3. A Vision For The Future

TheatreSquared audiences probably don't know or care how much the actors onstage earn. Neither do those loyal playgoers need marketing to convince them to come to the Nadine Baum Studios in Fayetteville for the intimate dramatic experience that is T2's greatest strength -- although they probably do appreciate another strength: The presentation of new work.

But what happens off stage is the foundation for what happens on stage, and TheatreSquared, along with a panel of community leaders, spent a good portion of 2014 looking at what has brought the professional company this far and what is needed to continue that growth and success into the future.

The result is Vision 2017, a report released Oct. 1. In it, TheatreSquared looks back at its founding vision in 2005, ahead to where Bob Ford, artistic director, and Martin Miller, T2 executive director, hope to be in 2017 and, in between, the incremental strategies to get there.

"The report is not a product, not a finished document," Miller says. "It just says everything about where we are right now in a way that was difficult to articulate but necessary to say in order to keep growing. To a certain extent, our growth was the product of sheer will on our part and good will on the part of the community. It happened organically, and now we have to say who we want to become, or it won't have the shape it needs.

"It's about the sky being the limit but a step-by-step process getting to the sky," he adds.

"I think the report makes tangible the amount of thinking and idea slinging that goes on behind the scenes," Ford concurs. "The theater that people get to see, the product, is nested in this kind of collective thought process, and you get to see that articulated in the report. We're not just aimlessly moving forward; there is a definite trajectory. We are here because we planned to be here -- because our successes have matched our wildest dreams."

In what Miller calls "a nice bit of timing," he and Ford were also able to announce a three-year, $1.03 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation to support Vision 2017's goals of "expanded artistic programs, broader access to all segments of Northwest Arkansas and a more prominent national role for TheatreSquared through high-profile productions and new play development."

"It says to us, 'You've been great stewards of the grant you received three years ago. How can we help you become what you're clearly becoming?'," Miller says.

"We are proud that, in just five years' time, our annual budget to create professional theater and arts-in-education has grown from under $200,000 to over $1.3 million, with attendance growing tenfold over the same period," Miller enumerates. "We are thrilled to be able to seize this momentum."

But Miller and Ford also want audiences to know what they enjoy about TheatreSquared won't change. There is no plan to move to a bigger venue, they say by way of example.

"We love where we are, and we love the intimacy of where we are," Ford says.

Neither will the commitment to the audience that is intrinsic to the T2 creative process change.

"If it's personal to us, it will feel personal to our audience," Miller says. "That's why we put this report out there: To be intimate with our audience. There may be a man behind the curtain, but we've just gotten rid of the curtain."