Meet Olivia D’Ambrosio of Bridge Repertory Theater in East Cambridge

Today we’d like to introduce you to Olivia D’Ambrosio.

Olivia, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Bridge Rep was founded in 2012 by a group of six theatre artists, all under age 30 at the time. We had $10,000 in start-up funds, called ourselves Founding Artistic Associates, and committed ourselves to creating intimately staged, live theatrical productions ranging from Shakespeare to musicals. Other core values included recruiting artists from underrepresented populations for our creative teams, and developing an audience base diverse in age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, so that the American Theatre does not die with the largely elderly, largely white audience currently keeping us on life support.

As the first years passed, our core team evolved, and we exchanged the term Founding Artistic Associates for Playmakers, a title we devised in response to the common conception of an organization’s “staff” the key difference being that our Playmakers, including our Producing Artistic Director, have not yet been able to take a single dollar in salary, and in fact continue to work full time day jobs. While our operating budget has increased from $10,000 a year to over $100,000, we continue to pour every single dollar we raise into supporting our creative teams and the work made on stage. In fact, a new, key initiative has been to bring radical transparency to the time and money needed to make live theatre, vis a vis the staggering lack of arts funding available in the US.

Over our first four years, we also consistently examined our unique opportunities as a small and therefore nimble organization. Ultimately, we moved away from a traditional “season” of cripplingly expensive mainstage productions, to a year-long model of eclectic theatrical events. Our mad experiment worked, as concentrating more resources into fewer full scale projects made them more successful on a variety of fronts, while our series of inspired, popular, one-off events and workshops helped us reach new audiences and create new streams of revenue. One such event, for example, paired the live performance of Edgar Allan Poe’s THE RAVEN together with iconic, devilish pop-songs like Michael Jackson’s THRILLER. The event, called The Marvelous Party: Halloween, sold 200 tickets to an audience that ranged in age from 18 to 83.

Now in Year Five, we’ve begun a groundbreaking residency at the Multicultural Arts Center in East Cambridge, where our focus is an unprecedented development process for a world premiere production called DARK ROOM. The play, penned by renowned playwright George Brant, is inspired by the life and photography of Francesca Woodman, and will feature an epic cast of 25 women when it is finally performed this upcoming summer. Meanwhile, we continue to innovate, educate, put our noses to the grindstone, and prioritize quality over quantity in all we do. With our new venue located on the cusp of the East Cambridge and Kendall Square neighborhoods, we’re focusing on building relationships with and between these distinct populations, while also upping our game vis a vis organizational development (i.e. more money) and artistic rigor (i.e. better performances). Exciting projects in the pipeline include: a “STEAM” Exchange initiative, which will build upon our Producing Artistic Director’s parallel existence as a Lecturer in the Department of Theater Arts at MIT; and a new series based on the MOTH model, where we provide a venue, as well as acting and writing support for residents from our surrounding neighborhoods who want to tell their stories to a live, studio audience.

All in all, we are endeavoring to do that which is nearly impossible here in the United States currently: make the leap from a promising, nascent nonprofit arts organization to an integral, well-funded, community-oriented cultural institution with staying power.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
While the road has been rewarding and meaningful, it has been anything but smooth! Our founding team consisted entirely of artists, which meant we had a *huge* learning curve when it came to the production side of theatre. In what can only be described as, on-the-job, trial-by-fire-training, we learned everything from how to get sets built and lights hung, to how to sell tickets and raise money. Add to those challenges the fact that your average theatrical production has a team of at least 25 people. Managing all those people, and all those moving parts, has been a huge endeavor — one that continues to both challenge and make us better every step of the way.

Returning to the subject of money: the lack thereof has been another enormous obstacle. Folks are blown away to know that, to pay everyone who works with us a base wage of $20 / hour, and to cover our most basic organizational expenses, we would need a minimum operating budget of $750,000 per year. What have we been working with? $10,000 – $100,000 per year. Consider that number vis a vis the municipal arts funding available here in Cambridge. The City Council, with a total budget of $605 million, allocates just $1.1 million to the arts. That’s less than one quarter of one percent of the entire city budget, and only a fraction of that makes its way into the hands of arts organizations like Bridge Rep. (Fun fact: in the wake of the Presidential election, our Producing Artistic Director ran for the Cambridge City Council in 2016 with an arts-centric platform. Although she lost the election, she brought visibility to the issue of arts funding in what is now Bridge Rep’s home city.)

So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Bridge Repertory Theater story. Tell us more about the business.
We are known for producing a wide range of material, including the weirder, riskier stuff that large companies tend to shy away from. Although it’s a work in progress that sometimes causes confusion, our shifting away from the traditional mainstage model, to our hybrid model including popular one-off events, has been notable. When it comes to perception, we’ve learned that we have a knack for stretching each dollar, as patrons and collaborators alike are often astonished at what we make happen on a shoestring budget. In terms of our hiring practices, we’ve given a significant percentage of opportunities to artists and arts administrators from underrepresented populations, and to women. And now that we’re in residence at the Multicultural Arts Center in East Cambridge, we’re building a presence within a specific community, and creating work in a stunning, historic space.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
As Producing Artistic Director, I can say that the luck of my “birth lottery” has helped us out a great deal. Thanks to support from my parents, and my Mom, I was able to pursue any interest of my choice, and to finish all my schooling including graduate level conservatory training without accumulating debt. In many ways and without diminishing the vast, enormous, Herculean effort it has taken to grow this organization. I was very much in a great, poised position to get this thing going out of the gate.

Pricing:

• To aid accessibility, transparency, and financial stability, we offer tiered ticket pricing, which patrons self-select on an honor system:
• Subsidized Tickets are in the $10 – $15 range.
• Standard Full Cost Tickets are in the $40 – $50 range.
• True Cost tickets are in the $115 range.

Contact Info:

• Address: Bridge Repertory Theater
  c/o Multicultural Arts Center
  41 2nd Street East Cambridge, MA 02141
• Website: www.bridgerep.org
• Email: connect@bridgerep.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BridgeRep/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BridgeRep/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bridgerep

Image Credit:
Esme Allen, Grant Terzakis, Andrew Brilliant

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