The Playgoer: Intiman-oh-man...

Custom Search

Monday, February 14, 2011

Intiman-oh-man...

Poor Kate Whoriskey--young director takes over a nice big Seattle theatre only to find out midyear in her first season that someone's been cooking the books!

The board of trustees, led by Kim Anderson, unearthed what the Intiman characterizes as a series of management failings, including inflated budget projections, unpaid bills and a lack of accounting oversight, which occurred during Brian Colburn's tenure as managing director. Former director of development Melaine Bennett has been named as acting managing director and the Intiman has enlisted Barbara Anderson to step in as acting CFO. The staff has also been reduced to a four-day workweek. Since November, the Intiman has raised $874,315 to keep its doors open and to repay some of its debts.
The Intiman noted that Colburn resigned for personal reasons last November just as the organization uncovered details of the financial failings. Among the details revealed were unauthorized transfers of restricted funds in the Intiman Foundation account (which  supports programming) into the theatre's operating account.
Also noted was a misrepresentation of the company's financial stability, financial recording inaccuracies, a backlog of bookkeeping, lack of cash flow oversight and a mismanagement of financial agreements with co-producing entities.
Times says this is a truly life-threatening emergency and the company could fold if it doesn't raise another $1 million in the next 6 months.

3 comments:

Playgoer said...

I should have linked to the original Seattle Stranger piece that broke this story, and has more detail. So here it is: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/02/11/intiman-announces-it-needs-1-million-in-the-next-few-months-or-it-will-close

lucia said...

But here is an incisive and completely different response from Paul Mullin on this situation - He's been following the Intiman story on his blog and has quite a different take on it, particularly relevant in our current economic environment... anyway, be sure to read this, too!

http://www.paulmullin.org/just-wrought/2011/02/on-institutional-arrogance.html

Playgoer said...

Thanks for this link, Lucia. Mullin makes some pretty valuable--if delightfully "uncivil" points...