From Managing Director Joe Gfaller
It is hard to believe that it was a year ago this week that the board of Metro Theater Company officially offered me the opportunity to serve this extraordinary company as its next Managing Director. I remember vividly getting ready to go to a friend’s wedding here in St. Louis when I received the news and then doing everything I could to contain my enthusiasm during the wedding reception so that I wouldn’t “spill the beans” before things were official. The confidence and support of this board and staff, the partnership of MTC’s kind and thoughtful Artistic Director Julia Flood, and the generosity of spirit across all of MTC’s community partners, funders, artists, and audiences have made it possible to face every challenge and every opportunity with the faith that with a combination of empathy, hard work, courage, and determination, together we can accomplish anything.
That faith is critical now more than ever, one year later. Together, we stare down the extraordinary uncertainty resulting from COVID-19. And together, we recognize through the unrest across our nation and through the voices within our own community that we must do more to dismantle the systems of racism that breed inequity not just in our streets and in our civic practice, but also in our very industry. These challenges may seem daunting because they are daunting. But they are challenges we can and will address together – and we will build both a stronger Metro Theater Company and a stronger St. Louis for having done so.
That isn’t blind faith. It’s faith grounded in the extraordinary accomplishments we’ve achieved over the last year. If you’re interested, please take a minute to reflect on some of that progress with me, and then I’ll share a little of what is currently inspiring me about MTC’s future.
Looking Back on Last Year
Community Impact
Serving our community is at the heart of everything MTC does. This, our programs grew in countless ways to ensure that impact was both meaningful and broad-reaching.
On stage and in the classroom, we reached nearly 20,000 young people in person this past season before COVID-19 cut our in-person programs short. Through ticket underwriting from many individual donors and foundations like Gateway Foundation, Boniface Foundation, and the Des Lee Collaborative Vision, over 5,000 of those young people were able to attend without cost.
While our core mission is to serve youth and families, it was deeply heartening to see how much our adult audience grew this past year as well. Across the public performances on our mainstage, we saw a 251% growth in paid adult ticket purchases this past season – a reminder that theater designed to inspire the best in our youth can inspire and delight audiences of any age.
We gratefully expanded our Say Something, Do Something violence prevention program this year in partnership with Diversity Awareness Partnership, providing it as one of the core curricular components of DAP’s excellent Give Respect, Get Respect program. In total, for the first time in a single year three unique SSDS scripts toured this season, addressing cyber bullying, physical violence, and gender identity.
While schools were open, there was rarely a day that our team of teaching artists weren’t each in one or more classrooms daily, providing arts integrated curricular instruction for children at every age. The most significant addition to our immerse school programs this year was a new partnership through which MTC teaching artists were present in every second grade class room in the University City School District for at least one hour per week throughout the fall to utilize the power of arts-based thinking to teach social studies.
Our production of Ghost helped spur conversations about equity, representation, and access both for public audiences and for schools. We hosted two panel events after public performances of the play: one looking at equity and access in sports and one looking at representation in children’s literature. Plus, thanks to support from Left Bank Books, Matthew Carter (the real life inspiration for the play’s title character) spoke at all seven middle schools in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, with students receiving free copies of the book.
Locally, our school touring production received more free public performances than ever before, thanks to partnerships with the Missouri History Museum, the Missouri Botanical Gardens, the St. Louis Public Library system, and Urban Chestnut’s Oktoberfest.
Nationally, the impact of our programs were highlighted at two major national conferences. In partnership with the St. Louis University College of Public Health and Social Justice, MTC’s Education Director Karen Bain and SLU researcher Keon Gilbert presented findings the ways Say Something, Do Something changed attitudes and behaviors around violence at the American Public Health Association annual conference. During the virtual TYA-USA conference, MTC’s recent productions of both The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus and And in this Corner: Cassius Clay were selected to be shown, allowing over 1,000 industry leaders from across the globe to experience our work first-hand.
