Pearl Theater Company files for bankruptcy
The Pearl Theater Company, which has been performing various plays in locations across Manhattan, has filed for bankruptcy. The theater announced the news earlier this month and will stop operating after 33 years. The theater company had a residency and would perform classic plays in expensive spaces throughout Manhattan.
The troupe, which always performed off Broadway, suffered its demise much like other small performing companies; common financial pressures and poor decisions or missteps that made the company fold. The longtime home of the company was on St. Marks Place in the East Village. In 2012, the company signed a 20-year lease at its current home on West 42nd Street. That lease quickly became too expensive to pay.
“Artistic enterprises are live beasts, and everything that’s live has a life span,” the founder of the company said in a phone interview with The New York Times. The company was founded in 1984. The founder led it until 2009. “I’m not sure that this was a possible dream from the beginning.”
By 2012, the company spent most of its endowment, which once totaled $241,354. The money remaining was down to $28,066. The money was spent to help with the move of the company and construction costs at its current and final home. The most recent annual report from the theater company showed that rental payment this year would total $282,825 and jump to $329,317 by 2020.
In an email, a spokesperson for the company said the following about the theater’s demise: “They felt they should have made greater investments in marketing and fund-raising earlier to build and diversify their audience.”
The final production for the theater company came roughly two months ago and was an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel “Vanity Fair.” The production received positive reviews.
The petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy was filed by the company earlier this month in United States Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York.
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Source: The New York Times, “Curtains for the Pearl, as the Theater Company Files for Bankruptcy,” Michael Cooper, June 07, 2017