One of metro Atlanta’s longest-running community theaters said it may not be able to offer a 2024 season due to changes at the Cobb County-owned facility where it stages performances.
Jonathan Liles, managing director of CenterStage North, told East Cobb News that Cobb PARKS (Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs) officials informed him last month that the theater organization won’t be able to have Sunday shows at The Art Place-Mountain View in East Cobb starting next year “due to staffing.”
He said The Art Place will no longer furnish an employee for Sunday activities, including rehearsals and stage set-up, even though CenterStage North pays for an employee to assist with lighting and other technical issues on its show days.
This year, The Art Place discontinued Sunday piano recital activities.
CenterStage North shows take place on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons, typically over a two-week period in The Art Place’s theater that seats between 125-210 people.
Ticket sales fund operational costs for CenterStage North, including rental fees at The Art Place. The board members and actors are all volunteers, as are those who assist with the performances.
“CSN is on a mission to save the arts in Cobb County,” Liles said in a message responding to a request for from East Cobb News for comment. “Without Sundays, we are unable to support this mission.”
But Liles said the main concern isn’t operational but financial.
“Without the Sunday revenue, I cannot afford to stay open,” he said.
“The majority of our revenue comes from subscription sales to shows and donations, and we are one of the few arts organizations that stays solvent using this model.”
In addition to Sunday being the best day for volunteer availability, Liles said the Sunday matinees are “the only time some patrons can see a performance. . . . It generates critical revenue that funds operating costs covering the next production.”
Liles said he is meeting with county officials next week to discuss the matter, and he said he’s proposing “creative scheduling with the existing staff” to come up with a solution.
East Cobb News contacted the county for more information.
Spokesman Ross Cavitt said that Cobb PARKS “is dealing with the fact that the Art Place is not staffed for a seven-day-a-week operation with only two full-time and two part-time staffers. The Art Place is the only art center open on Sundays for rentals.”
He said with the center’s hours—10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday—”it has been challenging to keep them staffed,” and that the average Sunday patron turnout is around 30.
The rest of CenterStage North’s 2023 schedule—including a political comedy, “The Outsider,” and its annual Christmas holiday show—will go on.
But this is the time of year that the theater finalizes its schedule for the next year. Liles said that hasn’t been happening, and subscribers have been asking.
“When our patrons ask us why we have not announced our next season, we had to inform them what was happening and that we are unsure that we will be able to have performances next year,” he said.
He said that CenterStage North has no other place to go if it can’t work something out to remain at The Art Place.
“We would have to go on hiatus” in 2024 at the very least, he added.
CenterStage North is an all-volunteer non-profit that has staged community theater performances in Cobb County since the 1970s, initially in the Smyrna area.
The theater group’s current name was adopted in the 1980s and it staged shows at The Steeple House Arts Center, which was located on Johnson Ferry Road at Paper Mill Road.
CenterStage North later began leasing space at The Art Place, located on Sandy Plains Road near the Mountain View Regional Library and the Tim D. Lee Senior Center, and began staging full seasons, with quarterly performances, plus special shows for the Christmas holidays.
CenterStage North was set to expand its season subscription to five shows in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic was declared and performances stopped in 2020, and returned in limited fashion in 2021.
Liles said support for the arts has been decreasing since then, and that only CenterStage North and a few children’s theaters serve the East Cobb area.
He noted that in Cobb County “ball fields are open on Sundays. Why not the performing arts facilities? There are organizations clamoring to rent on Sundays if the facility is open.”
Related:
- Marietta Art in the Park returns for Labor Day weekend
- Johnson Ferry Conservatory for the Arts closes
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Can’t believe this is happening again! Another theatre is closing! First it was the Atlanta Lyrics. Then Georgia Ensemble must move out of the Roswell Cultural Art Center. They at least made arrangements with the Jenny Anderson Theatre (a Cobb PARKS organization ?) to continue doing business and bringing in REVENUE on Sundays. So let’s strap on our “thinking caps” fellows. Ask a senior citizen from the Tim Lee Center to sit in the CSN lobby on Sundays! Ok, maybe ask a volunteer FIREFIGHTER next door to sit on any given Sunday during production. How do we spell “volunteerism” if Cobb PARKS can’t (won’t) pay somebody to sit in on Sundays. There lays the question…
Or, maybe YOU could volunteer on Sundays @Benay.