Stage fight | Scott R.C. Levy, Producing Artistic Director, Penobscot Theatre Company, Bangor
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Scott R.C. Levy: "If you present high-quality work, you'll get people into the theater, and they'll come back."
Scott R.C. Levy knows how to get the most out of a cardboard cutout. For the Penobscot Theatre Company’s upcoming play “State of the Union,” Levy and his staff crafted a cardboard effigy of the show’s fictitious presidential candidate. Levy, the theater’s director, takes the cutout around town to interact with locals, much like a real candidate, to drum up interest in the play. “We’ll get people to take photos with him, and they’ll bring in the photo and get $5 off their ticket,” Levy explains.
Creative and eye-catching, the cutout gimmick is appropriate for a theater marketing strategy as bold as it is, well, dramatic. Since Levy took over the nonprofit Penobscot Theatre in 2005, he’s taken ambitious steps to tackle the challenge facing many theater directors: filling seats. And he’s reporting progress. During Levy’s first year as director, the theater sold 13,000 tickets. Last year, during its September-to-July season, it sold 18,000 tickets.
The budget of the theater, which has 12 year-round employees and works with more than 100 artists, designers, actors, guest directors and stage managers during a typical season, has climbed from $550,000 in 2004 to $725,000 last year, Levy says, with a $70,000 increase alone from ticket sales at the box office. Levy’s work exemplifies the best of how the creative economy can energize communities.
This year, Levy led a $1 million restoration of the theater’s Art Deco façade, returning the high, pale brick exterior on Main Street, which had become rusted and grimy, to its original dignity. When the marquee is installed in November, the final restorative touch, Levy’s efforts to improve the theater will literally be lit up, which in turn should cast a strong light down the rest of the block. What’s good for the theater, after all, is good for downtown Bangor, because people who spend an evening at the theater typically spill into restaurants and bars.
Levy regularly meets with the heads of area nonprofits and arts organizations, such as the Maine Discovery Museum, River City Cinema, Robinson Ballet Co. and the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, to find ways to boost Bangor’s whole art scene.
Even though Levy expressed a hint of regret about leaving his 12-year theater career in New York City for this remote Maine city, the 33-year-old is embracing the Penobscot Theatre and his unexpected side job as downtown revitalizer with gusto.
“The most important thing to me was to bring the organization into the 21st century from an artistic standpoint,” Levy explains. “While almost everybody in the community had a deep love for my predecessor, no one was very excited about the theater. I had such a passion for theater, I wanted to change that.”
Levy worked to lower the average age of the audience by, he says, presenting “riskier work, work that would attract younger audiences.” Two years ago, for example, Levy canceled the longstanding Christmas theater classic at the Penobscot, “A Christmas Carol,” and produced “Peter Pan” instead. “Peter Pan” sold more tickets than any of the last five Christmas Carols.
Levy this year launched an advertising campaign with University of Maine marketing students, who helped create the theater’s new slogan, “Where art doesn’t imitate life, it inspires it.” And Levy’s created a play-development program, the Northern Writes festival, a two-week event in which actors read scripts sent in by playwrights from around the world. If any of the selected plays are produced, it’ll bring the Penobscot Theatre some attention.
As the Connecticut native prepares for the birth of his second child in January, he’s also looking at a busy season ahead with shows like the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Dinner with Friends.”
To Levy, everything happening on the stage in front of him is “fantastic.” “The place has got a gleam in its eye now,” he says.
Rebecca Goldfine
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