Aurora Theatre moves to lay off staff, vacate downtown Berkeley venue

San Francisco Chronicle​

a day ago

Since Aurora Theatre Company announced in May that it was suspending production next season, Bay Area theater fans have feared the worst: permanent closure of yet another beloved institution.
On Monday, Aug. 11, Artistic Director Josh Costello shared that the company was taking decisive steps toward disbanding.
'We have begun the process of laying off our staff, finding a home for our archives and emptying out this beautiful building on Addison Street in downtown Berkeley,' he said in a video recorded from the theater's peninsula-shaped stage. Still, both the video and an accompanying letter maintained that it was only 'possible,' not certain, that the company would shutter forever.
One week of performances remain for 'The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,' Jane Wagner's one-woman play, starring Marga Gomez, of interrelated monologues anchored by a self-described 'bag lady' who gets beamed into other people's consciousnesses. In September, Marin Theatre is partnering with Aurora on the Tony Award-winning 'Eureka Day,' but those performances take place at the Mill Valley company.
Costello did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Aurora's landlord, Gordon Commercial Real Estate Brokerage.
In his letter, Costello blamed a familiar constellation of factors.
'The economic situation in the Bay Area today simply no longer allows for the small professional nonprofit theater model on which Aurora was built,' he explained. 'As with so many theaters, attendance never recovered from the pandemic — my sense is that social media and a broader cultural shift away from in-person socializing are as much to blame as COVID.'
Other cited causes include skyrocketing expenses, an untenable cost of living for artists and arts workers, tech titans' lack of support for the arts (in contrast to philanthropy by other industrialists in previous generations) and 'disarray' in public and other private support.
'I'm tremendously sad that this is happening, and that it's happening on my watch,' Costello said.
Established in 1992, the theater eked out a high-quality but anti-razzle-dazzle niche, specializing in contests of ideas that played out like boxing matches or lit tinderboxes. It presented A-list performers such as James Carpenter, Margo Hall, Carrie Paff, Aldo Billingslea and Danny Scheie up so close that, especially if you sat in the front row, you were basically a part of the set.
Behind the actors? Most likely fellow audience members, thanks to the theater's rare deep-thrust shape. When everyone laughed together in the theater's blockbuster world premiere of 'Eureka Day' or cringed and tittered at Mark Jackson's production of 'The Arsonists,' the room became an echo chamber in a way that's just not possible when spectators are anonymous in the dark, facing the backs of others' heads.
If it does cease to exist, Aurora will join a list of recently closed or hibernating companies and venues that, in of themselves, could sustain a theater scene in a midsize city: California Shakespeare Theater, Cutting Ball Theater, Bay Area Children's Theatre, PianoFight, TheatreFirst, American Conservatory Theater's master of fine arts program, foolsFury, Exit Theatre's Eddy Street venue, Custom Made Theatre Co., Mugwumpin and 42nd Street Moon.
Other still-standing companies are making massive cuts, too. In late July, Magic Theatre announced it was indefinitely postponing its autumn show, 'Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission,' because it couldn't raise the funds. 'I am crushed and confounded to have to make this painful and disappointing decision,' Lead Director Sean San José said in a statement.