Fourteen years after setting up shop in Sandy Springs and a short-term Georgia Ensemble Theatre residency, Act3 Playhouse is launching a collaborative arts venue at the theater with 360 Arts Blvd.
The new model brings together multiple production companies and a youth conservatory. It allows multiple theater companies, performing arts organizations, and individual artists to offer a variety of entertainment options, while each bears only a fraction of the annual operating costs.
The intimate, 100-seat Act3 Playhouse is across the street from City Springs, in the heart of the city at the Sandy Springs Plaza Shopping Center, 6285 Roswell Road. Ample free parking is available, and patrons can enter through the breezeway next to Five Guys.
Because no single organization bears the full operating cost, they can draw larger audiences and build a fuller calendar than any one of them could alone, according to the late September announcement.
Transitioning local theater
Cheri Morris, board member of Act3 Productions, said Art Sandy Springs helped bring the Act3 Playhouse to the city more than 14 years ago. They set up shop in a space behind Trader Joe’s in the Sandy Springs Plaza shopping center.
“It was essentially a group of moms who wanted great theater opportunities for their talented kids, and it worked out wonderfully,” Morris said. “This small theater won more local theater awards than any company during its tenure. It also sent several young people to Broadway and the New York theater scene.”
After 14 years of theater camps and plays, Act3 Productions brought in the Georgia Ensemble Theatre as a resident company. The Georgia Ensemble Theatre shuttered in April after a decision by its board of trustees, of which Morris is a member.
She said that because shows run for three weeks at four shows a week, a company can produce at most six to eight shows a year. That’s about 70 to 100 days of revenue per year, with 365 days of rent, insurance, HVAC, and other costs.
“As they looked at the end of their residency we all noted the difficulty of producing enough shows to create the revenue needed to support the annual operating costs,” Morris said. “That is the big flaw in the world of local theater.”
Morris said local theaters and nonprofits used to fill funding gaps with government grants and local philanthropy, which she said have diminished in recent years.
“After some brainstorming, we figured out that one managing company could coordinate multiple resident companies who could each produce their own seasons or children’s education and summer camps, cabarets, concerts, and the like, collectively spreading the work and comfortably funding the operations,” Morris said.
New approach to local theater
One of the two resident theater companies anchoring the calendar is Ovations Theatre, specializing in stand-up, sketch comedy, and theatrical productions. The resident theater company anchors Mainstage productions and comedy programming.
The other anchor, the Spotlight Conservatory, brings theater education to the Act3 Playhouse for youth and adults, with classes in acting, musical theatre, and technical theatre. Spotlight is producing “SIX: Teen Edition” on Oct. 23-24.
Beyond resident theatre companies, other local partners have mainstage productions and limited engagements throughout the year. They include Snug Concerts, a live concert series in cozy, small-scale settings; The Overture Series, concert versions of rarely staged musicals; and Mad Artists’ Entertainment, high-quality musicals and plays.
The Act3 Playhouse is also now home for 360 Arts Blvd, a membership community for creative professionals of all disciplines and the people who support them. BLVD members work together to equip one another with the entrepreneurial skills, resources, and peer network necessary to build the infrastructure for a sustainable creative career.
“The shared physical space provides members with additional opportunities for visibility and professional development while giving audiences direct access to local talent and the artists behind it,” the September announcement said. “Coworking and creative hub models like the BLVD consistently reinforce that when creatives cluster, they amplify each other, and audiences and commercial activity follow them.”
