In Broomfield, financial difficulties and the departure of Nigel Knutzen, executive and artistic director of BackStory Theatre, have put a beloved local children’s institution in jeopardy.
“When I came on board, there was already a lot of financial strain,” Knutzen told Boulder Weekly in a March 20 interview before he resigned. “BackStory has a good reach in Broomfield but it has not had the opportunity to engage the rest of the theater community in Colorado. Historically, they don’t have strong individual donors and need to find more sustainable monthly income with renters.”
Although Knutzen accepted the position earlier this year, on March 24, he decided to step away from BackStory.
“The board felt they were no longer able to honor the salary originally offered to me when I accepted the position,” Knutzen wrote in an emailed statement to Boulder Weekly after announcing his resignation, effective April 1.
Amid financial turbulence, Knutzen’s exit adds to the theater’s challenges. While BackStory’s renovation of a 5,000-square-foot retail space in downtown Broomfield was supposed to mark the beginning of a new era for the company, former executive and artistic director Mary Wilkie admits they are back where they started when she took over.
“BackStory did this 10 years ago. We asked for financial help or were going to shut down during a transition,” Wilkie says. “Now, we’re going through a leadership transition again, saying, ‘Hey, we need some financial help or we need to shut down.’ It is different in some ways and it’s not in others.”
History of BackStory Theatre
Founded in 2006 by Anna Marie Wilcox, BackStory Theatre has blossomed from a single nine-person class for preschoolers into a vibrant community asset that served more than 4,000 students last year.
It fills an important niche in the community as the only children’s theater organization in Broomfield and one of the few in Boulder County, alongside The Arts HUB in Lafayette, CenterStage/Tapestry Theatre Company in Louisville, and Rocky Mountain Theatre for Kids in Boulder. With a mission to provide affordable performing arts education for kids of all ages, the organization considers itself a nurturing ground for creativity and connection.
“While I love BackStory for the theater, I really love it for the community and the people there,” says current student Sofia Vela-Ueha, 14, who most recently performed as Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music. “Everybody in that cast was just so close-knit, and it felt like a family. I do theater not just to be on stage, but also to make friends, find a community and be able to express myself with people I love.”
To help serve students like Vela through donations and grants, the organization applied for nonprofit status at the behest of Karen Gerrity, Broomfield’s Cultural Affairs Manager, in January 2011 so BackStory could access alternative revenue streams like government funding, donations and grants
It took the company until November 2013 to get approval. Though their nonprofit status was retroactive to the year they applied, the organization was forced to operate on a shoestring budget, charging nonprofit rates to the community while continuing to operate as a for-profit business.
In 2015, the theater announced it would be closing its doors due to “increased financial challenges and heavily subsidized competition,” according to a statement by the board of directors. However, the community rallied, and donations from parents as well as grants from the Broomfield Community Foundation, Broomfield Health and Human Services and Colorado Creative Industries allowed them to keep their doors open.
“They were able to survive because the merit of the programming was seen,” Wilkie says. “Around 2015, we reevaluated the entire business plan and made this long-term plan for how to shift to where we are now. We just stayed the course, and it worked.”
Shortly after, Wilcox moved away from the area to focus on her family, and Wilkie, a former teaching artist and program assistant, was named interim executive director in September 2015 and hired as executive and artistic director in January 2016. She worked with the board to help grow the organization and led BackStory to move into its first studio space at 555 Burbank St. in 2018.
“My biggest achievement is that there is still an organization. It was about to dissolve when the founder needed to step away,” Wilkie says. “I asked what the community needed and tried to respond to that. We became an SCFD organization, got a small studio space and really thrived there.”
Even during the pandemic, Wilkie says they were able to stay afloat. “We were able to come through that time frame in a stable position,” she notes. “So, we moved to our next step in the plan, which was always to get into this larger community space.”
One step forward, two steps back
The theater moved into a new facility on Nickel Street last June, which gave them much more space but also more than tripled the rent to north of $6,600 per month.
During the transition to the new space, Wilkie says she realized she needed to scale down her leadership role at BackStory. She was returning to graduate school in the fall of 2023 to become an LPC, so they appointed Amy Gould as artistic director over the summer while she remained executive director.
