skylight open house draws huge crowds

by all accounts, the skylight opera theatre's open house and concert in the park was an unbridled success. proceeds from the event are estimated to be in the range of $10,000.

this from ray jivoff:

"At 4:00 in the afternoon, [interim Artistic Director] Colin Cabot was up on a ladder outside the building cleaning the marquee. Cleaning the marquee!

The open house was not at all what I expected... tons and tons of people coming for the open house. 30 people at a time standing around [technical director] Rob Wagner in the scene shop, people in the props and costume shops... people everywhere.

The bar was packed, there was entertainment up there before the concert. There were over 500 people at the concert in the park, and then there were over 300 in the theatre afterwords to watch Norman Moses get sawed in half.

It was an amazing night."

late this afternoon i spoke with interim managing director joan lounsbury, who was basically gushing:

"Last night's event was positively brilliant in its execution, and it has the whole Milwaukee arts community talking about the power and the magic of The Skylight.

The depth of talent, both on and off the stage, the artist's and staff's ability to pull this off in the midst of building a show which opens in a few weeks, and the care taken to see that everything happened in the classiest and most 'Skylight-y' way possible, inspired and thrilled me.

I am in deep awe.

The press was there and stayed for the whole thing, right through the Cabot Theatre piece. Damien Jaques from OnMilwaukee.com, Tom Strini from ThirdCoastDigest.com, and David Schuyler from The Business Journal.

Christine [McGee], Sara Marie [von Hemert-Dachelet] and Heidi [Boyd] have just spent the whole morning counting cash. The sixth floor conference room looks like the back room in a casino.

I am so proud to be a part of this organization right now. There was a staggering amount of contributed talent, and hats off to THE SKYLIGHT STAFF, the best staff in the arts universe, in my view.

third coast digest's tom strini was there too, and counted over 800 in the park.

strini's assessment of the evening, however, swings from certain singers who "were not so good" (a bold statement to make about a benefit concert, especially considering the fact that we've all now heard strini himself warble a youtube tune) to suggesting eric dillner's notion that the skylight can afford to brush aside locals like leslie fitzwater, kathy pyeatt and diane lane is ridiculous, to ending with a note of anxiety about needing someone new to run the skylight "and soon."

here is lighting designer jason fassl's time-lapse of the set-up for the concert in catalano square:

come on-a my house, a-my house...

who could pass up a free variety show hosted by skylight ringmaster colin cabot? maybe he'll pull ray jivoff out of a hat, while you help make the company's debt disappear.

tuesday afternoon, september 1st, beginning at 5 pm the skylight opera theatre is throwing open it's doors for a huge celebration and the entire milwaukee community is invited. the whole event is free, and they're gonna put on one heck of a show. er...shows.

anyway, here's the official rundown:

SKYLIGHT 50th ANNIVERSARY
OPEN HOUSE & CONCERT

Come one, come all for a FREE celebration of the Skylight Opera Theatre's rich 50-year history!

Whether you've been a Skylight patron since 1959 or if you've never even seen a show, this open house and concert will welcome you into the Skylight community – illustrating just how special this theatrical gem really is.

The event will include an intimate glimpse behind the scenes of the Skylight with backstage tours and costume, set and prop displays; a concert in Catalano Square with Skylight favorites singing big Broadway musical numbers, torchy jazz hits, arias - a taste of the variety of music theatre we perform on the Skylight mainstage; and a special performance featuring the magic of David Seebach and our own Colin Cabot and Norman Moses.

5-7:00 pm – Open house with backstage tours, exclusive access to Skylight memorbilia, and displays of props, costumes, and scenery

6:30-9 pm – Benefit concert in Catalano Square (corner of Menomonee and Broadway) with contributed performances by Skylight artists including a 50th Anniversary Season Preview

9-10:30 pm – Variety show hosted by Skylight favorite Colin Cabot

can't make it to the shindig tomorrow? you can still help the performers raise dough by contributing here.

reports from catalano square

this morning's milwaukee arts advocacy breakfast, a weekly meeting which began in catalano square and has since moved to the skylight bar, included skylight opera theatre board members laura emory, jude werra, and susan godfrey. vince shiely and howard miller couldn't attend, but sent snacks for the crowd – bagels and cream cheese from shiely; muffins from miller. jonathan west (artsyschmartsy) brought donuts for "the youth of america," and colin cabot gave a guided tour of the broadway theatre center after the meeting.

this is progress.

UPDATE 10:20 p.m. – commenter alissa adds this:

Also in attendance today: board member Tessa Bartels (V.P. of Artist Relations) and past board member Lili Friedman (with whom many Tuesdays commenters have engaged in dialogue).

Tessa bent over backwards to adjust her work schedule and join us these past couple weeks. Board member Byron Foster, though currently on vacation, also joined us thrice in the park.

