Tomorrow's stars are on stage today

27 April 2001

It's a bittersweet moment for the Boston Children's Theater.

Tomorrow night BCT celebrates its 50th anniversary, making it what is believed to be the oldest children's theater in the country. Yet the theater company, with no permanent home and beset by rising costs, exists on the margin, struggling with limited resources to bring theater into the lives of children.

BCT is best known in Boston for its three main stage productions, timed to coincide with the school year's winter, midwinter and spring vacations. Unlike other children's theater companies, which feature adult actors offering fare geared to a younger audience, all of the actors in a BCT play are children. The kids range in age from 8 to 18, yet consistently deliver shows that thrill, amuse and even bring tears to the eyes of their audiences.

This spring's production of "The Wizard of Oz," which ends its run this weekend, is typical. More than 70 kids tried out in January. Rehearsals for the 38-member cast began in mid-February. For six weeks, the cast rehearsed for two hours a night, four nights a week. The week preceding the play's April 7 opening, rehearsals were every night for four hours a night. The production is now finishing a 12- show run, including six performances during spring vacation - thereby wiping out any family's plans for a nice break in the Bahamas.

It's an exhausting schedule, for the kids certainly but also for their parents. I should know; my 10-year-old daughter is a member of the cast. But the effort reflects BCT Executive Director Pat Gleeson's insistence on perfection and professionalism. "Just because they're children," she says, "we do not expect less."

BCT has a region-wide reputation as a school for budding actors. Its cast members even come from out of state, seeking a level of training and skill unavailable in local school productions. Julie Taymor, the producer and director of the Broadway hit "The Lion King," is one famous BCT alumnus, but the organization counts hundreds who have gone on to careers in theater and the arts.

There's much more to it than that, however. Gleeson, who has been with BCT for 12 years, wants to bring theater into the lives of as many children as she can. The organization offers music, dance and acting classes throughout the school year, a summer camp, and a unique Stagemobile program where a troupe of teenage actors rehearse and perform plays and skits from a mobile theater in locations throughout Boston.

But most important to Gleeson are BCT's audiences. Tickets to the best seat at a main stage production are just $16 - about the cost of a movie and popcorn. In fact, though, average ticket prices are more like $5, because BCT aggressively discounts tickets so that no child is denied a theater-going opportunity. Last week, for instance, busloads of kids from Tent City, the Bridge in Roxbury and Dorchester's Sojourner House attended, seeing real, live theater for perhaps the first time in their lives.

Yet for all of the good it does, and despite its critical place in the area's cultural fabric, times are hard for BCT.

Like a wandering minstrel, BCT has been unable to find a home. For 45 years, it put on its performances at the Copley Theater in the Back Bay's New England building. But in 1995 the New England raised rents by close to 400 percent, effectively evicting the organization. BCT then went to Suffolk University's C. Walsh Theater, which last year also gave BCT notice, saying it needed the space for expanded student programs. For the moment, it's at Roxbury Community College's Media Arts Center.

Moreover, it's expensive to put on a play - even when the actors aren't being paid. BCT may be a nonprofit, but it still has to pay royalties and rent theater space. And the cost of staying in Boston has soared; rehearsal and office space costs have more than tripled in the last three years. It used to be that ticket sales covered about 80 percent of BCT's expenses. But as costs have risen, the gap has grown wider.

So where does the money come from?

City Hall commits only a tiny portion of its budget to cultural institutions (far less than other major cities around the country) and the amount of money going to BCT has fallen in recent years.

Foundations and other charities, another possible source of assistance, tend to ignore nitty-gritty organizations such as BCT in favor of those that are more high profile. Thus the Wang Center's Young at Arts program, with big names and reservoirs of institutional support, has little trouble attracting large donors. Meanwhile, groups such as BCT are left hanging.

A city's smaller artistic institutions, those that operate on the grassroots level, are arguably its most important: By reaching directly into people's lives, they create the artists of tomorrow. If the essence of a city is its culture, then Boston, through its neglect of organizations such as BCT, risks losing its soul.