LimeLight Theatre Closes (For Now)

      It's always sad when a community theatre company shuts down, and last week The LimeLight Theatre Company announced it was suspending operations for now. 

   Dennis Strom posted this on Facebook on January 5: 

   Although we're not technically closing our doors, LimeLight is suspending all main-stage productions for the foreseeable future. The reasons are many, and varied, but one of the main difficulties is trying to maintain quality productions in the worsening economy. Our summer theatre camp is suffering the same fate. I've pasted the text of a letter we sent to all our Camp Curtain Call supporters below to help explain:

   "Hi campers, parents, and supporters,

   We’ve waited until now to announce this, in the hopes that we might be able to figure out an alternative, but it looks very much like we won’t be having camp this summer.

   In a nutshell, it’s not so much a financial problem. We’ve always managed to pay all the bills associated with running the camp. It’s more a staffing challenge, in tandem with the enormous amount of time we’re compelled to invest in order to make camp a great experience for everyone.

   Another factor is the economy. We’ve been offering camp at, what we’ve been told, are day-care prices, not daring to charge what similar camps are charging in other more affluent areas. While this helps in garnering a higher number of students, it doesn’t help us pay our staff as much as we’d like, making it tougher every year to get qualified instructors. In this, we’ve been very lucky. To date, we couldn’t have asked for better instructors, but a large number of our ‘regulars’ have already let us know they can’t do camp this year.

   We’ve approached other companies and individuals about the possibility of having them run it, but the main response we’ve gotten is that they’re also over-extended, and it being a difficult time of year to try and staff it, as well.

   We wanted to make this announcement as soon as we could in order to allow you time to make alternative arrangements for your summer. It’s also early enough to entertain any ideas you may have about keeping camp going.

   It breaks our heart to think that we won’t be able to continue. We’re having to make the same suspension decisions about our theatre company, LimeLight. Although we take great pride in the quality and value of our stage productions, we’re barely able to break even on these shows. At this point we are still continuing with the Actors Workshop classes and hopefully keeping the workshop space open.

   We feel like we’ve had great success in our theatre / camp productions, but we may have miscalculated the difficulty of being a Mom and Pop business as opposed to being a non-profit organization. Certainly, there was the liberating feeling of not having to run every decision past a board, but there’s also the reality that there’s no financial support except through the graciousness of many of you. In fact, I’m not sure how we managed these past 6 years except through the volunteerism and the support of many of you.

   Another thing we didn’t count on was how long it would take to bring you the best quality video packages for the shows. Once they started backing up in the queue, we realized we might have a problem. It’s not our ‘style’ to deliver low quality videos, but that’s what would have been the next step if we were to continue. So, rest assured, the video packages for your merchandise orders are our first priority.

   We apologize for any inconveniences and really hope you understand. We think it’s better this way, rather than have camp slowly devolve into something other than the company with the high standards we envisioned it to be."

   And again, THANK YOU to everyone for their generous support of our efforts over the years, We can't even begin to express how grateful we are.

Sincerely,
Kelly and Dennis