Some real communication is transpiring. Authentic dialogue and good will all around.

ny times returns to minnesota milwaukee

the new york times' dan wakin briefly revisits the land of figaro and fargo, and provides this bit of clarity on the skylight saga (my emphasis):

After Mr. Dillner’s efforts to deal with severe financial setbacks, about two dozen performers and other creative collaborators like directors and designers resigned in protest. Mr. Cabot said that many of the artists who withdrew would be returning to casts of the productions for next season, the Skylight’s 50th. The productions include “The Marriage of Figaro” and the “Barber of Seville.” Mr. Theisen has also agreed to come back to direct four of the shows he had been scheduled to do.

In the wake of the withdrawals, Mr. Dillner recast some of the roles. Mr. Cabot said several of those new singers would have to be paid even if they were now being replaced by the original performers.

“The mess that the Skylight got itself into is going to have costs associated with it, and this is just some of them,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

dillner resigns from skylight post cabot/lounsbery brought in as interim ad/md

(updated 8/5/09 9:40 p.m. est)

eric dillner has resigned as managing director of milwaukee's skylight opera theatre, it was announced at a 3 p.m. meeting of the full skylight staff. the news was delivered by interim board president terry kurtenbach, and an announcement to the skylight board of directors followed shortly thereafter.

joan lounsbery will return to milwaukee from her home in santa rosa, california to assume the role of interim managing director, and colin cabot, also a former managing and artistic director of the company, will return as interim artistic director.

bill theisen, the artistic director who's position was eliminated on june 16 – an event that became the catalyst for weeks of angst, frustration, protests, and national publicity – will resume his duties as director of four shows he was previously under contract for: barber of seville, plaid tidings, marriage of figaro, and the long and the short of it, for which cabot and his wife, actress/singer paula cabot have agreed to return to perform in.

UPDATE 8:25 p.m. – joan lounsbery has released the following statement about the developments in milwaukee, and her return to the company on august 24th:

"I am honored that the Skylight's Board of Directors has invited me to return to Milwaukee to serve as Interim Managing Director. I am especially pleased to be working alongside Colin Cabot in his role as Interim Artistic Director.

I have every intention of doing my part to quickly restore the Company to its position of national prominence and to work with the board, the staff, the artists, the subscriber and donor community, the press and the public at large to ensure a stellar 50th anniversary season. I can't wait!"

UPDATE 9:40 p.m. – tom strini reports that skylight marketing director kristin godfrey has said all performers who had been fired by dillner or quit their roles would be restored.

the full skylight press release:

Managing Director Eric Dillner Resigns

Milwaukee, WI, (August 5, 2009) - Interim Board President Terry Kurtenbach today regretfully announced the resignation of Skylight Opera Theatre Managing Director Eric Dillner. Dillner said, "I had to make many difficult decisions to streamline the company and it is now best for me to step aside and let someone else carry it forward."

"The decisions to lay off several valued employees, eliminate positions through attrition, reduce artist fees and ask staff to take furloughs, though unpopular, were necessary in order to address the Skylight's budget gaps and help secure its viability in the future," said Kurtenbach. "Eric is a strong manager willing to make difficult decision with professionalism, honesty and integrity. The Board of Directors and I appreciate Eric's service to the Skylight during the challenging times brought on by the national economic crisis. We thank him for his commitment to the Skylight and wish him the best."

"During the current difficult economic climate, many performing arts organizations have faced staff reductions," said Dillner. "As the economy took its toll on the Skylight's fortunes, the Executive Committee and I made these extremely difficult decisions in order to preserve the financial viability of this extraordinary company."

Eric Dillner, a professional artist in his own right, came to the Skylight from the Shreveport Opera, where he successfully weathered 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina during his seven-year tenure. He has devoted the last decade to building companies, audiences and artists' careers. He will continue consulting with the Skylight, but will engage in other pursuits to build and develop artists, nonprofit companies and build future audiences. He plans also to further develop topic-based outreach programs such as "Herman the Horse: a Healthy Tail" and "Why Dinosaurs Don't Smoke".

"I wish the Skylight the best in all its future endeavors and leave it in the hands of a capable staff, and fiscally responsible and caring Board of Directors. It is an amicable departure." Dillner added, "I am thankful for the support I have received here in Milwaukee and from around the globe."

The Board of Directors plans to explore a full range of options as it considers Dillner's successor. Two Skylight alumni, Joan Lounsbery and Colin Cabot, have graciously offered to help manage the company in the interim until a replacement can be identified.

The Skylight will be celebrating its 50th Anniversary Season in 2009-2010. The season will open on September 18th with a beloved opera The Barber of Seville, sung in English, as is all work at Skylight Opera Theatre. The season includes an exciting line-up of shows featuring the full range of music theatre for which the Skylight is known. The season, produced at the Broadway Theatre Center, will also include Plaid Tidings, The Marriage of Figaro, A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine, and RENT. Enthusiasm for this season continues to be high.

on an ordinary sunday

for my skylight family.

reports from catalano square

3:03 pm:

jonathan west will be posting video of the meeting throughout the day.

