Making the Scene

How did professional theater get so big in the Twin Cities?

September 2008 | by Camille LeFevre

Sheila Livingston has been associated with the Guthrie Theater since its earliest days in the 1960s, when she join the Guthries's volunteer organization.

Photo courtesy of the Ivey Awards.

The Guthrie was a positive catalyst before, but Royce says the issue now is scale, even when it comes to operating costs in the new building. “Maintenance did double in the first year, but it was fairly circumspect in the second year—of course, that’s compared to the huge spike in year one. The impressive thing is that they have grown from an $18 million budget in the final year at Vineland to $26 million—a 44 percent increase—and they balanced this year. Somebody’s doing something right.”

Still, he adds, “the costs associated with that new building are a real challenge, and how they grow out of that will be something to watch. Either [the Guthrie] sucks everything in—and it will for a little bit—or we’ll get our bearings and the question will be whether it raises all boats with it.”

Hometown Fans

Whatever happens, Peter Rothstein is one artist who plans on sticking around. “I want the Twin Cities to be my home,” he says. “The commitment to my work has been so incredibly supportive and generous, and I want to be in a place where I contribute.” He recalls that before he and Tod Peterson wrote the wildly successful A Christmas Carole Peterson, which will run for its ninth year this December, the two wrote a little play called Oh Shit, I’m Turning into my Mother.

“We brought that show to a cabaret room in New York City, and opening night we were all jazzed,” he says. “We did the show, then we suddenly thought, ‘Why are these 80 people in New York more important than 80 people in Minneapolis or St. Paul?’ There’s all this hype about being in New York, and while that wasn’t a letdown, it was illuminating. There’s something great about creating work for the community in which you live.

“In the Twin Cities, theater is created for itself, in and of itself. It has its own legitimacy,” Rothstein continues. “Not every show is a sellout, but that’s also true in New York. You can’t stop creating work because you think your market is oversaturated. If artists waited for an audience, there wouldn’t be any art, historically.”

If the history of the Twin Cities theater community is any indication, he adds, people will continue making theater despite any future challenges. In other words, “Build it and they will come.”