In case you hadn't yet heard, the Waco Hippodrome closed last Thursday. It was the facility managed by the Waco Performing Arts Company, the organization that I ran for four years of my life while at the same time trying to be newly married and complete a Master of Divinity degree. You can read the Waco Trib article about the closing event here. It was a huge part of my life that shaped me in ways that I am certain I have only begun to appreciate.

To say that I feel sadness, anger and loss is just the beginning. Let me be clear before I begin here, I don't blame anyone for the closure; and that includes staff, Board, and even myself. Does that mean that none of us bears any responsibility? Of course not. Situations like this cry out for simple answers that just aren't there. People are looking for either someone to blame or a singular cause of the recent closure. Unfortunately, neither exists. So what I propose to do here is to discuss at length some of the many issues that surround running the WPAC and a professional non-profit Arts organization in Waco. The reason for such a discussion is that I fear that the conversation about the WPAC has been too long dominated by sound-bites and incomplete information. I've found no shortage of opinions on everything from the facility, to programming, to management, to operations despite the fact that I doubt there is any person other than myself who can fully and intelligently comment on all aspects of each of those topics and more. So rather than allowing the discussion to continue uninterrupted with more misinformation, speculation, and rumor, I thought it good and necessary to digest some of the very complicated issues surrounding the WPAC with an inside point of view. Carl Hoover with the Waco Tribune-Herald has done an admirable job covering the WPAC over the years from a journalist's point of view, and he deserves much credit and thanks for his tireless advocacy for the Arts in Waco, but I thought I might have something valuable to add here as well.

I've discussed before some of the difficulties inherent in running the WPAC, and if you dig through my archives under the tags "Waco" and "Theatre" you can read even more. If you have a new question or problem, please feel free to leave it in the comments section and I'll be sure to address it soon.

For the first post here, we'll take a look at some of the fundamental problems. The real problems with the Hippodrome Theatre itself are two-fold: the facility is in deplorable condition and even at its best it is unsuitable for the needs of both Waco and the WPAC. Those are constants despite the numerous ups and downs of successful shows, economic collapses, changes in leadership, and the myriad other events of a theatrical life. To the first, the Waco Hippodrome was built in 1914. It's rapidly approaching it's hundredth birthday. It's been repaired and rebuilt on many occasions. The last major renovation was in the early 80's. It was billed as the rebirth of the Hippodrome, and so it was. But there were some serious oversights and flaws with that renovation which persist to this day. Those flaws included a leaky roof, too few womens' restrooms in the orchestra level, no structural integrity testing or repair work done to the exterior walls, and more. The leaky roof leaked, of course, which caused water damage to the ceiling above the audience and the interior walls. Mold grew, plaster crumbled, and finally bits of ceiling tile began to flake and fall on the audience. The roof was finally repaired in 2001, but by then the damage was done.

The exterior walls are only exterior by accident. Originally there were adjacent buildings on both sides. They were torn down, but the Hippodrome stood and its old interior separating walls just became exterior walls. They weren't treated or sealed in any way, so they wicked moisture from the ground and the air outside and began to fall apart. I was always worried that a brick was going to work loose and fall on someone; they were in such bad shape. And they certainly were at risk for holding up the entire structure.

I became somewhat obsessed with the facility shortly after I had been there for a year. At the time, all we could do was put band-aids on the problems and keep it working. Not long thereafter I uncovered full architectural renderings and engineering studies that had been done in 1993 although no action, apart from replacing the roof, had been done in response to those studies. Interestingly, the studies identified all of the same problems that I had. The problems had been known for over a decade, and some of the problems had been known even longer. I became determined to not allow them to be someone else's problem the way they had become mine. The Cooper Foundation generously gave us a grant to get a new full study done since no contractors could legally use plans as old as the 1993 documents for guidance. That study was supposed to have been done in the summer of 2008, but wasn't because we didn't get the grant in until the Spring of 2009.

These are only some of the many problems with the condition of the building. I've said nothing about the flooding in the basement, the faulty electrical systems, the failing HVAC, the decayed dressing room floors, and the hundred other problems that are pulling the facility apart. The reason to point all of these out is to impress the seriousness of the problem. It's not something that could ever be put on the back burner. But, as you can guess, neither is it something we ever had the financial resources to actually address. Instead, the problems with the rotting building just persisted alongside every other challenge. It was something that had to be addressed daily in whatever small ways we could. We could not simply focus on other things because, as I frequently pointed out, if we didn't have a theatre in which to perform, having great shows and big audiences wouldn't really matter.

But that leads to the second fundamental problem. Even if it were fully renovated, it would still be insufficient for the needs of Waco and the WPAC. It took the study to fully reveal that. Renovations couldn't alter the fact that the stage was at least 10 feet narrower than it needed to be at a minimum. Nor the fact that the dressing rooms were too small, the wing space was too narrow, the balcony seating was unacceptable, and perhaps most importantly that there were still only 929 seats. Given that any meaningful renovations would cost at least $2.5 million, we had to ask ourselves, "Is that money well spent?" In other words, if we could somehow raise that kind of money, is it really good stewardship to spend it on a project that wouldn't ultimately address our needs? Obviously the answer is no. And you can now appreciate some of the existential dilemma of the Waco Hippodrome.

A final note on the seating capacity problem: you have to bear the mathematics of the seating in your head whenever you consider any performance or any show. But not with the number 929. You see, the balcony is horribly uncomfortable. It's got a great view and it sounds great up there, but it's cramped and it smells like mildew. Those seats are nearly un-sellable. So you're really talking more like 700 seats. Which is why various attempts have been made, including this past season, to expand our offerings to two-night exhibitions instead of our typical one-night-only. One-night-only economics don't work there. More on that later.

So those are some of the fundamental issues and concerns. Next I'll talk about the Tuna debacle and what impact that incident had on the past year and a half.