Gaffney’s Departure

The end of Kathleen Gaffney’s tenure as artistic director and CEO at Studio Arena came very quietly. Daniel Dintino, president of the board of directors, confirms that her employment has been terminated, and not for cause.

Kathleen Gaffney

“Our primary goal at this point,” said Dintino by telephone on Tuesday evening, “is to preserve the [Studio Arena] building so that it can continue to be available to this community as a venue for live theater. This is a cost-saving measure.”

Dintino also confirmed that Studio Arena managing director Iain Campbell has accepted another position out of state.

“Kathleen knew that this was coming,” said Dintino. “This has been in the works for a long time. We had secured funds to keep her on in a fundraising capacity through the summer, but not into September. And a venue that is not producing theater does not need a full-time artistic director. The only way we could have kept her on was through a sudden influx of funds, and that did not happen. At this point we are focused on paying the insurance and utility bills. We do not want to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy. We do not want to lose the building.”

Gaffney was recruited in 2006 and came on as the artistic director of Studio Arena Theatre in April of that year. Her personal charisma and track record for creative innovation, coupled with her friendship with television producer and Buffalo native Tom Fontana, seemed like the perfect formula to reignite Studio Arena artistically and to reposition the venerable institution in a changing community.

Quickly, however, she found herself in the midst of a financial crisis not of her making. The board had been hiding the degree to which the theater had been hemorrhaging money, and the degree to which former management had failed to address that issue.

Gaffney was hired to provide the artistic leadership, not the financial leadership, but before she could ever really take control of the artistic reins, the financial crisis erupted. In a desperate measure, the board fired the managing director and foisted the managerial responsibilities onto Gaffney as well. She was burdened with the task of beginning the layoff of staff, and of taking the heat for 20 years of failures that had nothing to do with her.

Under her leadership, the theater did reduce its debt substantially, but ultimately the mismanagement that preceded her plagued her, as accounts payable proved impossible to meet, leading up the announcement of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2008. Chapter 11 protected Studio Arena from its creditors and allowed it time to reorganize. At a press conference, Gaffney and Dintino announced the bankruptcy, as well as the cancellation of the last two productions of the 2007-2008 Studio Arena season. The remaining staff members, some of whom had been employed at the theater for many years, were let go.

Unfortunately for Gaffney, while her artistic predecessor, Gavin Cameron-Webb, had been an almost invisible presence at the theater, from the moment she arrived, she had been promoted as the new face of Studio Arena. Her photograph, featuring her affirmative smile and signature red hair, was blown up across the lobby and printed in all Studio Arena publications. Ultimately, a marketing move intended to give the theater a fresh personality along the lines of that created for JoAnn Falletta at the Buffalo Philharmonic, instead gave many the mistaken impression that Gaffney was responsible for the theater’s failure.

The financial crisis at Studio Arena Theatre was never Kathleen Gaffney’s fault—not by any measure. She merely got left holding the bag.

A Niagara Falls native and Buffalo State College alumna who had moved her family back to Western New York from the New York City area to take the job at Studio Arena, Gaffney decided to stay on despite the theater’s financial woes, and announced her determination to save the theater that had inspired her career in the arts. Viewing the crisis an opportunity for Studio Arena to assess its goals and reconnect with its abandoned mission of artistic excellence, she operated the Studio Arena Theatre School this summer with notable success, and tried to find creative ways to partner with other local institutions—specifically Shea’s Performing Arts Center and Buffalo State College.

Indeed, a turnaround of this nature, unprecedented in the American theater, would have been a major accomplishment and affirmation for Gaffney, and many agree that her vision had true merit, but the obstacles proved to be insurmountable. No one was willing to commit to any sort of partnership while the theater was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the financial crisis was so dire that fundraising efforts between February and the end of summer amounted to little more than keeping the lights on.

Most unjust of all is the fact that Gaffney never really had a chance to function fully as an artistic director, the job for which she was actually hired.

Her first season was, for the most part, selected before her arrival, though she did manage to insert an innovative version of Tom Fontana’s The Fourth Wise Man, showcasing the remarkable artistry of local puppeteer Michele Costa, and populating the stage with Buffalo State students in supporting roles. The following year, she did not even get to complete her first full season as artistic director; though her presentation of two co-productions with local theater companies—the MusicalFare production of Bat Boy and the Road Less Traveled Production of To Kill a Mockingbird—viewed by many as an artistic gamble, proved to be the most financially successful shows of her foreshortened line-up.

Stressing that Gaffney’s termination had nothing to do with either her job performance or with the recent hoopla over “the Nicole Kidman business,” Dintino expressed regret that the timing was “a coincidence and unfortunate.”

Last week, a hoax asserting that movie star Nicole Kidman had made a public statement supporting the theater and urging other celebrities to kick in $50,000 apiece to rescue the financially beleaguered institution was repeated as fact on local television stations and in an article by Tom Buckham in the Buffalo News before being exposed. That media circus, says Dintino, had nothing to do with the end of Gaffney’s tenure.

And so when the end came, it was very prosaic. Studio Arena simply ran out of steam. Lacking the funds to keep a paid fundraiser, and no longer in need of full-time artistic leadership, the board of directors terminated Kathleen Gaffney’s employment.

For her part, Gaffney quietly notified members of the theater community through an email, stating simply that she intended to go ahead with Studio Arena’s Curtain Up! program with actor Stephen McKinley Henderson, and that her new email address was her old email address at Artsgenesis, the company she had founded with her husband in New York City, and which they had given up to come to Buffalo in 2006.

“This is the last email from me that will come from Studio Arena,” read the message. “I am no longer working there.”

Dan Dintino remains as the president of Studio Arena’s eight person board. “Naturally,” says Dintino, “it is not possible to recruit new board members while we are in Chapter 11.”

A senior vice president at First Niagara bank, Dintino is an unlikely successor in the history of Studio Arena’s leadership. He in no way professes to be a theater person of any kind. He even made himself very unpopular among some when he first began to advocate for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Studio Arena. As it turns out, however, many of his recommendations have been correct. It is possible that if Studio Arena had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy before the debt became entirely unmanageable, they might be contemplating a season by now. Instead, with debt in the millions, there is no discussion of any sort of season for Studio Arena in the foreseeable future.

Dintino sees the Studio Arena facility serving as a venue that could become available to other producers. He sees this occurring through collaboration with another business person who does not see himself as a theater person, Tony Conte, president of Shea’s.

“We look forward to working with Tony,” says Dintino. “There is no other venue the size of Studio Arena in Buffalo. Shea’s is too big for certain types of shows and other theaters are too small. I can see touring shows being booked there in cooperation with Shea’s, or I can see local theaters using the Studio Arena stage for signature productions. What I don’t want to see happen, especially as they are opening up the 700 block of Main Street to two-way traffic, is for the first building you see to be boarded up. We can’t let that happen!”