Seattle's Theatres Struggle in the New Economy

Everyone knew it was going to be harsh. For weeks, arts orgs around Seattle have been struggling with the fallout of the recession and its impact on their projected budgets for 2009. Now hard figures are coming out, and they're not pretty. Over on the Slog, Brendan Kiley has a report on the budget cuts at some of Seattle's largest theatres. ACT Theatre, following the wildly successful run of their annual Christmas show, A Christmas Carol, is in better shape than some others: It only had to chop 20% out of its budget. The Rep, by contrast, may be looking at up to a 40% cut to make ends meet, though there's no hard numbers yet. No information was available from the Intiman.