“CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland Public Theatre has canceled Big Box 2016, the annual centerpiece of CPT’s eclectic season, citing delays in the renovations of the James Levin Theatre.
Designed to showcase and develop new work, Big Box is one of the theater’s most popular events and the sort of grassroots nurturing of artists CPT brass rightly says sets it apart from other Cleveland theaters.
Christine Howey built “Exact Change,” her one-woman show about her gender journey from man to woman at Big Box before taking it to CPT’s mainstage, Playhouse Square and then on to New York’s acclaimed Fringe Festival this summer.
“Honestly, I had to make a horrible and difficult choice,” says executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan.
Bobgan sent participating artists an email last week telling them the series, originally slated to run for four weeks this spring, wouldn’t go on as planned.
The problem? The $2.2 million in construction on the aging Levin – the final leg of a $7.5 million campaign to improve the buildings and facilities in CPT’s Detroit Avenue campus – hit a snag four or five weeks ago, when Marous Brothers Construction discovered that the elevator, one of the main reasons for the renovations to bring the theater to full compliance with ADA accessibility requirements, sits below the water table.
To adequately waterproof it would take some complicated, time-consuming engineering, including having to raise the basement floor, or portions of it.
Bobgan looked at the calendar. The Spanish-language production by CPT’s Teatro Publico de Cleveland was in rehearsals and Big Box artists were beginning to cast their pieces, but the Levin Theatre, where the Teartro show was to open March 4, wouldn’t be ready, not for another two weeks at least, maybe three, says Bobgan.
Though there was a “5 percent” chance the theater would be ready, Bobgan wasn’t willing to roll the dice and moved the Teatro show to the adjacent space in Parish Hall where the Big Box series was to launch on March 17. Then he pulled the plug on Big Box.
Big Box artists might be out of a venue, but they won’t be left holding the bag. “We’re giving them the full base fee so they can continue to develop the work. We just can’t provide them with the theater itself,” Bobgan says. CPT will also look into hosting readings and offering artists other opportunities to work with the theater.
“This is really about maintaining the Spanish-language production this year,” Bobgan says.
Choosing between two critical pieces of programming wasn’t easy. “You can’t make a choice you don’t regret. As Margaret Atwood said, ‘if you don’t have any regrets, you’ve never made any real choices.’ ”
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