Au Revoir, Voltaire?
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James Rohrbacher, general manager of the theater and coffeehouse, says the 70-seat theater has been holding its own but the restaurant is losing money. “The restaurant was popular five years ago, but no one wanted to hang out there anymore,” he explains. Over the years he experimented with various menus, but lately nothing seemed to work: “It just wasn’t trendy.” Owner Mark Epstein says his lease was due to expire in a year and a half, and the probability of higher rent contributed to his decision to close up shop.
But even then Dowda would have to pay the rent and remaining overhead if she doesn’t find another angel like Epstein. In the existing space Dowda charged performance groups a flat fee of $100, refunding $40 at the end of the run if the space was undamaged; ticket sales were split between the theater and the company. For theatergoers Voltaire offered some of the lowest ticket prices in town–usually between $3 and $10–which allowed people to drop by casually and sample whatever was playing. Dowda might have trouble keeping ticket prices down in a more costly space, but she would like Voltaire to reopen by early fall.
Meanwhile, the company is auditing its books for the 1996-’97 fiscal year, which ended last August. The company wound up $2,417 in the red for the previous fiscal year, but Alpaugh says the company could show a surplus of as much as $50,000 this year.
