Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre to close after 33 years

After 33 years and transforming more than 150 works of literature into full-fledged stage productions, the curtain falls on Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre. The nonprofit theater company said Tuesday it is ceasing operations and laying off staff. 

Book-It board President Christine Stepherson said that the board of directors had voted to start the closing process after the final show of the season, “Solaris,” ends its run on July 9. 

A majority of the staff of 18 was told they’d be laid off Tuesday; six people will stay on for three to six more months to wrap up operations. Also affected are the roughly 300 people who work on Book-It’s productions throughout a given year: actors, artisans, technicians, dramaturges, writers, directors, intimacy coordinators, costume shop personnel and designers. Many of these workers, 267 in total for the 2022-23 season, were part-time employees.

Season subscribers who bought tickets to the now-canceled 2023-24 season — which was to include “Frankenstein,” “Fellow Passengers” (adapted from “A Christmas Carol”), “Crumbs/Migas” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” — can receive full refunds or can choose to donate the amount of their purchase to the company to support the cast and crew through the end of the current season, according to Book-It. 

To blame for the closure, Stepherson said in a phone interview, were diminished audience attendance, changes in funder priorities and a lack of enough major donors, among other reasons. “We aren’t a theater company that has a huge endowment,” she said. “We had really hoped that we could make it through all of this. We are just at a point where we don’t feel it’s responsible to have contracts with artists and move forward with such small margins.” 

Stepherson stressed that it wasn’t one thing that spurred the decision, but rather a cascade of events in a sector where the margins are usually already razor-thin. Having to cancel a show due to a COVID-19 exposure and refunding at least $20,000 in tickets, and then missing out on multiple grants in the span of just a few months, as was the case for Book-It this year, was devastating. Coupled with ticket sales and individual giving still being down from the pandemic, the board couldn’t come up with a balanced budget for 2024, Stepherson said. 

It’s an industrywide problem, she added: “We’re not alone in this.” Stepherson noted that other theaters also aren’t seeing people returning at pre-pandemic levels and funders aren’t stepping up in the same way either. “If we really believe it’s three or four more years until the theater community recovers, can we continue to hobble along during that?” she said. 

Book-It became a nonprofit in 1990, but its artistic roots date back to the ‘80s, when theater artist Jane Jones began experimenting with performing short stories on stage in New York. After moving to Seattle, Jones would continue that work with a local arts collective, which fellow theater artist Myra Platt joined in 1988, according to Book-It’s website. 

The collective later evolved into Book-It: A Performing Arts Company and in 1994, Jones and Platt became Book-It’s first co-artistic directors. Their signature Book-It style — which directly incorporated the authors’ words as on the page (including, for instance, narration and descriptions) — became famous when in the mid-’90s, Seattle Rep’s production of “The Cider House Rules” in the Book-It style became a local phenomenon and later moved to Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum. 

Since then, Book-It has brought a wide variety of books to the stage, including classics like “Jane Eyre,” “Don Quixote” and “Moby Dick,” as well as more recent works, like Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” “The Financial Lives of the Poets” by Jess Walter and “Childfinder” by Octavia E. Butler. 

“We were midwives to countless new works of art,” said Platt about her decadeslong collaboration (and friendship) with Jones, who could not be immediately reached for comment. 

“It’s just a great loss,” Platt said about the company’s closure, her voice wavering with emotion. She called their legacy at Book-It “one of the biggest joys of our life, and our creative life, in bringing some of our favorite literature to the stage and being turned on to other people’s favorites.” 

Platt and Jones were co-artistic directors of Book-It until early 2020, when Gus Menary, their successor, arrived — along with the pandemic and its devastating effects on the arts sector. Menary, who left the company earlier this year to move back to Chicago, directed “Solaris,” Book-It’s last show, adapted from the novel by Stanisław Lem.

Stepherson said “Solaris” is truly Book-It’s last chapter. “We’re not going to be a full-blown theater company anymore,” she said. Platt had more hope: “If there’s an angel out there to save it, there’s still some time,” she said.

This story has been updated to reflect that “Solaris” is not the only show Menary directed at Book-It.

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This coverage is partially underwritten by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over this and all its coverage.