Adapting to COVID-19
The dramatic changes to how we live in order to protect one another from COVID-19 did not change our commitment to our community. Instead, they prompted us to find new programs to better serve parents and families during this moment – and to find new ways to deliver them to you.
Shifting to stay at home orders in March, MTC developed an eight-week video series called Learning Through Play in the Arts to provide curricular support to parents, children, and teachers during in-home learning. The series generated over 30,000 digital viewers across multiple social media platforms and continues to be watched from audiences in (to date) 43 states and 5 other countries.
MTC launched the COVID-19 Memory Project in order to provide young people and their families a voice during the pandemic. Stories have been shared with MTC from as far away as upstate New York and Texas. A dramatic reading of excerpts from these stories was shared during the Arts United STL fundraiser for the Regional Arts Commission, and the excerpts are being developed into a short Zoom play for later this summer, with the development of a new play for young audiences performed by professional actors to follow.
The new Intergenerational Storytelling Project is helping young people connect with seniors who have had to self-isolate for health reasons, building connections across the generations and helping young people find new stories to share. We are grateful for The Opportunity Trust for their support in making this program possible.
All of our summer camps have been adapted into a digital setting, allowing young people from Pre-K to high school to still connect with like-minded friends across the region while building skills and exploring their own creativity. Middle school camps began this week!
The two productions that were highlighted as part of the TYA-USA conference, The Girl Who Swallowed a Cactus and And in this Corner: Cassius Clay are receiving 4-week digital streaming runs online this summer. (Cactus continues until June 28 and Cassius begins June 23.) The digital broadcasts have been designed to be ‘pay-what-you-can’ pay-per-view to ensure that no one’s current economic situation should prevent them from experiencing theater.
Community Support
Prior to COVID-19, we experienced meaningful growth in community support – and as our operations evolved to respond to COVID-19, we were humbled to see our community continue to stand with MTC as we faced this global health and economic crisis.
The generosity of the Berges Family Foundation $25,000 matching challenge was met during the run of It’s a Wonderful Life thanks to the extraordinary support of over 200 new, increased, and re-instated donors. Every gift from those donors was matched dollar-for-dollar by the Berges Challenge.
Audience enthusiasm for It’s a Wonderful Life was so extraordinary that box office sales for the production’s public performances came within $1,000 of total box office sales for all public performances from the 2018-19 Season combined.
Leadership at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch graciously re-evaluated their previous operating principles that theater for youth and families would not be reviewed, leading to a glowing review that called it “heartwarming,” “smart,” and “sensitive” – alongside similar rave reviews from Ladue News, St. Louis American, KDHX, “Two on the Aisle,” and others.
A remarkable group of almost 30 community leaders came together to serve as the host committee for After Dark, MTC’s first true gala of scale since former Artistic Director Carol North’s retirement. While the gala has had to be postpone until the spring, we are honored that four of our region’s anchor corporate citizens – Emerson, Centene, Bayer, and Edward Jones – have made commitments to sponsor the event.
In lieu of our gala (which would have been May 7), we hosted a one-hour virtual telethon as part of Give STL Day. The telethon featured many artists from our most recent season and helped MTC generate the largest number of unique Give STL Day donors of any theater in St. Louis during the day, with the majority of gifts received $25 or less and half of all gifts new donors to MTC.
If that sounds like a lot, we did a few other things during this past year as well, which may seem mundane but which meaningfully have improved how we can operate. Our website got its first major upgrade in 10 years, and is now (we hope!) more user-friendly and mobile optimized. Our chart of accounts got an overhaul to help streamline our internal processes around bookkeeping and increase the transparency of our financial communications. We’ve hired a number of amazing new staff members to complement the amazing people who were already part of the MTC team when I arrived. And, in partnership with our remarkable board and emeritus board, we have been working since October on a new strategic plan… which takes me to the future.
