Murphy's Law

By far the hottest political controversy of the last four weeks in Milwaukee has involved the arts community and the Skylight Opera Theater. It’s a remarkable story. The storm that’s erupted may well be nationally unique and demonstrates, for better or worse, the extraordinary power of the Internet.

In a nutshell, the Skylight’s managing director, Eric Dillner, informed artistic director Bill Theisen in mid-June that he was being let go, along with four other staff members, because the theater faced a $200,000 deficit. Dillner has only been with the company since mid-2008, while Theisen has been the artistic director since 2004 and began performing with the company as a teenager. Theisen is beloved by artists in town while Dillner is largely unknown.

The firing looked Shakespearean, like a coup by Dillner, and the Internet exploded with blogs and comments condemning Dillner (though with little evidence). Longtime Skylight performers have threatened to never perform with the theater. Many were among the protesters who organized outside the theater to assail the board for supporting Dillner. Journal Sentinel theater critic Damien Jaques wrote a column criticizing the Skylight, as did fellow JS critic Tom Strini, who called for the Skylight to fire Dillner and reinstate Theisen.

In response, the Skylight has alternated between not commenting and making comments that looked lame. Late last week, the theater announced it had decided to hire Theisen back, and he responded in a manner that must have stunned the theater, publicly rejecting the offer. “I feel there has been a breach of trust,” Theisen declared.

This has left the Skylight in a terrible position, with no obvious way to heal the rift with the artistic community, and facing an endless stream of online complaints and speculation – an “Internet wall” of negative comments, as Kristin Godfrey, the Skylight’s marketing director, puts it. (Even most of the columns by Strini have been online only.)

“That was something we never could have anticipated,” says Godfrey. “I’m not sure I know how to manage it. There’s no way to respond appropriately. If I try to comment on these blogs, it just gets taken out of context. I’ve looked around to see if any other theater nationally has ever faced anything like this, and I can’t find another example.”

“Eric’s family has been threatened,” Godfrey says. “He’s not sleeping at night. I’m not sleeping at night.”

I do think the Skylight made mistakes. But there is another side to this story that isn’t getting told.

For starters, if Dillner organized a coup, why has the board voted to continue with him as managing director, even in the face of so much criticism? The idea that Dillner was looking to supplant Theisen is absurd, says attorney Matt Flynn, a longtime Skylight board member. “Eric needs this like he needs a hole in the head. He now has two hats to wear, two jobs to do.”

Flynn says the executive committee of the board erred in making the decision to let Theisen go without consulting the full board of directors. “If you’re going to dismiss the artistic director, that goes beyond just cutting staff,” he says. “It was a mistake and they (the executive committee) have acknowledged it.”

Worse, the executive committee erred in having Dillner, rather than the board president, dismiss Theisen. “That was a mistake,” Godfrey says. “It would have helped if people had not seen Eric as making the decision.”

From the executive committee’s perspective, Dillner was someone who has experience running both the financial and artistic side of an opera company. Dillner was the general director and artistic director of the Shreveport (La.) Opera for seven years.

Neither Theisen nor his supporters have made any claims that he could handle the finances of the theater. Strini has suggested that board members handle the finances and replace Dillner with Theisen. But that’s a recipe for disaster. Which volunteer board member is going to work 40 hours a week on a job that’s so demanding? Not to mention the contradiction here: If board members have handled things as poorly as Strini claims (and I tend to agree), why hand them all responsibility for the theater’s finances?

Perhaps the most interesting thing written about this controversy was a public letter by Colin Cabot, the former head of the Skylight and its longtime guiding spirit. Theisen had called Cabot for advice. And artists in town welcomed his letter as confirmation that something was rotten at the Skylight. Clearly Cabot was pained by what has happened. And he noted that a financial report done

But what everybody seemed to ignore was Cabot’s sober take on the theater’s financial problems. The Skylight, he noted, has always scrimped on salaries. “I feel that running up the debt on the Skylight’s line of credit in recent years has mistakenly lulled people into thinking that the organization is fiscally strong when it is actually structurally unsustainable,” Cabot wrote. “A lot of people had year-round jobs that would have been seasonal in the old days. … My impression was that … sinecures had been created and that Eric was going to have to clean house.”

In short, the Skylight had unwisely outgrown itself. The economic meltdown compounded the problem, leaving the company with less United Performing Arts Fund money, a smaller endowment (and less spinoff from it to meet expenses), and cutbacks in foundation and corporate support. This is what created the $200,000 shortfall. In addition, the theater’s roof needs repairs, a $92,000 fundraising project that Cabot has agreed to head up.

In the wake of its rejection by Theisen, the Skylight’s board now intends to create some kind of advisory committee to oversee the artistic side of the company. If they're smart, board members will avoid holding a grudge and ask some of their critics – including talented former artistic staff like Paula Suozzi and Richard Carsey – to consider joining the artistic committee.

Of course, they may well refuse. After the death of Milwaukee Shakespeare and the firings at the Skylight, artists in town are feeling understandably angry. The livelihoods of many have been threatened (if not obliterated).

Flynn refers to the Skylight as a “family,” but the way Theisen was fired suggests a very different image: He was fired with brutal coldness, like a corporate axing. It makes you wonder what the board’s executive committee was thinking, and whether the full board has considered reshuffling this committee.   

But while the decision was poorly handled, it appears to have been unavoidable. It’s difficult to see how the Skylight can run itself without a managing director. To insist on the firing of Dillner could push a now struggling company into a far worse situation than it already faces.

Tosa Is Liberal!

My recent column on the upcoming race between incumbent state Sen. Jim Sullivan (D-Wauwatosa) and his challenger, Rep. Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa), suggested that eastern Wauwatosa “is hardly liberal land.”

Wauwatosa Ald. Dennis McBride called to take issue with my characterization. McBride says there are two Tosas, the conservative western portion and the more well-to-do, increasingly liberal eastern portion. He notes that Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and John Kerry both did well in eastern Tosa. He notes that the first suburban store opened by Outpost Natural Foods was in Wauwatosa (a love of hummus and tofu is a sure sign of Democratic-leanings). He notes that eastern Tosa was opposed to the referendum banning gay marriage. So, if you love liberalism and find Shorewood just a little too politically correct, may I suggest you check out eastern Tosa? It’s not your father’s suburb anymore.

The Buzz:

-Pundit Nation blogger Michael Mathias has an inspired idea for how the Journal Sentinel might cut costs without cutting staff: Eliminate the Saturday paper and publish six days a week.

-JS reporter Dan Bice has now gotten the e-mails between Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn and reporter Jessica McBride, and he wrote a column on this Friday. What he found was apparently such non-news that his column didn’t run in the print edition of the paper. It didn’t even make the “Best of the Blogs” column.

I also requested these public documents from the city. They confirm that McBride was not having an affair while she wrote this story, and that their first encounter came in early May, several months after McBride finished her reporting and more than two months after she turned in her final rewrite. Yes, there were a lot of chatty e-mails, and McBride certainly showed poor judgment, as I’ve already written.

But meanwhile, Bice has written a story that was picked up and broadcast across the nation claiming McBride had an affair while writing this story. That is untrue, as he and his editors now know. Are they going to serve their readers – and print the truth – by running a retraction?

-And can someone – anyone? – save Milwaukee’s only annual pro golf tournament? The Sports Nut considers.