News From The New BareStage Theatre
Announcement: BACKSTAGE @ BARESTAGE
Greetings! Goodbye, Farewell and Amen …
BARESTAGE THEATRE CLOSES STAGE DOORS
County’s Only Community Theatre Calls It Quits. After nearly seven years of entertaining Tehama County, Red Bluff’s only community theatre has taken its last curtain call in its own venue.
Theatre staff cited the continued tough economic times as the chief reason for the closure.
“Our overhead was surprisingly low, but times have just been too hard for too long,” said BareStage Board President Sharon Pressburg. “Nonprofits have a difficult time to begin with — even when the economy is soaring — but when times get lean, entertainment and the arts are the first to be hit and the last to recover.”
BareStage started in 2002 in what was then the Bear Flag Roasting Company Coffee Shop on Walnut Street. After sustained success, the theatre moved to its Antelope Boulevard location in 2004. By closing time, BareStage had produced nearly 50 full-length stage plays, and provided numerous projects and workshops for children and adults, regularly hosted comedians and musicians, introduced Red Bluff to Mystery Dinners and Dessert Cabarets and launched several internationally-known annual New Plays Festivals, which produced more than 200 original short scripts from around the world.
“We went pretty much around the clock for more than six years, sometimes with up to three different productions a month, and that eventually takes a toll on volunteers’ time and energy,” Pressburg said. “No one has ever been paid for the work we have do, including Bryon (Burruss), our Artistic Director. In fact, many of us have invested a lot of our own finances, as well as our time, to keep the doors open. But there comes a point when you’re just physically, emotionally and financially spent.”
Artistic Director Burruss said it was a testament to the board’s and staff’s and volunteers’ resolve that the theatre was able to hang on even while older, more- established and traditional business all around it were closing.
“We’ve watched many of our favorites local businesses close their doors this year alone,” Burruss said. “We took for granted that all of them would be around forever, and now they’re gone. I just hope that these closures help folks realize that, in tough times, we really have to support local businesses before it’s too late.”
Board member Any Dena said the theatre could not have kept its doors open as long as it did without Burruss’ creativity and tenaciousness.
“Whenever times got rough — and it happened about once a month,” Dena joked, “Bryon always obtained some sponsorship or mounted some production that kept things going. No one else I know of could have kept things going so long.”
Pressburg agreed: “This was Bryon’s dream from the start and if it weren’t for him, Red Bluff would have never had a community theatre of its own. This was more than a full-time job for him — he easily put in 80 or more hours every week, without pay, just to create and maintain something he felt was crucial to the community, and I think we think we all should be happy for the difference it made in so many people’s lives for more than six years.”
Burruss said it is more important to recognize all the volunteers over the years who gave their time and energy just to keep a good thing afloat.
“There have been so many talented individuals who have come and gone over the years,” Burruss said, “Each of whom contributed their talent for only the applause of the crowd. They are the ones who really made a difference.”
“We want to sincerely thank everyone who contributed anything to the theatre over the years — and there are many, many people who pitched in,” said Pressburg. “Without them, it all would have been nothing.”
Pressburg said the theatre plans to continue to perform locally a time or two a year — when the right projects come along — but the days of year-round schedules are long past.
“We hope everyone will remember the good things they experienced over the past six years, and the challenges we offered, and risks we took,” said Pressburg. “And we can only hope that they will come and support us when we mount productions in the future.”
The BareStage Theatre will maintain its website at www.barestage.com, where future schedules will be posted. It also keeps up an e-maili newsletter which can be subscribed to at the site. The theatre can be reached by email at barestage@mac.com.