1:48 pm:

full audio of the skylight meeting in catalano square this morning.

(hat tip fred pike)

1:29 pm:

this seems key, to me. from this morning's discussion. board president terry kurtenbach states the skylight cannot afford a full-time artistic director. the question the comes, can the company afford a part-time artistic director? in his answer, kirchenbach claims the following:

"That is a very fair question. And you know, that is part of the issue that we probably didn't fully consider. However there were options. This is not the circumstance that came to, you know, the position...that came to the individual out of the blue. There were discussions. There were options."

this would seem to suggest that bill theisen was given options to remain in an artistic director position, in something other than a full time basis. this has been disputed again and again by theisen.

12:45 pm:

dillner's opening statement:

"For those of you who don't know me, I'm Eric Dillner, managing director of the Skylight.

I think we're all here for the same reason. You all love the Skylight, I love the Skylight, we all have loved it for many different lengths of time. Many of you for your whole life, some of us for, ah, well, I'd say for the last ten years i've known about the Skylight, but the last year and a half, I've loved it, like you have, but for different reasons.

Our whole mission here, all of us, together, is to produce exciting, wonderful productions that our community at large can enjoy, and love, and celebrate a special occasion at that evening, have dinner, celebrate with a drink afterwords. We're all here to make that the best that it can be.

We have this terrible thing called the economy hurting us right now. We're all suffering from that. We are personally suffering from it, we're emotionally suffering from it. The Skylight is one of the most important things in our lives, to keep the doors open. We aren't here discussing whether...well, we are here to discuss how we're gonna take it forward, but we also have to completely understand that we're here to discuss how to keep the doors open..."

12:28 pm:

jonathan west: the message we got today, from the new board president, was that it is mostly "the artist's responsibility" to fix this problem. if they don't they are not being gracious. (full quote from kurtenbach coming.)

molly rhode: in his "opening statement" kurtenbach said he had been on the board six years, but doesn't know any of the artists.

and then there is this, from the earlier tuesdays emailer, summing up the meeting:

Kurtenbach: "You need to help us fix this."

Dillner: "All of the people we lost have been replaced already."

Cabot: "Think of what you're doing."

Dillner: *interrupts Colin Cabot*

Kurtenbach: "The board knows what its doing."

Us: "Do you want to apologize for anything"

Kurtenbach: "Sorry for not telling you sooner."

Us: "Why should we trust you?"

Kurtenbach/Dillner: "............"

12:22 pm:

the meeting has apparently concluded. working on getting audio. video should come later in the day. an emailer to tuesdays: "oh my god, it was a bloodbath."

11:49 am:

radio silence. sorry. fyi, there is, i believe, video happening on the scene, so hopefully this is all being captured and will be online later today. (and no, dear christopher, i am not twittering this and live-blogging this. besides, much of milwaukee hasn't quite caught on to twitter yet.)

on a side note, this from damien jaques in this morning's journal/sentinel:

"[Artists] are not fast food employees who can be summarily shuttled in and out. Haughtily referring to them as a mob, as a Skylight board member reportedly did, reveals a stunning lack of understanding as well as a sickening arrogance."

11:19 am:

actress molly rhode point blank asked dillner to please step down. dillner refused.

lighting designer kurt schnabel has withdrawn from next season. he was contracted to design both "barber" and "figaro." his resignation letter will be posted later in the day.

11:09 am:

the discussion has become quite intense and probably too complicated to relay in a forum like this, says my source. (but we'll keep trying.)

10:58 am:

dillner modifies his last statement. no, not all have been replaced. jamie johns is speaking. and, according to my source, "getting squelched."

10:55 am:

there are now definitely over 100 people present.

eric dillner has just announced that he has an entire list of replacements for next season that he will release very soon. everyone has already been replaced.

10:50 am:

just a reminder to readers: this is all very fluid. none of the information here is in quotes. these are rough ideas of what is going on.

my source is suddenly very quiet.

10:40 am:

kurtenbach is talking about the process that took place at last night's board meeting, arguing it was fair, and the community should participate out of a sense of obligation. (these are not quotes.) in a democracy, some win, some lose.

dillner speaks. an apology. west asks why he should be trusted. kurtenbach then explains why the board has been slow in reacting, and he apologizes on behalf of the board and asks for understanding.

