sunshine on Empire Street.
Company: The Perishable Theatre
Artistic director: Mark J. Lerman
Employees: 5 full-time, 5 part-time, and 3 interns
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Type of business: Theater arts company, including a traveling children’s theater, a main stage
theater, and an acting school
Year founded: 1983
Location: 95 Empire St., Providence
Annual revenues: $500,000
operating budget
Sitting in the dimly lit main stage theater at the Perishable Theatre, Mark Lerman can’t help but look out at the empty blue felt seats when he talks.
Donned in what he calls his “artistic director outfit” – a black sweater with jeans – Lerman talks with animation. His hands moving from the table into the air and back, while his salt-and-pepper hair that just about touches his shoulders bounces with each movement of his head.
Today is a typical performance for Lerman – he is trying to convey just how important his theater is to the city of Providence, to the state of Rhode Island, and to artists across the country.
“I heard it said recently…that the best places to visit are ‘small theaters in dynamic cities,’ and I believe it,” he said. “That’s where the new ideas are being brought to life. Theaters like this one are where the R & D (research and development) for new ideas is.”
For nearly 20 years Perishable Theatre has been bringing new ideas to the stage.
Created by David Eliet, then head of the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, in 1983 the company was founded as a touring children’s theater. Two years later, after receiving non-profit status, Perishable began renting space in downtown Providence and expanded its programming to include community classes, and a lunch performance series entitled Uncommon Lunch.
In 1990, Lerman, then a student of Eliet’s at Trinity Repertory Company, took over operation of the company.
“When I took over we were working from a third-floor space on Washington Street above Blake’s Bar,” he said. “We were doing some performances, but the building was not to code, and frankly wasn’t legal.”
In the fall of 1992, Perishable Theatre joined forces with AS220 and Groundwerx Dance Theatre to find a location for all three organizations in downtown Providence. Over the next year, the three organizations held capital campaigns to find and renovate a new space before moving into what is the called the AS220 Arts Complex on Empire Street in December 1993.
It hasn’t always been easy. Running what at times can feel like three different companies – a main stage theater, a traveling children’s theater, and an acting school, can be difficult. But according to Lerman it’s the nature of the beast.
“These are three different theater arts businesses,” he said. “All three areas have strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately I think it makes us unlike any other organization.”
It also makes getting the public to understand the theater’s goals and mission even more difficult. With only 75 seats in the main stage theater, productions that don’t fall into any familiar genre, like Shakespeare, and a budget that is already stretched thin at $500,000 Lerman said he has to put a lot of faith in the local arts community. Fifty percent of the operating budget comes from fund-raising efforts.
“That’s a challenge,” he said. “We always have to educate people that theater is important. There is a reason that theaters aren’t normally for-profit businesses. We just aren’t that kind of industry.”
Lerman thought he and his staff were doing a good job of marketing the theater – but after wining a recent grant from American Express he realized they were wrong. The $10,800 grant has helped the theater create a new marketing program.
“We thought that we were marketing, but it turns out that we were promoting,” he said. “We learned that saying ‘we are here’ is not marketing. We really need to reach out to our audiences.”
It’s a challenge Lerman is ready to take on. Entering his 10th year as Artistic Director he says he wants to do more.
With a new catch phrase that “bigger is not necessarily better. Better is better,” he has visions of creating a new formal lobby for the theater, equipped with its other rooms, which are currently located on stage left. He wants more seating in the main stage area, but doesn’t want to raise ticket prices (currently ranging in price from $12 to $20). And he wants the productions, which often center on current issues, to reach a wider audience.
He wants all of this to happen without changing the mission of the theater – “to produce original, groundbreaking, breathtaking works for the theater.”
“We want to be a catalyst for creating a dialogue in this community, and while it is not a mainstream mission, it has been the key factor in why we are still here… at least I think so, ” he said, as he flicks the stage lights off.
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