lost some groups that would generally travel to the theater via chartered buses - a staple of the dinner theater's clientele. Because of the rising price of gasoline, some of the bus companies now stipulate that they need to have full capacity in order to make the trip.

The venue did gain new patrons from Naples, because Prather purchased the Theatre's Naples Dinner Theatre s mailing list when they closed, which had 80,000 names. Because of direct mailing to those patrons and print and radio advertising in Naples, the theater's seen an increase in Neapolitans.

"I've seen that payoff exponentially," Prather says. "My guess is at least 50 percent increase in our Naples patrons. We're basically the only dinner theater in all of Southwest Florida. We're benefiting from changes in the competition."

COURTESY PHOTO Theatre Conspiracy found a home this year and produced five shows. Prather also owns a theater in Pennsylvania and one in Arizona, as well as a touring company, "which sometimes feed off of each other," he explains. "So we can produce our theater a little more cost-effectively."

But, he says, now that the snowbirds have returned north, "it's going to be an uphill battle this summer."

Theatre Conspiracy probably experienced the most extreme season of any of the venues; it left the Foulds Theatre at the Alliance for the Arts and was homeless for a while. The Broadway Palm Dinner Theater generously offered them the use of their Off-Broadway Palm theater space for a couple shows last summer.

"The biggest highlight was, we found a home," says Theatre Conspiracy producing artistic director Bill Taylor. "That was the main goal for us, to secure a home, get up, get running. We accomplished that, and I couldn't be happier."

The theater found a wonderfully raw space in an office complex on Park Windsor Drive, behind Sasse's restaurant. The space is intimate and fun.

"Relaxed is a good way to put it," Taylor says. "Someone called it Shabby Chic y y the other day. No one's been turned off by the space. Everyone who comes enjoys it.

"The audiences have followed

us here. Peoseason,

People have followed us."

Including the shows they put on at the Broadway Palm, Theatre Conspiracy put on five shows this past season.

In addition to finding a home for his theater, Taylor considers "Maria" the other highlight of the year. A one-woman show written by Alma Bond and starring Joy Davidson, "Maria" examines the life of opera diva Maria Callas.

"I was approached to help work on the script, because it had been a book first," Taylor says. "And then as we talked, she said, 'Why don't you direct as well?' It just kind of snowballed from there."

In addition to a reading at Theatre Conspiracy, there was one in New York City as well. And Taylor has just received word that the show will be performed at the

Philharmonic Center for the Arts next season in the smaller Daniels Pavilion.

The Phil itself had a good season, according to Phil CEO and chairman Myra Janco Daniels.

"Well, I think it was a challenging time, but I think we came out of it much better than we forecast," she says. "In 501(c)(3)'s, if you come out so that you don't lose, you do well. As for highlights this year, I think that frankly, the orchestra outdid itself. And it is our product, our home-grown product."

Other orchestras have not fared as well, in the state and around the country, she says, with some failing and others slashing budgets.

"But we have not done that," she says. "Our idea is expansion, expansion within reason. And we will continue to do that. I think our product is good.…We made the most promising giant steps with our youth orchestra and the youth chorale… And this year, for the first time, we were able to give one child a $15,000 scholarship, which meant she could attend Case Western in Cleveland, one of the better music schools."

Their Broadway season enjoyed great success, especially "The Drowsy Chaperone." Daniels recalls seeing it on Broadway and after the first 20 minutes said, "Let's get this."

And her instincts were right on-target. The musical sold out at the Phil, and tickets were a hot commodity. Daniels calls the musical "new, fresh, exciting and fastpaced."

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and the Miami City Ballet were both highly successful, as were country singer Wynonna and crooner Johnny Mathis. And this past 12 different cabaret acts performed season, In the Voices of Distinction Phil Speaker in the Daniels Pavilion.

Series, Daniels points to Sidney Poitier's lecture as a highlight. "Sidney was a happening," she declares. "Here was a man whom most people have loved for years. He was charming off-stage and on."