10:30 am:

the hastily called meeting of skylight opera theatre artists, colin cabot, and eric dillner is underway in milwaukee's catalano square, just south of the skylight's home in the broadway theatre center. reports of 100-120 people in attendence.

new board president terry kurtenbach spoke at length about his fairly short history with the skylight, which began with the first show he saw there, "floyd collins." cabot spoke for a few moments, and now jonathan west is posing questions on behalf of the artists.

libby: "the destruction of the company"

former skylight opera theatre managing director christopher libby has sent this letter to the skylight board of directors tonight:

Dear Board of Directors,

As a former Managing Director of Skylight Opera Theatre I implore you to take dramatic and decisive action to change the path on which you have set yourselves. I have grave concerns that the path which you pursue will lead to the destruction of the company.

I cannot add to the criticism to which you are subject, nor do I presume to know the details of the decisions that have taken the company down this path.

I can only say that the decisions being made and the way in which they are being executed stand in such sharp contrast to the building blocks of Skylight that they threaten to undermine the accomplishments of five decades of dedicated professionals and volunteers.

If there has been any accomplishment of Skylight, it has been because we stood on the shoulders of giants, who built this great company with the talent of artists, the patronage of donors, the curiosity of audiences, and the wisdom of Boards like you.

That all threatens to stand in ruins at your feet when from your better selves you are too long estranged. If you choose this path, know that you choose it alone, away from the support of history, and the blessings of those who now stand aside and still, aghast at the path they see before you.

As an unbidden voice of the past, I add mine to the clarion call to turn back from the path you've chosen, or face a future far graver than the one you sought to avoid.

Sincerely,
Christopher Libby
Former Managing Director

skylight board backs dillner

an emergency meeting of the skylight opera theatre board of directors tonight ended with a very close vote to retain eric dillner as managing director.

skylight board president suzanne hefty has stepped down, and was replaced by terry kurtenbach, who will remain president only through the board's annual meeting in seven weeks. kurtenbach has agreed to be interim president with the express charge that eric dillner demonstrate that he can heal the rift with the artistic community.

eric dillner and colin cabot will meet with the artistic community in catalano square tomorrow morning, friday july 24th at 9:00 am. cabot has asked that the community come and be “professional, forward-looking, and focusing on a positive direction” and to give dillner a chance to make amends.

from tom strini:

Cabot...called upon the board to fire Dillner, but they refused to do so in a close vote.

Cabot said that he got the board and Dillner to agree to meet with dissidents in Catalano Square in the Third Ward at 9 a.m. Friday (July 24). "Eric has agreed to answer his critics," Cabot said. "It's gonna be a food fight."

Cabot plans to fly in for that event.

He said that he had offered to come back to Milwaukee to serve as interim managing director and "repair the breach" by bringing back Theisen and the many cast members who had spurned their contracts or had been fired by Dillner. The board turned him down.

"This boggles my mind," Cabot said. "It's incredible."

He seemed determined to press his case further, despite Tuesday's board vote. Cabot sits on the company's influential board of advocates, which is to meet Friday afternoon.

the cabots quit: "how sad. how puerile."

colin and paula cabot will not be returning to the skylight opera theatre to perform in the 50th anniversary season.

Dear Skylight Friends,

It was my first job and it lasted twenty three years. People made fun of me because I chose to move to Milwaukee (ostensibly to see if there was civilization west of the Hudson and to be nearer to Marie Kohler’s ailing mother) and during my first year I often found myself twiddling my thumbs in between cleaning my desk of the bits of terra cotta tiles that regularly fell from the ceiling because the roof was used for growing plants. I wondered whether my career path from the Harvard Business School to a converted tire recapping garage on Cathedral Square was logical in any way. But I kept busy because we were doing shows, lots of them.

Jack Strawbridge, Ray Hickman, and Monty Davis initiated me into the Skylight’s rhythms of self deprecatory condescension mixed with pride that comes from knowing that at least you have a job right now even though it will end in seven weeks. My first Skylight show was El Capitan by John Philip Sousa with a creaky libretto by Harry Bache Smith. On opening night the marching band from St. John’s Cathedral High School played Sousa marches on the sidewalk as the audience arrived. The old marquee which Clair Richardson had scrounged from somewhere clicked noisily as the bulbs flashed on and off. John Bohan was waiting outside after the final curtain in his taxi hoping for a fare. Those were the days.

Clair fired me that night for reasons which in retrospect make a funny story. It has to do with the house light rheostat and my thinking he said “applause” when what he had really said was “a pause.” The next morning when I came to collect my things he chewed me out for keeping several members of the Clarion Society (later renamed the Skylighters) waiting. The fired was immediately retracted and we carried on, sometimes reaching a fever pitch of antipathy and bad feeling, but usually finding each other good company. He was irascible and unpredictable but also charming and outgoing (especially with the ladies). He knew he was a character and he liked to enhance his reputation for flamboyant skullduggery.

