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The 23-year partnership between the University of Alabama drama school and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival is approaching its final act. The problem was not in the stars, or UA graduate students, but in the finances.
ASF officials said the festival needed the $500,000 it spends annually on the university's master of fine arts program. For the last few years, records show, the festival has been operating at a deficit and dipping into its endowment.
"This story can sort of be encapsulated with the following: We had state funding, we lost it and were unable to restore it," Young Boozer III, chair of the ASF board, told The Tuscaloosa News. "When the (MFA) program has been phased out, it will result in budget savings for the ASF."
UA spokeswoman Cathy Andreen told the News the move is meant to help the festival.
"This decision was made as the result of significant input and careful deliberation by a large number of UA employees and ASF board members who participated in discussions over the past eight to 10 months," she said.
The end of the collaborative program also was reported by the Montgomery Advertiser.
Supporters of the MFA program say the festival will suffer from the loss in student labor. MFA students in Montgomery work in various jobs, from marketing and ticket sales to acting and stage management. The university pays their stipends, tuition and health insurance.
The festival has had financial woes in recent years. For fiscal year 2007, the ASF had total revenues of just over $4.2 million, but operating expenses of more than $10 million, the News reported. For 2006, operating revenues totaled $3.5 million, while expenses came to $9.6 million. Records show a similar pattern of operating losses as far back as 2002.
Private gifts, grants and contracts and funds from the festival's endowment have been used to fill the holes. From 2003 to 2007, about $9 million in endowment funds were used.
After the split, ASF will no longer provide the professional component of the MFA programs in acting, theater management, stage management and design. The professional actor training program would dissolve after next year's class graduates. The other MFA classes will be redesigned, with hopes of linking them to other professional theaters.
The university, which has been the sole legal sponsor of the festival for the last 15 years, will give up control of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival Inc., and all assets, including the ASF building and the land it sits on. Assets will transfer from the ASF Finance Authority to the ASF.
It is not entirely clear whether the separation is final or must be ratified by UA's board of trustees.
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