Las Vegas theater community could grow by working together

Famously, he declared:

"We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

That was in the musical "1776." (Strike up the orchestra.) Curiously, Ben Franklin said the same in 1776. (Strike up the Redcoats.)

Nooses notwithstanding, that quote also applies to an issue that has hung over local theater for years: Why can't they all hang together?

"Wouldn't that be lovely if we all worked together?" says Leslie Fotheringham, artistic director of Signature Productions. "Every theater company here is so self-contained. But it could benefit us in ways we don't even understand yet."

Competitive? Theater companies are surely that. Yet in many cities, states, regions and even nationally, groups organize into alliances with mutual benefits and a unified effort to advance the idea of attending your local playhouse.

"One of the girls in the play with me at CSN ('Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them') told me she and her boyfriend just got the paperwork because they wanted to start their theater business here," says Joy Demain, director of local Jade Productions. "They wanted to send an e-mail out to all the theater companies saying, 'Hey, why don't we get together and have everybody work with each other and be helpful?' This was just a couple of days ago. It definitely should happen."

Still ... it doesn't. "We tried it once," Demain recalls. "We talked about sharing things. It got so we stopped meeting because everybody was busy with their own shows."

Inattentiveness may only partly explain the failing. "Ego is a big part of it," says Will Adamson, founding managing director of Cockroach Theatre. "People here have worked together, not to positive results. And isolation is a big part. We get very cliquish."

Elsewhere? Local theater guilds exist from Santa Monica, Calif., to Mobile, Ala., Willimantic, Conn., to Dover, Del., Vero Beach, Fla., to Fairbanks, Alaska.

Many also belong to the mommy organization, the American Association of Community Theatre, representing 7,000 theaters, plus individual members.

Last week, the association held a convention in ... Las Vegas. Missing? A Las Vegas guild. "Sounds to me that there isn't a lot of coordination going on there," says association spokeswoman Susan Austin. "It might help (individual theaters) to be part of something larger (the association) and see how the larger group works together, then take that down to their level."

Potential benefits of togetherness: Sharing databases of actors and crew; borrowing equipment, costumes, props and sets; and joint publicity to promote and increase theater awareness.

"I came here from London and they would deal with marketing across the board," says Jo Cattell, artistic director of Vegas-based British National Theatre of America, founded in 2008.

"You could make sure your fliers got into other venues. There's nothing like that in Vegas. Marketing is really lax. To me, that's even more important than people borrowing costumes and scenery."

Theater guilds also produce newsletters, offer forums to address common problems and provide exposure to each other's work.

"One of the benefits is we run a festival system, which allows the theaters to bring a show to one location and the shows are adjudicated," Austin says. "It's seeing how other people handle the same show. There are also competitions so they can move from the state to the regional level to the national festival."

Scheduling also looms as an issue -- ensuring various companies don't select the same plays from season to season or bunch up show dates.

Example: As originally scheduled, the third and fourth weekends of March have one and two local productions on the boards, while the first and second weekends of April have six and eight colliding. Contributing factors to the lopsided calendar include venue availability and working around school schedules of companies such as Nevada Conservatory Theatre, the College of Southern Nevada and Las Vegas Academy that have responsibilities to students and faculty to consider. Conferring, however, could help avoid a feast-or-famine scenario.

"Someone asked me before to organize all the groups in town and call a meeting and I told them they were nuts," says Walter Niejadlik, president of Las Vegas Little Theatre. "I spend my nonworking hours keeping LVLT's doors open. I said we'd volunteer to host a meeting, but there aren't enough hours in the day."

Another roadblock, Niejadlik adds, is finding independent administrators, pointing to the collective called Theatre Bay Area in San Francisco, which includes more than 300 theaters, both community and professional, around the Bay Area and Northern California.

"They put out a monthly magazine, they helped with grants and resources, there was a phone line for auditions and it worked really well because it was run by people outside the people running the theaters," Niejadlik says.

"Human nature is you will protect your own (interests). You have to have someone impartial to stop the fighting because it will occur, to make sure everyone is playing on the same level field and everyone else's production is advertised in everybody else's program."

Whether coordinated efforts increase audiences is debatable, says Fotheringham of Signature, citing allegiances to particular theaters. "Each theater company has its own patron base," she says.

"Las Vegas Little Theatre has a base that visits all their shows. Our patron base is out of Sun City, and families. Yes, if we know what shows (other theaters) are doing, it will give people in the community a chance to see more of a variety of shows. Then again -- when UNLV does, say, 'The Music Man,' they have a different patron base than we do, they're in a different area, so for us to do it two years later, it's not a big deal."

Theatergoing breeds more theatergoers, Cattell claims -- regardless of geography. "There's a sense of insecurity among the companies, a notion that sharing an audience with another company means they'll lose that audience member. Usually, the opposite is true. People come back to see more theater."

Pockets of outreach do exist. Companies including Cockroach and Las Vegas Little Theatre offer rehearsal and performance space to other troupes.

Super Summer Theatre, which hosts various companies at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park during its limited season, includes ads for productions around town in its programs, recently launched an online audition page (www.vegascallboard.com) and lists local theaters on its website (www.super summertheatre.org).

"We started that philosophy a long time ago -- yes, Virginia, there is other theater in town," says Christy Miller, Super Summer Theatre's vice president.

"Community theater exists on pennies and people's talent and extra time. You can keep your arts alive if everybody communicates and shares their resources and talent. You die otherwise."

Put another way:

Hanging together assuredly beats hanging separately.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@review journal.com or 702-383-0256.