Editor's note: Dialogue is excerpted from actual interviews.
Stage direction: Curtain rises on the new Las Vegas Little Theatre on Schiff Drive, eight doors down and twice the size of the old Las Vegas Little Theatre on Schiff Drive.
Narrator voice-over: It's the grandpappy of Vegas community theater. But LVLT's glory to date, its passions, its commitment to the culture that some insist does not exist in a city characterized as its antithesis, are merely an echo inside its one-time cocoon of drama and tragedy and comedy and music, now a martial-arts center at No. 3844. Its destiny, brimming, one hopes, with the respect and patronage of an appreciative citizenry ready to feel and laugh and cry and sing, waits impatiently within what once housed Nevada Bindery at No. 3920.
Spread out before us is an 8,000-square-foot maze of drywall and plasterboard, main stage and dressing rooms, rising dust and uninstalled fixtures, box office and classroom, exposed wiring and empty outlets, rehearsal space and secondary stage, caulking and conduits, optimism and anxiety.
It is late December 2004. Twenty-seven years after its founding. Four years after a relocation plan was hatched. Three months after the postponed September grand opening, with Driving Miss Daisy. Two weeks until the rescheduled, mid-January grand opening, with Woman in Mind. One-hundred-thousand dollars from the original cost estimation of $120,000, now climbing toward $220,000. Ninety-thousand dollars from paying off a battery of creditors and contractors. Seventy-five-thousand dollars from reasonably meeting those obligations, despite donations from hard-core subscribers, dogged volunteers and scattered businesses, but not from Las Vegas' Most Well-Heeled Potential Benefactors.
One savior with a good heart and a fat checkbook away from solvency and artistry.
Stage direction: LVLT President Walter Niejadlik enters, stage left; Treasurer Paul Thornton enters, stage right; they meet center stage, huddling strategically, concern clouding their faces.
Walter: This could be a wonderful cultural center, an affordable, accessible center, in this city that we hear so often is lacking in culture. All we need now is a couple of dollars that people seem to have for other organizations—which are just as deserving, I know. Without naming names, though, we've gone after some major figures for donations, but no one's come forward.
Paul: We've never tried to make a huge profit. We just wanna bring in enough money to keep the doors open, offering what we do. It's not like we have not been out there trying to get businesses to donate services and materials, and we have gotten stuff donated to us—just not enough. Another $75,000 is really what we need to open the doors.
Walter: We've gone after anyone with a pen and a checkbook.
Stage direction: A shadowy figure, unidentified, crosses stage-rear, listens intently.
Paul: When we first started, the county was using the uniform building code. Right after we signed the lease, the county changed to the international building code. A lot of things had to be changed. The main firewall had to be taken back out and they had to put in slip-track at the top of the wall just in case a huge earthquake hits. A lot of things like that, and suddenly there was this huge can of worms that got opened up.
Walter: Like adding the fire tunnel to the stage, having to add another door to the front of this building with "panic hardware"— the doors we have, we have to take out because they don't swing both ways, they can only swing out. Then the cost of labor and materials has gone through the roof in the last six months and we are getting nailed.
Stage direction: Shadowy figure, stage-rear, leans in as Walter pores over a balance sheet and bank statement, worry and weariness creeping into his voice.
Walter: We are down to the bare bones, and all of our ticket money is going to go to sustaining the place, paying the rent, trying to rebuild a nest egg. All the contractor bills came in at once to the tune of almost $90,000, which just wiped out our bank account. We've applied for a $60,000 loan, but if the loan comes through, we still have a $60,000 bill over our head for the next five years, which, with the increased rent—from $2,450 per month to $5,300—is going to be real difficult to sustain. Now God forbid the loan doesn't come through, we've got some very creative financing to come up with.
Stage direction: Shadowy figure, stage-rear, produces a small calculator and begins punching numbers.
Paul: There might be several reasons for not getting any response from major donors. We're not big and in front of people the way the Nevada Ballet manages to be, or the Philharmonic. And I don't think theater has ever lost that old image—the hotels used to post a sign, "No actors or dogs allowed." I don't think theater has progressed much beyond that. It's very frustrating, considering that Little Theater has been around so long. You how many theater companies we've seen come and go? And not just amateur but professional, and we've outlasted all of them. To have hung on this long and still not be able to get that support ... Well, I equate that with no respect.
Walter: I think people forget that everybody here is a volunteer. The board, the actors, no one down here working on this gets a salary.
Paul: That's part of the problem when we go after donations and grants from businesses. Maybe they look at us and go, "They're just a bunch of ragtag volunteers." I just know, I KNOW, that somewhere out in this city there is somebody who could whip out a checkbook, write a check for that $75,000 and not feel it in their pocketbook, but be mighty pleased with themselves that they supported the organization.
Walter: One idea is that we're going to sell the naming rights on e-Bay. So if someone wanted to give us a check for $75,000, this would be, say ... the Steve Wynn Mainstage Theatre?
Stage directions: From out of the darkened wings steps the shadowy figure, pen in hand. Delighted gasps escape the lips of the Two Characters in Search of a Checkbook, anticipating a conclusion to this Story in Search of an Ending. Lights fade on Walter and Paul, panning up slowly on the shadowy figure—The Savior— to reveal a beatific smile beaming across the face of ...
Narrator: Goodnight.