SCC May Force Harbor Theatre Changes

The is part of downtown Suisun's redvelopment successes, but the Solano College Theatre Association that runs it received some bad news recently, that they decided to talk about publicly this morning:

We have been informed that at the May 16th SCC Board of Trustees meeting Superintendent/President Dr. Jowel Laguerre will recommend to the Board of Trustees that Solano Community College cease all funding for the Solano College Theatre Association and eliminate the position of Managing Director of Theatre Operations.

This will effectively terminate an additional 9 full time staff and 23 part time staff; suspending the production and technical support they have provided to the theatre department, the SCC and all outside events.  If this recommendation is approved, as of June 1, we will no longer have staff to maintain and manage either the Campus Theater or the Suisun City Harbor Theater.  Following the meeting on May 16th, we must assume that we will no longer be providing any of the services listed below.  The SCTA intends to honor all commitments that have been made up to this point to the very best of our abilities. 

Should you wish to give the Board of Trustees any input regarding this recommendation, there will be a public comment section of the meeting.  The Board of Trustees will hold its regularly scheduled meeting at 6:30 pm in the Board Room of Solano Community College (Room 626 on the Fairfield Campus).

If the recommendations to eliminate funding are approved by the SCC Board of Trustees at the meeting on May 16th, the following services will be discontinued:

•              Theatre Rentals – The SCTA will no longer be managing nor providing rentals of either the Harbor Theatre or the Campus Theatre.

•              Stock Rentals – The SCTA will no longer be providing rental of costumes, sets, props or equipment of any kind.

•              Ticket Sales & Marketing – We will no longer be providing ticket sales or marketing for any events.

Solano College Board President Jowel Laguerre told Patch this morning that the show will still go on at Harbor Theatre.

"Yes, I believe so," he said. "Our goal is to continue our programs. We probably won't have the same caliber (of shows)."

The theater program at the college will go from what he said was a program with a $650,000-$700,000 subsidy per year to a $100,000 subsidy per year program, relying on a "skeleton staff" of hired folks to supervise and shepherd students as the students develop and put on theater presentations.

Budget talks with the theater department are nothing new, Laguerre said.

"These are issues we have been discussing for four years," he said.

The root culprit of many of the cuts at SCC of late, including summer school and sports programs, he said, is the state budget. However, Laguerre wasn't as gloom and doom as some of the Farifield-Suisun Unified School District about future budgets.

"It doesn't have to be better next year, if it remains the same as this year we will be happy. If the governor's tax package passes we will not lose as much as we predicted."

Even so, Laguerre said the proposed cuts to the theater program will result in a new kind of theater production process, that would be more student-driven.

"I think students can be taught how to do that…it's really a change in philosophy, he said. "This (budget crunch) is bad but it also allows us to re-evaluate our priorities."