I was happy to clean up around his edges and I learned a lot from him though he wasn’t what you could call a conventional mentor. He taught me how to write a press release by tearing apart my formulaic efforts (I had graduated cum laude with a BA in English from a prestigious ivy league college)and finding something unique and interesting in whatever it was we were trying to sell. I also was happy to take the fall for missing pages in his copy of The Mikado which he only discovered when he opened the book for the first time during the first rehearsal. How could you not love a guy who’s work ethic was this transparent?

I was a lucky person to have found him and his theatre to append myself to. We did show after show after show and had a good time doing it. Sure there were things like the ladies’ chorus class action suit over being paid half of what the men’s chorus was. And there was the famous moment where he blew smoke in the Hungarian bass’ face during the intermission of the last performance of Barber of Seville so he could fire him for cause when he erupted and later win when the singer applied for unemployment. Charm with Clair wasn’t a constant.

With Clair everything was personal, nothing was about money. If he liked you, he’d throw you a bone. If he didn’t you were pretty quickly out the door. But he didn’t mess with the talent collectively. For him it was never us and them when it came to the performers. The stagehands and the musicians unions were another story, though, and we had to pay through the nose later when we had to interact with them.

Clair loved his (very few) board members. He was fond of saying the only board meetings he liked were those that could be held in the back of a speeding automobile. He wept uncontrollably for at least an hour the day that Allen Slichter died. And after Clair himself died, I realized he had spent the week before going around town saying goodbye to the people he worked with. Like Helmut Bolk, the printer on North Avenue who had served in the German army during the second world war whose print shop smelled of molten lead and ink and who used his old linotype machines to set the type for our programs and all those awful season brochures. And Darinka Kohl of the Hook and Eye costume shop whose license plate was “Nazdar” in her native Czech. And Damien Jacques, who had been his drinking buddy when he was on the city beat...

When Bill Theisen asked me and Paula to do a show for the Skylight’s fiftieth anniversary season, we agreed because he convinced us that these kinds of reminiscences would make a fun evening for me and give Paula a chance to bewitch her audiences with her extraordinary voice once again. We decided to make a serious effort at putting something together that would be surprising and enjoyable at the same time.

We were planning to visit my parents in New Zealand (Cole Porter’s first published song was “I’ve a Shooting Box in Scotland”, so, not to be outdone, my parents have a sheep station on the edge of Fjordland National Park on the south island of New Zealand.) In order to give ourselves time to think and write, we booked passage on a container ship, the Hansa Flensburg, from Long Beach, CA to Tauranga, NZ. With the prospect of fifteen days at sea with nothing to do, we visited the Sam Ash store on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and bought an electronic keyboard for our cabin. We brought along all the songs we could think of as well as a bunch of plays by the likes of J. M. Barrie, Noel Coward, Booth Tarkington, and W. Shakespeare, and something began to take shape as we crossed the ocean. Not that it ranked as even a passable first draft, mind you, but it put us in the mode of writing a show. I started to work on some of the Dudley Moore piano pieces which I performed in the Chamber Theatre’s production of Beyond the Fringe with Norman Moses, Bill Leach, and Monty Davis. They were silly then, and now seem positively strange without the other three zanies to contribute to the levity. Bills’ introduction of one of the pieces was: “Mr. Cabot will continue to play with himself upon the piano – forte, this time in a rendition of that old English nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet, named for an entomologist of the same … name.” (I guess you had to be there.) Lord, how I miss Monty and Bill, those two wondrous beings of the theatre who graced us with their gifts for so long and so unstintingly.

So I gave up on all of the Fringe pieces except for one bit which I’d like to lob toward the current Skylight Board of Directors in an effort to get them to see what is happening to the artist community in Milwaukee. The set up is that a news reporter (picture an English version of Tom Strini) asks Lord Cobbold, the English Censor: “What do you think of sex and violence in the cinema these days?” My answer, as Cobbold, was: “I think far too much sex and violence gets by in the name of entertainment these days. I mean, when I go to the theatre I want to be taken out of myself. I don’t want to see lust, rape, sodomy or incest. I can get all that at home.” I never thought I’d see the day that my funky family of theatre-crazed addicts would be mobilized to take to the streets in opposition to a monolithic pseudo-institution which I unwittingly helped to create.

The Skylight is in total free fall as I write this. My friends of yore are rebelling in righteous indignation to the (dare I say despotic?) utterances of the leadership which clings to the notion that boards of non profits should never break ranks and say what the individual members think. (We used to all Clair Bialystock behind his back, but we never called him Il Duce…On second thoughts maybe we did.)

One of the current board members referred to the “whiff of the mob” in a recent e-mail exchange. This same board member is now counseling keeping a certain member of the artist community from attending proposed artist forums in the Skylight’s building even though he may be employed by another organization in the building. I find this counter-intuitive, counter-productive, and destructive.
Until the players drop the rhetoric and talk to each other about their differences, there is no hope of repairing the breach of trust that is alleged by those who feel most wronged. To consider anything in this situation as helping one side against another is to contribute to the further destruction of a legacy of which I am surprisingly proud.

