When two Baltimore-area theater troupes recently announced next season's lineup, beneath the dry specifics of cast size and copyrights, audience size and budget constraints, two different pictures began to emerge.
One company — the Single Carrot Theatre — is leaping forward, while the other — Howard County's Rep Stage — appears to be treading water. For the second year in a row, Rep Stage is shortening its season and doing fewer productions.
In a way, any head-to-head comparison is impossible. The Carrots are a group of people in their 20s who are brimming with energy and new ideas, but the ensemble is most accurately described as a semiprofessional troupe. The performers often work largely for free, build their own sets and provide their own costumes.
In contrast, Rep Stage, the theater in residence at Howard Community College, produces work that frequently competes with the top troupes in the Baltimore- Washington area. In its 18-year existence, Rep Stage has picked up seven Helen Hayes Awards, Washington's equivalent of the Tonys. It is a professional company, with commensurate obligations to pay union wages and pension benefits.
Nonetheless, as each theater group announces its offerings for the 2010-2011 season, it's a good time to take a snapshot of how each is faring.
The Carrots are about to begin their fourth season with a lot of exclamation points.
They're growing in size. Their budget is almost doubling in one year, to $215,000, and the troupe boasts 300 subscribers. In addition to Elliott Rauh, the full-time executive director, the company is adding two part-time staff positions to pursue fundraising and to coordinate education initiatives.
Though the number of annual productions is being reduced from five plays this season to four next, the run for each show will be extended by one week and seating will be rearranged to allow about one-third more chairs. With the changes, the potential audience for each production will increase from 600 to about 1,000.
"We were filling more than 90 percent of our seats for every show, and many performances were sold out," Rauh says. "We hated to turn people away."
The Carrots also are growing in professionalism. For the first time, next year's program will list an Actors Equity, or professional, actor. He will fill the lead role in Gao Xingjian's "The Other Shore."
In addition, the troupe has come up with an innovative method to further cement its bond with an unusually loyal core audience. Next season's ticketholders will be offered a chance to buy "memberships" in the company.
For $125, a theatergoer will receive admission to all four shows, free passes to the company's two annual parties and gala, invitations to open rehearsals and readings of new scripts, and discounts at area businesses.
"We want to change the relationship of our customers from being an audience to being fans," Rauh says. "The membership model sells community. We're selling a chance to become part of the Single Carrot family."
If the Carrots have weathered the economic downturn better than most arts groups, it's partly because the company's expenses are so low.
The situation is very different at Howard Community College, where Rep Stage has been in residence since 1993, and where any production involves contracts for performers, designers and crew members.
In the past two years, the theater's budget has shrunk by about 30 percent, to about $350,000 for the 2010-2011 season.
As a result, Rep Stage is cutting back the number of comedies and dramas it will produce. In the 2008-2009 season, the company mounted six productions as part of the subscriber package. This season, there were five plays; next season, there will be four.
Michael Stebbins, the troupe's producing artistic director, says the cuts are temporary.
"This will allow us to continue staging tip-top productions and to operate in the black until the economy improves," he says. "We could have gone ahead and staged five shows next year. But we're not overly confident of our bank account right now, and we felt that it was more fiscally responsible to play it safe."
When Valerie Lash founded Rep Stage in 1993, it seemed to have all the hallmarks of success. Howard County has an educated and affluent population that thrives on cultural offerings. The Columbia location, midway between Baltimore and Washington, filled an artistic gap.
Though Rep Stage productions have won critical plaudits and routinely featured some of the area's best actors, including Everyman Theatre favorites Megan Anderson and Bruce Nelson, the company has never developed the zealous following that the Carrots picked up after just three seasons.
After 18 years, the company has about 1,000 subscribers, though ticket prices are relatively low. The most expensive ticket to a Rep Stage production costs $30, compared to $40 for Everyman and $65 at Center Stage.
"Our challenge is to keep our prices affordable while not cutting corners in any way on what audiences will see," Stebbins says.
Though the company's on-campus location has many benefits in terms of providing a ready pool of student labor for such behind-the-scenes functions as helping to sew costumes and wire footlights, the setting, off Little Patuxent Parkway, is inescapably isolating.
When audience members leave the theater, exhilarated by the magic they've just seen on stage, they can't cross the street and grab a slice of pizza or a martini. There are no strains of live music coming from nearby venues to tempt them in. If they want to continue the celebration, they have to get into their cars and go somewhere else.
And some theatergoers mistake Rep Stage for a student troupe, Stebbins says.
"Since I arrived in 2005," he says, "one of the things we've been trying to do is figure out how to brand the theater as being in residence at the college, but separate from it, like Trinity Repertory Company at Brown University, or the Yale Repertory Theatre."
Still, he has faith that in the long run, maintaining the high quality of Rep Stage productions is the best way to ensure his company's future.
"We've just put on one of the most positively received seasons we've had in a long time," he says.
"When you think that just two years ago, we had to send out a letter saying that we were cancelling a production because we were out of money, we've made great strides. We had 500 new patrons this year. When we get people into the theater, they like what they see."
If you go
The final production of the 2009-2010 season, "Tragedy: a tragedy" by Will Eno, runs through July 11 at 120 W. North Ave. $10-$20. Call 443-844-9253 or go to singlecarrot.com.
The Rep Stage
The final production of the year, "The Goat: or Who is Sylvia?" by Edward Albee, wraps up at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. today at 10901 Little Patuxent Pkwy., Columbia. $12-$24. Call 410-772-4900 or go to repstage.org.
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Because of incorrect information provided to The Sun, an earlier version of this article gave the wrong amount for Single Carrot's budget.