Looking Ahead to the Future
None of what we’ve accomplished this year would be possible without deeply committed community support or our remarkable staff, board, and emeritus board. Without the strength of the first half of our year, addressing this deeply challenging moment would be much harder. COVID-19 has resulted in more revenue lost than revenue gained or expenses saved – and we are working hard during the last few weeks of June to raise an additional $32,000 to end our fiscal year in a healthy financial position.
But despite these present challenges, I can say with a clear conscience that, yes, the future at Metro Theater Company looks bright – and not just next month or next year.
The Next Year
The 2020-21 Season (our 48th!) may look different than some past seasons, but all the creative ways we have adapted to meet this moment will help ensure it will still be filled with memorable moments that will inspire audiences of every age.
Live performances will go on, and in partnership with the Kranzberg Arts Foundation (who owns the Grandel Theater), we will ensure that through social distancing, frequent disinfection, revised front of house policies, and regular health tests for our artists and other members of the MTC team, we will create an environment that is as safe as humanly possible for all of our audiences. We cannot build community through the arts if we cannot first ensure the health and safety of the artists or the audiences in our theater. Your health and safety is our first priority.
We are working to secure digital streaming rights for all productions in our upcoming season. This will ensure that anyone who is unable to attend a performance live (either due to health concerns or a performance with limited capacity selling out too quickly) can still experience it virtually. Similar to our summer streaming, we anticipate these will be offered in a ‘pay-what-you-can’ environment to provide as much economic access as possible.
Reflecting the lived experiences of young people in our community has always been central to our programming. For our community, equitable representation on our stages has always been part and parcel with that commitment. As we strive to be a better partner to build dialogue about and against racism, that commitment in casting and in programming is only a start. That said, the season that Julia Flood envisioned for next year continues to reflect MTC’s commitment, with two productions that center black voices (Last Stop on Market Street and our touring production of Jacked!) and two productions whose casting is intended to reflect the diversity of our region.
We are adding a new venue to our season! While we will be at the Grandel Theater for Digging Up Dessa and Last Stop on Market Street, our spring production of The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show will be among the first productions at the new Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. Being in a brand-new facility will certainly add to the excitement of being the first company in the US to produce a fully bi-lingual English/Spanish production of The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show.
Beyond
Over the last nine months, our entire team has been working to build a strategic plan for Metro Theater Company that will carry us through to our 50th anniversary season (the 2022-23 Season) and beyond. Early in our new fiscal year, we’ll be sharing some exciting announcements coming out from that plan. You can imagine that there will be some very creative and memorable ways in which we will all celebrate that 50th anniversary milestone together. (Other than the Muny and the Repertory Theater of Saint Louis, there isn’t another professional theater in St. Louis older than MTC!)
As we looked at MTC’s extraordinary legacy, we have asked ourselves where MTC can go next. How can we build on where we’ve been to ensure that we are daily living up to our commitment to our community? How can the next five years take MTC to the next level? I wish I could answer all of these questions here, but I can promise that one central theme of the plan will have the potential to be transformational for MTC and for the young people our region.
I hope you’ll “stay tuned” until then. We hope to announce some of these new projects as part of our September 24 event After Dark. So, consider joining us that day to be the first in the know!
In Conclusion
I have been told that I am not exactly ‘a man of few words.’ This blog post is only further evidence that that is true. For those who have journeyed with me to the end of this essay, as I’ve reflected on where we’ve been in this past year and where we are going thanks to your generous support… thank you.
We have work to do before this month is over to ensure that MTC’s financial position is as healthy as it can be before we embark on a new season. As time goes on, some of the uncertainty that has characterized these last few months will wane and we will find ways to safely come together again to celebrate the power of theater to inspire and delight and to honor the intelligence of the young people in our community who experience it with us. I look forward to that day.
I am so grateful for what I hope will be the first of many years partnering with each of you to ensure MTC continues to grow and thrive, whatever challenges may come our way.
Thank you for being part of the MTC community.