When I travelled to Milwaukee for the last Skylight Board meeting I was overwhelmed by the intense “mob” allegiance to whatever the legacy of the theatre is. When I saw Ellie Quint, Peggy Peterson, Jenny Clark, Joel Kopishke, Leslie Fitzwater, Norman Moses, and all the rest of them milling around on Wisconsin Avenue before the board meeting, I felt that I was connected to a past that is worth valuing. This is not a mob, this is a family that has been thrown out with the bath water.

I have never met a breach I couldn’t try to heal until this one.

Yesterday, while weeding, (“Il faut cultiver notre jardin”) Bill Theisen called to tell me that he was going to push send on the e-mail that would sever his ties to the Skylight (the best of all possible worlds.) I feel intensely frustrated that I couldn’t successfully bring Bill and Eric Dillner to a table to save the theatre as we knew it. We talked for a while about various spurious allegations that have been circulated in this strange internet conflagration that erupted on June 16. He assured me that the deal to hire Eric’s wife for at least a show a year never happened, and he told me that he laughed when Eric suggested replacing two of the Barber of Seville chorus men. The details are the detritus of unresolved conflict. How sad. How puerile.

That moment and many others like it (people not communicating successfully) have moved the Skylight into another plane of existence.

Which is one which neither Paula nor I wish to enter. We won’t be travelling to Milwaukee for a show on New Year’s Eve. If you have bought tickets, please contact the Mildred Lindsay box office for a refund. If you think we should pay for your tickets to our non-show, please do respond to this e-mail.

If Eric Dillner, Suzanne Hefty and the current board of the Skylight are successful in moving the theatre to its next iteration, more power to them. If not, the legacy could turn out to be like a phoenix. But I’m not sure. That the Skylight could survive losing its current artist base is a possibility. Of course it reminds me a little of the war to end all wars where human lives were thrown away by officers who didn’t understand what trench warfare was really all about. It may indeed be possible to find excellent artists to step into the abandoned positions of the old Skylight regime, including singers, set designers, conductors, rehearsal pianists, and education staffers. But Paula and I can’t in good conscience cross the line that has been drawn by our old friends without betraying them, and theatrical allegiances die hard. Maybe we can be there (with our walkers) for the Skylight’s sixtieth and all the current hullabaloo will be a faded memory.

I hope so.

Colin Cabot

raising the roof

the lovely and talented j. michael brennan chimes in on the skylight, and that roof situation (my italics):

I am very glad to hear that Colin [Cabot] is still involved to some degree: he brings a much needed perspective to this mess.

Having been part of Skylight during those tough times as the company was making the transition from tire garage to its own house, and having many conversations with Colin about his goals, dreams and vision, it has always been clear to me that a large measure of Skylight's success was the bi-lateral push and pull between the often conflicting artistic and business sides.

I hope he can reinstate this balance, and I further hope it leads the Skylight down a path that reinstates Bill Theisen at some point in the future (not having met Bill, but the passion with which my friends defend him speaks volumes.)

It's also enlightenging that Colin points out almost parenthetically that it was with his assistance that the roof repair problem was offset by a vigorous fund raising effort. Wasn't the roof repair crisis used as justification for why staff cuts were necessary, and now we find out that with Colin's assistance, those costs were offset? What is needed here is an advocate who will protect both sides of the business.

It speaks volumes of the Skylight legacy that almost fifteen years after having spent a few seasons there, I feel as passionate and as much a part of its history now as I did then.

colin comes a callin'

from the milwaukee journal/sentinal's tom strini:

Colin Cabot, the former managing director, donor and guiding light of the Skylight Opera Theatre, will come to Milwaukee from his New Hampshire home to try to calm the controversy that has engulfed the company since artistic director Bill Theisen was fired on June 16. Cabot will attend a crucial board meeting set for Wednesday (July 8) afternoon.

Cabot said he hopes to broker some sort of rapproachment among the conflicting sides, so that the company's 50th anniversary season will be a happy one. But he also said that he did not see how the company could proceed without someone in charge of the artistic side and without a company manager.

strini also reports that the skylight board is "divided among those who would oust managing [director] Eric Dillner and president Suzanne Hefty for firing Theisen and those who believe it was an economic necessity."

one might suggest those two points of view are not mutually exclusive.

the ultimate intermission speech

a open letter to the skylight community, from colin cabot.

July 3, 2009

Thoughts on the Artistic Direction of the Skylight --
An open letter to the Skylight Community

Dear Friends of the Skylight,

Since June 16 I have thought a lot about the woes of the Skylight, and now that Bill Theisen has agreed to direct most of the shows he was scheduled to do in the fiftieth anniversary season, I want to put my thoughts in writing.