The rocky economy didn't affect them as much as they thought it might.

"We did discover that our clientele is extremely loyal," she says. "We did have an exodus of some people moving out of state, who were on fixed incomes, and we'll miss those people. But the economy didn't affect us as much as we thought it would. We haven't figured our final numbers, but we really had the biggest year in our history in the hall, the biggest in sales volume and biggest in number of people. That was very good for us."

For the Florida Repertory Theatre, celebrating their 10th season, things started out a little rough in the beginning, but improved as the season continued. An updated, condensed version of "Romeo and Juliet," performed by the Classical Theatre of Harlem, was a hit with the high school students who saw it for free. But paying audiences didn't seem eager to attend.

"In some ways, our greatest failure and our greatest success of the season was the same show," says Robert Cacioppo, Florida Rep's artistic producing director. The production not only introduced many high school students to theater for the first time, but initiated partnerships with the Lee County School District and Chicos.

"It was quite a season," Cacioppo says. "We started off this 10th season so far behind the eight ball, we were expecting to have a quarter million- dollar loss this year. And we've had four years in the black, so we've been very stable financially as an arts organization."

A favorite for Cacioppo, from a personal directing standpoint, was the two-man show, "Stones in His Pockets."

"I know it was a really difficult show to pull off, and I felt we did a really bang-up job. It didn't light up the box office, but it did well and made us numbers," he says.

The show that followed, the quirky "Almost, Maine," though an artistic success, did poorly.

"They say theater people like the unique, and the masses like the familiar," Cacioppo says. He suspects audiences may have liked the play better if it had followed the same people throughout, rather than being a series of vignettes about different people in the same town.

Things started turning around with their production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Doubt."

"[Before 'Doubt,'] we really thought, 'Oh my God, this is going to be a disastrous season. We all felt extremely proud of 'Doubt.' Again, Maureen Heffernan, as a director, brought such a great touch," Cacioppo says. "And again, Maureen got to direct a pretty flawless play."

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," their first musical, brought in their largest audience in four years. And "Breaking Legs," which followed, was also a big crowd pleaser.

"So these three shows, plus a really great fundraising event, didn't totally salvage the season, but took us to an off-year, rather than a disastrous one," Cacioppo says. "So 2008 was really great. A year ago, when we decided the season, the economy and the housing market were not in the shape that they're in now. You can't really change a horse mid-stream."

Closing with the two-man play "Visiting Mr. Green" added to their success. Michael Edwards, the artistic producing director of the Asolo Theater in Sarasota, attended closing night and decided to cast both actors and use the same director for their next season.

"It's very interesting that we opened our season with a collaboration with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and closed our season with a show that would be remounted and brought to the Asolo, which is one of the oldest regional theaters in America," Cacioppo says. "So I think we've been in good company this year."

In contrast, The Naples Players at the Sugden Community Theatre experienced their most successful season, much to their surprise.

"We had a terrific season this year with our highest attendance records ever," says artistic director Dallas Dunnagan. A number of things contributed to that success. "I think it's everything from show quality to extra marketing to the [Naples] dinner theater not being here anymore," which brought more attendance to the Sugden's musicals, she says.

"Perfect Wedding," which she describes as "a fun little show, a cross between a romantic comedy and a door-slamming farce," almost completely sold out before opening.

They started their season last summer with "Beauty and the Beast" which "took off like gangbusters," she says. "That pushed our momentum forward. Everyone seemed to like 'I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change,' then 'Cabaret' did really well. We just didn't have a bad season this year."

Edgier shows in the Tobye Studio, their black box, also did well, especially "Humble Boy" and Edward Albee's "The Goat."

"There's always a demand for that kind of thing," Dunnagan says. "If it hasn't been done and done and done, you want to go see it and see what it's about.

"We don't seem to have been hurt by the economic problems at all, which sort of surprises me. But theater has a history: when times are hard, people still go. People want to be taken out of themselves."