Theater Subterfuge
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Printed Date: 5/11/25 at 6:15pm
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Topic: Theater Subterfuge
Posted By: Guests
Subject: Theater Subterfuge
Date Posted: 11/08/02 at 4:09pm
My husband and I have helped run a theater group which has been producing shows for around 11 years. We have been in our theater for 2 and half years. I'm sure we will never know the full story but in a nutshell the owner of our venue called to tell us another theater group had offered more money to rent the space and that we needed to out by the end of the month. We all were in shock. We had no idea this had been coming and were blindsided by the event. We had a show in rehearsal at the time and we were planning a new Christmas production. We decided that we couldn't out bid the 2nd group for several reasons. We tried to hunt down other spaces but nothing has come of that. The show that was in production will probably be housed at the local college but the Christmas production had to be cancelled. The last two weeks we have done nothing but pull out all the improvements we put into the space and put them into storage.
I would like to find out if any other theater groups have been in this situation and what they did about it. Or if anyone has advice as to how to carry on.
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Replies:
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/15/02 at 11:09pm
This is really sad, but things like this happen to trusting souls everyday. Use it as a learning experience and do better next time, because you may not have any legal legs to stand on this time.
You never mentioned if you had a Lease or what it said. The way your post reads, either you did not have a Lease and trusted your Landlord by taking his/her word for everything, or you signed your Lease without reading it. Not to give you a terse answer, but my best advice for next time is:
A) Read your lease
B) Have a Lawyer look at it and make any changes in your favor *BEFORE* signing it. Better yet, Pay the fee and let your Lawyer negotiate it for you.
This will give you a legal standard to fall back on when something like what happened to you comes up.
Fiat Lux!
Bil K
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/16/02 at 11:29am
I would hope your experience is not commonplace. Most of us can not afford the going rates for space rental - theaters are large, have a lot of specialized infrastructure and do not bring in a lot of revenue on a five or six show per year schedule.
At the same time I can not fault a property owner for wanting to get as much as they can for rent for their space. It seems that your problem was caused by the unethical behavior of your landlord. If your landlord had been upfront with you, there would have been discussions for some period of time about his need for increased rent and your ability to pay more. I would hope that more landlords are upfront with their tenants so each can be aware of the needs of the other.
After several years of moving our shows every night, we found a home at our local Grange. We have put a lot of money and countless hours into fixing up the building and installing our equipment. We are doing this on a handshake. So far they have been very good landlords - we pay them what we can and they are happy to have us use the facility but the risk is clear to us that the winds may change and all of our effort could be for nothing. So far it is a symbiotic relationship.
if we insisted on a lease (which they would not offer) we would not be using the building. Our goal is to make our use of the building valuable to them in ways other than financial.
Time will tell.
Doug
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11/16/02 at 6:58pm
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Doug's situation is very similar to ours: we rent part of a building (an old school gym) which we have done a great deal of work on and will continue to improve. Last summer we were able to get funding from a local trust for new windows and 2 new airconditioning units, all of which was installed with volunteer labor. Here is a nice touch, though: we were able to negotiate a 10 year "rolling lease" with our landlord (the town council) so that the lease would be reviewed each year, and another year added on if all is satisfactory with both parties. It gives us a 9 year heads up if somehow the politics were to change. We do have a lawyer on our board which never hurts, and we also have a good relationship of mutual respect with our landlords. KathyS.
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