At the end of January, ACT Theatre and the Seattle Shakespeare Company announced that they were going to merge. The SGN sat down with Elisabeth Farwell-Moreland, the current interim producing artistic director at ACT, and John Bradshaw, current executive director of "Seattle Shakes," who will become the new managing director. Farwell-Moreland will remain to help a national search for a new artistic director. (She might put her hat in the ring for that position, but that's yet to be determined.)

This merger is complicated. The Shakespeare company has roughly a $2 million annual budget, and ACT's is about $4 million. Some of that would include overlapping employee roles, so the merger could mean a more compact company than the sum of those figures might imply. Bradshaw mentioned that his company had already not been hiring replacements as people left and had no further productions announced, so the staff is naturally smaller.

He also described how he and John Langs, the departed artistic director at ACT, had been chatting, as long-time industry friends, a year ago.

"The overall environment for the performing arts has been incredibly difficult," Bradshaw said. "Like restaurant closures. COVID hit the performing arts industry. It hit the restaurant industry. These industries have not recovered quickly. [Also,] I love Seattle Center but it's tough, with the opening of Climate Pledge Arena, you know, with all the activities there, with the parking costs now here, with the traffic after events. Rather than continuing to recover, we've continued to lose. [He and I] were talking about sharing space (as two separate companies) at the Eagles Building (ACT's home space). ACT was looking for a managing director. We were looking for an artistic director. George Mount had stepped down. Was there a possibility of these two organizations coming together?"

Bradshaw agrees that it makes financial sense, in order to shore up the (sometimes) palpable shrinkage of audience members, the new habits people have of staying home, and the aging of some of the erstwhile steady audience members, as well as steady donors.

"And from the standpoint of what ACT does and what Seattle Shakespeare does, we're not competitive," he added. "We are not doing the same type of work. It made sense for the two [companies]. We began a conversation of ... having our boards explore this, because the decision had to come from a board standpoint."

"I got so excited when I heard about the merger idea," Farwell-Moreland exclaimed, "because I thought, 'Finally there's somebody coming up with an idea on how to keep these institutions going and make them sustainable in a world where theaters are closing."

Future plans

Twelfth Night (June 7—22), will be a joint production. The launch in the fall will begin the new season of the Union Arts Center, the business name. There is still more to decide, including a name for the new company.

Both Farwell-Moreland and Bradshaw suggested that there would be several phases over the next few years: an adjustment to the merger, a stabilizing, and finally an ability to increase their offerings, bring in other companies to the smaller spaces, and even to have a larger mix of events, such as poetry readings, play readings, or string quartets. The intention is to live up to the new corporate name, Union Arts Center.

The theater community is still mourning the loss of companies like Book-It, and the economic infrastructure they provided. While it might look the city is like losing another, it is hoped that this merger can help both succeed and thrive.

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