On Monday, it was announced in New York that the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre, one of the longest-lived and best-loved non-profit institutions in the Twin Cities, had won the Tony Award for excellence in regional theater. In the long history of the regional theater Tony, the award had not gone to a theater aimed entirely at kids.
But on a recent spring evening in downtown Minneapolis, hundreds of quiet children were intently focused not on Tonys or showbiz awards, but on the experience of orphaned Jewish kids struggling to survive in the Warsaw ghetto.
Children of all ages were watching a visually impressive production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Korczak’s Children,” directed by Eric Simonson. Based on historical truth, the story was severe and sad, involving death, poverty and betrayal, but the audience seemed especially interested in the character of Janusz Korczak, the director of the orphanage and a great children’s advocate. In the play, a world premiere, Korczak declares all children deserve a bill of rights.
Those suggested rights — to love, to respect, to fail, to be taken seriously, to protest an injustice –were duly printed in the program for modern kids to savor. At intermission, scores of pint-size Minnesotans were reading and talking about them with their parents.
It was a remarkable scene. And it raises a question: Why doesn’t Chicago — an even bigger theater city — have such a theater?
The Minneapolis Children’s Theatre works with a bevy of leading national theatrical writers, designers and directors — from this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, Nilo Cruz, to the distinguished Broadway choreographer Graciella Danielle. It commissions a slew of challenging new works, has an annual budget in the order of $9 million, a staff of more than 100, some 23,000 subscribers, and it recently spawned “Frog and Toad,” one of the musicals currently running on Broadway and directed by the Goodman Theatre’s David Petrarca.
For the people at the Children’s Theatre, the hoopla of this week was sweet vindication for the entire profession of theater for young people — an art that, they say, rarely gets the respect it deserves — as well as for their institution in particular.
“Central to the mission of this theater,” said its boyish and unassuming artistic director, Peter C. Brosius, as he sat in his prop-laden office recently, “is the belief in the power of young people — not as future subscribers or donors, but as an arts audience of today.”
There’s no question that the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre has secured an important place in the cultural fabric of the Twin Cities. And there is plenty of evidence that it builds audiences for the arts all over town.
“They have developed several generations of young people who started out going there,” said James Morrison, communications director for the Guthrie Theatre, the largest theater in Minneapolis. “We are very happy to take them over as they get a little older.”
Thriving with theaters
The Guthrie is by no means the only beneficiary of a theater-loving population. The Twin Cities are home to a vibrant theater community with numerous professional companies (there are approximately 80 non-profit theaters), including prominent resident groups such as Theatre de la Juene Lune, and big downtown venues such as the State and Orpheum Theatres in Minneapolis and the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul. Community leaders claim that the Twin Cities are second only to New York in the number of live theater seats per capita.
This long has been viewed as a family-centered arts community — Disney’s “The Lion King” started out here (producer Thomas Schumacher described Minneapolis as “a wonderful experience”), trying out the show prior to its appearance on Broadway.
This season, the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre became a Broadway incubator itself. Petrarca’s production of “Frog and Toad” was a major hit in Minneapolis last year, moving first to New York’s New Victory Theatre and then to Broadway, where it has become one of the very few Broadway shows ever to be aimed specifically at children.
“The show on Broadway,” Petrarca said, in a telephone interview, “is pretty much the same thing that we did there in Minneapolis. They have a remarkable group of artisans there.”
There’s nothing especially unusual, of course, in a theater aimed specifically at children. Indeed, Chicago has several such groups — from Alphabet Soup to Emerald City Productions. Universities (including DePaul University’s long-established Playworks series) and park districts run children’s theaters in Chicago. But there is no Chicago children’s theater attracting national figures or these kinds of subscriber numbers, because the existing troupes don’t have that level of resources or institutional capability. In general, they lack the big downtown buildings or the major city subsidies, relying instead on school bookings that fluctuate from year to year.
“I’ve often wondered why there’s no free-standing children’s theater in Chicago,” says Paige Coffman, the executive producer of the Chicago Kids Company, which has been producing in expensive rented spaces around the city for more than a decade. “There really should be one. The city really should support that.”
So why isn’t there such a place in Chicago?
It’s partly because no Chicagoan ever has really tried to build a company on the Minneapolis level.
“You cannot just create a place like the Children’s Theatre overnight,” Broisus says, noting that he gets approached all the time by bureaucrats and arts administrators in other American cities, all looking to create a comparable institution in their own communities.
“I always tell people that all theaters have to begin with the vision of a group of artists,” Brosius says. “That’s what happened here.”
In other words, the size of the Children’s Theatre has grown incrementally over 30 years to its current $9 million (a budget that is three times that of Hyde Park’s Court Theatre), just as Chicago troupes such as Chicago Shakespeare and the Steppenwolf have seen a similar development in their overall budgets. It just so happens that while Chicago was focusing on the edgy likes of David Mamet or John Malkovich, in Minneapolis the attention of the artists was put on children. And it clearly has paid dividends.
The Children’s Theatre began as The Moppet Players, a troupe producing creative dramatics for children. In 1965, it moved into its current inner-city home at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and incorporated under its current name. And as early as 1972, the theater was snagging major grants from the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation, and its budget was beginning to grow.
A national scandal roiled the theater in the mid-1980s, when the theater’s founder and (then) artistic director, John Clark Donahue, pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual misconduct involving teenage boys.