In addition to several protracted conversations I’ve had with both Bill and Eric Dillner and Suzanne Hefty, many old friends from the board and from the artistic community have called me to talk about the issue, some asking me to weigh in with some sort of ultimate “intermission speech” as if the spirit of the Skylight is somehow lodged within me. I deferred answering these calls until last week because I was busy, have been away for twelve years, and thought that a voice from the past would only muddy the waters. I did offer myself as a mediator and think that I helped clarify Bill’s thoughts as he made the decision whether or not to accept the offer on the table after he was fired. My mantra has always been to help the institution of the Skylight rather than take sides in what began as a personnel dispute and has escalated into a public relations debacle.

When Clair Richardson established the position of Artistic Director at the Skylight, he did so in order to give me the title of Managing Director. He was stepping back to allow me to run the theatre while he spent more time on his plants and his new marriage. It was clear to everyone that he wasn’t leaving or handing over the reins to the new kid, and that he was closely linked to the choice of repertory and the casting of the shows we were planning. But he also wasn’t up to doing all the work by himself any more. His heart wasn’t strong and he had hired me (after Bo Black) to be his assistant (at the board’s insistence).

[Interestingly, the day he died (September 12, 1981) was the day we submitted an application to the city for a community block grant to fund repairs to the rest rooms to bring the Jefferson Street building up to code so that we could remain eligible for federal and state grants. He had been opposed to the grant because he knew it would require a matching capital campaign and told me he thought it was throwing good money after bad because the building was in such poor shape. He was so adamant in his opposition that we weren’t speaking to each other when he went in for his second open heart surgery which he didn’t survive. Later the grant sparked our first successful campaign and ultimately the building was swapped for the site on Broadway which now needs a new roof.* So much for good money after bad.]

Something I haven’t heard mentioned in the recent debate is a discussion of the difference between the management models of a resident regional repertory theatre company and a traditional regional opera company.

Traditional regional opera companies are managed by General Directors who oversee repertory selection, fundraising, and management (such as contracts for the hall, the orchestra, the chorus and the artists). Typically such an opera company does very few performances of one or two productions per year in big venues. Often maligned as “instant opera”, these productions use borrowed sets and costumes that may have been built for different stage director’s concepts and typically have very short rehearsal periods because the principal performers are paid large fees and come from all over the world. Milwaukee’s traditional opera company is the Florentine Opera. (Clair and John Anello used to delight in feuding in public, a strategy which I am glad to see is no longer being followed by the companies.) Both the Florentines and the Skylight companies had the word “opera” in their titles, but they worked in very different ways.

The Skylight was patterned on the model of the regional repertory theatre company: do as many performances as possible of as many productions as possible using mostly local performers and establish yourself as a place where artistic activity happens all the time. It isn’t artistically healthy for one person to attempt to do all the work needed to mount over a hundred performances of the full spectrum of operas, musicals, and the cross-over pieces that have defined the Skylight’s repertory. What is needed is a healthy tension between experts in the various genres and a pluralistic view of the repertory to please the varied and eclectic taste of an audience which expects to be surprised every time they cross the threshold of the theatre. Ed Corn, when head of the National Endowment for the Arts Opera/Music Theatre Program, once delighted me in a review he wrote of the company after seeing us perform an Offenbach one act opera in the Galleria of the (then) First Wisconsin Center: “The Skylight enjoys the luxury of making a virtue out of the arcane.”

Stephen Wadsworth and Francesca Zambello became the Skylight’s Co-Artistic Directors to show the audience what was artistically possible in a converted tire-recapping garage. They were interested in training singers and working with up-and-coming designers in a place where rehearsals could be longer than usual and the opportunity to do many performances would allow performers to learn from their experience rather than from hindsight, which is what you have to do if opening and closing night are the same performance. My job as Managing Director was to fund that process and vision and to marshall support for expanding the meager resources that were available to the company. Over time the artistic product was vastly improved and the company started to grow artistically to the extent that the campaign to build the Broadway Theatre Center became a reality.

By that time it should be noted that the company and its Artistic Directors had outgrown each other. Stephen and Cesca had moved away from each other personally and were both commanding fees and working with artists at a level that the Skylight in Milwaukee could not support. Stephen was opposed to building a theatre for the audience to enjoy modeled on a baroque court theatre; he wanted an enormous flexible black box where the artistic vision of the particular production was the only thing the audience would see. I was interested in recreating some of the “passagiato” feeling that can be experienced at European arts festivals, where communities take justifiable pride in their public spaces for their individuality and human scale. I felt the elegance of the salon and the informality of the bar complemented the elaborate conceit of the theatre, and that keeping all the functions of production and rehearsal in the same building as the performances were important to developing the sense of community that has long been identified as “Skylight.”

