By Mark Woolsey
Marietta’s Theatre in the Square is turning ten years old this year-and it’s marking the occasion with an ambitious fund drive designed to ensure the organization’s financial and artistic viability well into the future.
The backstory: The original Theatre on the Square went out of business during the 2008 recession. Years later, a short-lived push for a revival foundered. Then, the new owner, Raul Thomas, bought the building and, in effect, gifted it to his son, Emil, a theater student at Ball State University in Indiana.
The pair renamed the spot at 11 Whitlock Avenue Marietta’s New Theatre in the Square, eventually dropping the “new.” Emil Thomas is artistic director, picking the season, directing shows and the like and handling day-to-day matters while his father tackles the financial side.
Yes, money has been an issue at times, prompting the Thomases to consider shuttering the doors at one point.
“The finances have been a seesaw,” the senior Thomas says. “Just before COVID we were doing amazing and everything was great. Then COVID hit, and we ended up having to close down for 18 months.” Audiences were slow to come back, and attendance has fluctuated.
“Right now we’re doing okay,” says Raul Thomas. (but)” The old cliché is that you’re only two bad shows away from going bankrupt.”
Their fundraising effort, dubbed The Legacy Campaign, is designed to provide the MTITS with some financial breathing room while also earmarking money for improvements in the theater’s programming and educational mission.
The theatre hopes to raise $250,000 by the end of the year, and Raul Thomas says that some $25,000 had come in by press time. The fundraising effort will tie into a series of events, including a first-ever Gala on November 1, he says.
Emil Thomas says the campaign’s purpose is “to provide a head start that was never given. When my father and I started the theater, we started with the savings that he had. It was not an investment. There was not a large check that came attached to it.”
He indicated the drive is designed to create their version of a college endowment, ensuring viability beyond the financial results of one season, or even two poorly performing shows.
Another goal of the campaign is to expand the theatre’s already-considerable educational programs, presenting an array of summer camps, internships and workshops for kids 12 and above and well into adulthood.
Instead of a focus on acting classes, Marietta’s Theatre in the Square lands squarely on the technical side, providing classes and a practicum approach to such areas as set design, learning how to light a show and do sound, handling props, functioning as a director or assistant director, and other disciplines.
While many acting workshops are offered across Georgia, says Emil Thomas, very few technical programs are.
“We really open up the back side of the theater, the side that nobody looks at, the non-pretty side,” is how he puts it.
All of which will enable MTITS to continue as a respected part of Marietta’s cultural landscape, presenting a variety of shows and a multicultural, at times edgy approach. One of the offerings in the current season, following the success of their first show, “The Bodyguard,” is “Partners,” a play that Emil Thomas developed five years ago and streamed during the pandemic.
“It’s about a couple that ends up in a condo they once shared on the evening of a mass shooting. Two ex-lovers in a situation they can’t get out of,” alternately talking about reconciling their past and trying to stay below the shooter’s radar, the younger Thomas explains.
The theatre has shown resilience in its first decade, the pair says. One sign of that: surviving the pandemic by spending conservatively and collaring a federal grant. Another: establishing a nonprofit about 18 months ago that allowed them to tap additional funding sources.
Ready agreement comes from Brittney Gray, the Executive Director of Visit Marietta, who points out that MTITS has embedded itself in the city’s cultural landscape.
“By offering diverse programming and fostering partnerships with other arts organizations like the Marietta Theater company (which has a residency at Theatre in the Square) Theater in the Square has enhanced the vibrancy of the square,” she said. ” We’re proud to have them in the spotlight.”
To donate to Marietta’s Theatre in the Square, follow this link to their PayPal donation page.