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“That was a devastating occurrence that almost closed down the theater,” says Dominic Papatola, the theater critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press (and another local kid who got hooked on the arts at the Children’s Theatre). “There’s no doubt that the theater became more cautious and less willing to take artistic risks. They really had to rebuild the trust of their audiences.” Brosius arrived in 1997 from the Honolulu Theatre for Youth. Managing director Teresa Eyring showed up in 1999. And under the new leadership, the emphasis of the theater shifted away from safe, picture-book adaptations to provocative new works from leading playwrights. Since the players now were different, the scandal began to recede, even though a couple of older audience members said recently that they had not forgotten.
Eyring and Brosius say the rough events of the 1980s only made the theater stronger.
“It was testament,” Eyring says, “to the strength of the community and the institution that they were able to keep the theater alive and go forward.”
“People decided,” Brosius says, “that the theater could not be allowed to die.”
Chicago is by no means alone in lacking a top-tier children’s theater. There are major kids’ companies in Seattle and Honolulu — and the New Victory Theatre has raised the profile of children’s theater in New York. But if you are talking multimillion budgets, that’s about the full list of important companies.
“You can almost count on your fingers of one hand,” says Don Carathers, the Cincinnati-based editor of Dramatics, the leading national theater magazine for young people, “the number of major children’s theaters across the country. Most of them just don’t have that level of resources. It’s not where American society has chosen to put its money.”
Except in Minneapolis.
The Chicago Kid’s Company, for example, is one of the biggest children’s theater operations in Chicago, yet it has a budget of approximately $350,000, as compared with the $9 million in Minneapolis.
In Chicago — as in many other cities — some adult theaters have included children’s programming in their mission. Taking advantage of its Navy Pier location, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater produces “Short Shakespeare” (abbreviated classics) and musicals for young people, and it also tries to get families to attend its mainstage productions. The suburban musical houses — such as the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire and the Drury Lane Theatre in Evergreen Park — do children’s shows during daytime, and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company has an arts exchange program.
A smattering of support
At the Chicago Shakespeare, they say families are “very important” to the theater’s mission — and the Marriott Lincolnshire points to the huge number of children bused to the theater. While they were active in the field during the 1920s and 1930s, the Goodman, Chicago’s flagship troupe, currently uses a partner, Child’s Play, for its family programming. It does not produce children’s shows independently.
But you can argue that housing children’s operations in adult theaters always has its drawbacks — notably that the children’s theater rarely gets the same attention. As a rule, children’s shows are the province of younger artists and non-traditional performance times. Artistic directors and other marquee names — as well as the leading actors — tend to work for the adults, where the lion’s share of resources is gobbled.
At the Steppenwolf, for example, the arts exchange shows usually operate on the adult show’s set. Ensemble members rarely appear. And while the work is often impressive, that level of resources is unlikely ever to attract national names. If kid’s theater is the whole name of the game, it’s different.
“The resources at the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre are extraordinary,” the Goodman’s Petrarca says. “They have the ability to take what would be a major production at the Goodman and turn it into a show for kids. And so they get the best possible artists doing their best work for children.”
“By doing only children’s theater, our mission is not bifurcated,” Brosius says. “We have a board dedicated to a singular mission. And so children’s theater is not second tier. We don’t have a situation where the education director is constantly trying to get the attention of the artistic director.”
The Children’s Theatre attracts national writers such as Hatcher or Kia Corthron by paying them the kind of money they would get from an adult troupe, letting them write on commission, surrounding them with top-drawer resources, and ensuring that they do not have to dumb down their work. Invariably, the artists are seduced by their impact on an audience that lacks the cynicism often found in adult auditoriums. And as a result, they end up raving about writing for children.
“They are a very demanding audience,” Hatcher says of the kids watching “Korczak’s Children,” even though he says he wrote the work very much like an adult piece. “But children are also incredibly rewarding. It was a wonderful experience.”
“We believe in exposing our audiences to a wide variety of issues and stories,” says Eyring. “Children are far more intellectually advanced than they are usually given credit for.”
The Children’s Theatre also has come up with some innovative ideas over the years.
Its subscription season is divided into two groups — one aimed at young children and one at older. But most families, Brosius says, buy both packages. With an average price of $18, ticket prices are far lower than the big Chicago non-profits or Broadway shows such as “The Lion King.” The aisles in the 746-seat theater were built wide, making it easy to leave with a fussy child. And there’s a glassed-in “quiet room” at the rear of the house, where audience members with difficult charges can watch the show without worrying about disturbing the rest of the audience.
This kind of attention to families has been appreciated. “This place has been here since I was a child,” says subscriber Mary Summer of New Hope, Minn., during the intermission of a recent performance. “There’s such a variety.”
In general, the theater avoids the cliches of the genre. It stays away from the kind of branding or spinoff products (such as “Scooby Doo” or “Blues Clues Live!”) that make up the bulk of touring children’s theater, even though it gets numerous such offers. And it tries hard not to do work that can be perceived as cute or cloying or patronizing.
“We spend a lot of time in play development,” Brosius says. “We like new work for children.”
Adult arts groups often resent the willingness of corporate and foundation funders to emphasize family programming. Still, Brosuis says, a high level of subsidy seems to him to be both reasonable and necessary for such a place.
“We can’t shake down our audience,” he notes. “What would we get? Their lunch money?”
This week, the Children’s Theatre has been hoping the publicity from the Tony Award will shake lose capitol campaign funds locked up in the cash-strapped Minnesota state legislature. If the money is released (as is widely expected in the coming days), ground will be broken this fall on a major renovation to the theater’s building.
And the Children’s Theatre will be all set for another generation or two.
“Our audience isn’t watching their 18th production of `Long Day’s Journey,'” Brosius says. “They are always connecting with something elemental. You can see it on their faces.”