It was often very difficult to raise money for the artistic projects that we mounted; doing the Monteverdi Cycle of Poppea, Orfeo, and Ulysses in rotating rep cost an additional $75,000 over the usual costs in those days. And although we raised the money in advance I was unable to control expenses completely and we ran a deficit. The solution was to tell the board we were in trouble and to convince the donors to give more while trying to rein in the artistic vision so that it wouldn’t bankrupt the company. Sound familiar?

I last visited Milwaukee in February, 2009 to attend a meeting exploring the possibility of a capital campaign to improve the building and expand into the parking lot to the north. When Eric Dillner told me that the company staffing levels were economically unsupportable, I believed him. Without seeing the numbers I felt that a lot of people had year-round jobs that would have been seasonal in the old days and that the artistic staff positions were luxuries we simply had been unable to afford and so hired people on an ad hoc basis to do specific tasks. My impression was that during Christopher Libby’s years sinecures had been created and that Eric was going to have to clean house.

I remember one year at the old theatre when I realized that there wasn’t enough money to pay the tech staff past closing night of the season. Of course they had saved up their comp time/vacation time in order to work overtime on the shows (The production was The Rake’s Progress if I remember correctly; the orchestra was Don St. Pierre playing a piano, a harpsichord and a chime!) I told them that their summer furlough would begin early as they were putting finishing touches to the set during production week. They weren’t happy with me or the situation but they finished the run and returned the following season. I tell this story because it was transparently clear to everyone that the money wasn’t there to pay them, and they accepted the necessity of the cut. I feel that running up debt on the Skylight’s line of credit in recent years has mistakenly lulled people into thinking that the organization is fiscally strong when it is actually structurally unsustainable.

Durring last fall and into the spring Paula and I were writing our upcoming show. We communicated regularly with Bill, (who is not the show’s author as a recent e-mail from Eric suggested) and I did not talk with Bill about the Skylight’s management issues because I felt it wasn’t my place. I had been sent a copy of the Rester report which was confidential to the board. We didn’t discuss it when Bill came to visit in New Hampshire because I didn’t want to meddle in internal affairs. I assumed that the report had been shared with staff. Now I find out that the complete report has maybe not been shared with the full board to say nothing of the full staff.

Transparency was easy in the old days. I took a small salary (too small for the health of the company) because I could afford to, and everyone else took the same or less. Fees for artists were non-negotiable because we simply didn’t have money in the coffers. (I have always been embarrassed that the performers were paid so little, and yet our Milwaukee rates were higher than the off-Broadway rates paid to the cast of Jim Valcq’s Zombies From the Beyond at the Player’s Theatre in Greenwich Village. In eleven weeks I lost $450,000 of my and other people’s money in that particular debacle which would have been enough to support a repertory company and technicians for a full season in the Midwest. But I digress…)

My points are: 1) that whenever a seemingly insoluble problem is identified, it must be addressed in full view of all, and 2) being a performer is a calling so compelling that it is irresistible. Why would anyone in their right mind work hours when everybody else in the world is relaxing, take pennies to do the impossible on a regular basis, risk failure and rejection at the hands of the press and the public, and have no assurance of a regular job, nor a voice on the board of directors? I am always amazed to realize I am married to one of these creatures and that the craving to perform still asserts itself constantly whether she wants it to or not. Someone should write a book about how art victimizes its greatest practitioners. Where would the theatre be without them? It wouldn’t.

My conversations with Bill, Eric and Suzanne during the past weeks have been cordial and have resulted in Bill agreeing to complete plans he had set up long ago. These plans include commitments to artists many of whom have worked for the Skylight before. I hope their voices (until now represented by the position of Artistic Director) will be included in the upcoming discussions with both the board of advocates and board of directors.

I am worried that what has long made the Skylight unique and viable is now threatened.

My suggestion is that everything be on the table: the board could be reorganized to include artistic representation, a part time volunteer committee of artists (past Artistic Directiors including Bill, Paula Suozzi, Richard Carsey, etc.) could be charged with recommending artistic vision until funds are found to pay for the function. The most important thing is that the board and management’s plans and answers to questions be accepted by all the Skylight’s constituents. Consider it a fundraising opportunity!

I look forward to the renewed health and artistic vitality of what Bob Zigman once told Clair was a “flea-bag flop-house of a theatre.”

Sincerely,

Colin Cabot

PS * I have attached a copy of the letter that Eric and I wrote to ask for support to make necessary building repairs. The gist of the letter says that we never funded depreciation since moving into the Broadway Theatre Center because we wanted to spend that money on the artists; it was a calculated risk to hope that the endowment would have grown sufficiently to meet the need to replace systems when they failed. Obviously the gamble failed to pay off and wasn’t one we should have taken.

I was astounded by the extraordinary generosity of those who responded to the appeal. Though I have dropped the ball on writing personal thank you letters, I thought the entire community should know that at least before June 16 there was a tremendous reserve of loyalty to the original vision.

Thank you.