More info on the HEAD

This is what the City Pulse has to say:

What’s left to save of the 44-year-old Equity theater that closed its doors last December after years of dwindling ticket sales and backstage dramas?

“That’s an excellent question,” said John Peakes, the actor-director who founded the theater in 1966 and now makes his home in the Philadelphia area. “A theater is made up of its staff and the actors they hire and the designers, the directors and the other ancillary folk who work there. There’s none of that there now.” Nonetheless, BoarsHead and Lansing Community College are considering a partnership to revive the theater. The proposal will be addressed during the LCC Board of Trustees’ meeting on May 17;

Considering the cost The new BoarsHead would, however, be considerably more streamlined than the theater’s previous incarnation, which had annual budgets of nearly $1 million. The BoarsHead season would be limited to four productions, three of which would probably be staged in Dart Auditorium. Orban said the only staff positions would be a full-time executive director and a part-time artistic director.

In order to maintain the theater’s Equity status, an Equity stage manager, set designer and technicians would need to be on hand for each of the productions and a certain percentage of the cast of each show would have to be composed of Equity actors, but “we would be hiring people on a show-by-show basis,” Orban said. LCC could assist the Equity personnel with technical help and extra performers. 

“LCC, I think, will be picking up nothing but ill will and a bunch of debts,” Peakes said. “That’s what BoarsHead is bringing to the table. It just seems to me to be a loselose proposition for LCC.” Peakes insists his feelings “aren’t a case of sour grapes — I’ve been away from it for a long time. I was sad to see (BoarsHead) was closed, but I’d be even sadder to see it come back in a bastardized form.”

Questions: Who is going to sell the tickets? Who is going to House Manage? Who is going to usher? Who is going to do the mailings? Who is going to answer the phones? How long would each production run? Where would they rehearse?

I love John Peakes!

SuperC