Saturday's performance of Hunchback was the last at Vancouver Playhouse, which announced on March 10 that it could no afford to operate.
A debt of $900,000 combined with general economic downtown are being blamed.
"The working model isn't working," artistic managing director Max Reimer told a shocked crowd at the downtown theatre early Friday afternoon. "We have a history of great saviours and grand gestures at timely moments. The difficulty is to sustain that."
While the Playhouse was able to reduce its debt over the past year with the help of the City of Vancouver and its supporters "we are not able to overcome starting deficiencies. When we're vulnerable the storms that hit us become vulnerable."
"It's been a tough 49 years and an amazing 49 years," said a tearful Jeff Schulz, chair of the theatre's board of governors. "At no point was it ever sustainable."
Every once in a while, the Playhouse would have a hit that would sustain it for a while but debt started to worsen in the past five years when the Playhouse had to rent rehearsal space. It had been thought that it would have its own space after two years.
Contrary to what some people might think, Schulz said, "the city was phenomenal. It's been an active partner with us."
He also congratulated Reimer for doing "an absolutely outstanding job creating playbills that stimulate" audiences and therefore ticket sales.
"A whole lot of things were going in the right direction," Schulz said, "but we hadn't expected an economic downturn."
Reimer said, "our mandate is specific: we offer programs and plays that provide meaningful experiences and we are rightfully held to a higher standard. But we also work without a net. It's do-or-die in every case."
He urged everyone in the crowd journalists, supporters, actors and theatre tradespeople not to try to blame a specific person for the Playhouse's financial troubles. "Trying to find someone to lynch would be unhelpful. I hope the period of divineness and blame is short."
What happens next is unclear. They are working to ensure God of Carnage comes to Vancouver but it's uncertain whether that will be possible.
In a question and answer period after the announcement, Reimer and Schulz were asked why the theatre didn't declare bankruptcy protection to give it some breathing room until funding was found.
"We've done everything we could and asked everyone we could think of to support us," Schulz said. "Bankruptcy is very formal and expensive. Our hope is to work with creditors to do things in a less expensive fashion."
The roughly 15 employees of the theatre will be losing their jobs. Gone too will be the $2.9 million the Playhouse pumps into the Vancouver economy through actors' and tradespeoples' wages and purchases. It's estimated there are 200 contractors a year hired by the Playhouse.
Both men encouraged everyone to come out to the March 10 performance of Hunchback, the theatre's last.
At the close of the announcement, the two men got a standing ovation for, in the words of one audience member, "their courage in calling this meeting together."