“But I realized during the renovations that since the organization is so small, it makes the most sense for it to be one person,” Wilkie says. “It was going to cost too much money to keep paying me as an ED and pay an AD, and there was going to be duplication of work. I brought it to the board and said, ‘It doesn’t make sense to split this job.’ So, we proposed that this other person take on the full job.”
Initially, Gould accepted the position and was supposed to transition to the executive and artistic director positions on January 1, 2024, but in mid-December 2023, she informed the board that she would be leaving. The board and Wilkie then began searching for a replacement and selected Knutzen earlier this year to focus on shoring up the theater’s finances.
“When they moved in, they had the intention to rent out the space to cover their expenses,” Knutzen explains. “Originally, someone was in discussions with them about subleasing for offices, but that didn’t come to fruition … The renovation costs also added up more than anticipated, which put them on a bit more back foot than they were anticipating when moving into the space.”
The anticipated rental revenue, which fell through after the organization that was supposed to sublease decided to move to a different location, was more than a financial strategy; it was a lifeline to keep the theater’s mission going in the face of rising operational costs. Nearly half of students attend BackStory programs for free, putting additional financial pressure on the organization and making the loss of potential rental income from the new space a critical blow.
BackStory’s plight is not isolated to Broomfield but a microcosm of the larger, national crisis affecting the theater industry. The Theatre Communications Group‘s estimate reveals a nationwide downturn in attendance of 59 percent in 2022 compared to 2018.
Locally, Denver’s Curious Theatre Company has announced a “Fund the Future” campaign to pay off its $250,000 deficit, initiated amidst a decline in subscriptions, ticket sales and donor contributions. This collective scenario of financial distress is a stark reminder of the fragile state of the arts sector.
In response to these financial challenges, a fundraising initiative aims to bolster the theater’s coffers. The GiveButter campaign hopes to raise $10,000 by the end of April but will accept donations throughout the year. If the campaign succeeds, an anonymous donor is offering a $10,000 matching donation. In roughly one month since the fundraiser began, they have raised $4,940 from 61 supporters, accounting for 49% of the goal.
Navigating through turbulent times
The theater’s ambitious relocation and renovation, coupled with the unexpected shortfall in rental income, exacerbated financial strains. Board president Misae Vela Brol says this led to the decision to reduce Knutzen’s salary, which ultimately prompted his resignation.
“The board had to figure out what we could do to survive,” Brol says. “Our biggest goal is keeping our doors open. One thing we proposed was potentially cutting his job duties and, therefore, reducing his pay a little bit. Then we could continue to go forward, and that’s just not something that could work for him right now, and that was totally understandable. We don’t blame him, and it’s unfortunate for us but that was how it shook out.”
Brol explains that his salary was the “biggest cut” they could make that would make a significant impact. “It was going to go down to about a third of what he was initially prepared for,” she says. “No company wants to lay people off. I have been laid off in the past, and it’s hard. It’s not fun to have to cut someone’s pay or hours, but it was just one of our strategies to ensure long-term success. Our strategy was to decrease it and then, once we were more stable, increase it.”
While they hope to hire someone to fill the position in the future, Brol says that for now, the board, staff and parent volunteers will step up to ensure the day-to-day operations continue. Once they have their financial feet under them again, BackStory will begin searching for a new executive director.
“Our goal is and will always be to continue to work hard to make sure that we are financially stable so that we can continue to keep our doors open for our youth,” Brol says. “Unfortunately, we have had a difficult time transitioning over the last year, but rest assured, we are actively strategizing for the future.”
Moving forward, BackStory Theatre is concentrating its efforts on key initiatives that are crucial for its immediate future. This includes the success of their current fundraising campaign, maximizing enrollment in their summer classes and preparing for the fall musical, which traditionally brings in significant revenue. The possibility of closure remains a significant consideration that the board and community stakeholders are mindful of as they work to ensure the theater’s financial stability.
“We’re not where we hoped to be right now,” Brol admits. “But we’re committed to bringing the same programming we’ve done and hoping to expand it as we continue to move forward. The summer classes are still on … It is unfortunate that we are in a similar situation [to 2015], but I am also hoping that our community comes together again and says, ‘We do not want this place to close.’”
Donate to BackStory Theatre here.