I still am sad at losing Balagan and all it could have been. I am grateful for the productions I was able to see there, because they enriched my life. And I am thankful that there are other smaller theatre groups in town that bring fantastic productions as well, Washington Ensemble Theatre and the Theatre Off Jackson of particular note.

"This is public shaming based on stuff that, frankly, should have been kept quiet."

That sentiment is just so fucked up, and on so many levels.

I mean, you keep claiming you're not connected to Balagan, but given the breathtaking stupidity and denial in your statements I'm stunned that they didn't ask you to me on their board.

^^ Should be "be on their board."

I know, that seems obvious, but you seem to be missing a lot of obvious things in this discussion.

Jake, I wouldn't worry about it. Here's the plan.

Obviously, get a lawyer. Stop talking to the press! And that goes double for you Hobson. Groshong has access to all the capital, you are completely disposable. But if you're smart and keep your mouth shut, you can trade on what you know and blackmail Jake into keeping you around.

Jake, you've been working up to this for eight years, and the best you can do is "I don't recall?" That clearly won't fly. It was your JOB to know. Claiming that you didn't keep track of the finances is an admission of financial malfeasance dummy.

After all, you've got your new business to worry about: http://goo.gl/GOGRSF. Sure you sold $40K of stock in the first round, but that's chump change.

But there's a way out; your incompetent Board. If those guys we happy with not receiving written financials, I bet they screwed up a lot of other things too. Hell, Guidestar doesn't even show a SINGLE 990 filed for Balagan. Ever.

(The IRS is going to LOVE that when they try to "close down". Suckers)

If your Board didn't review financials, didn't even HAVE a Treasurer for nine months, then I bet they didn't bother keeping accurate minutes, did they? Probably not.

Jake! You are free baby! Stop claiming you didn't know, and instead tell everyone that you repeatedly warned the Board about the danger, but they were blinded by the bright lights and kept driving the organization to bigger and bigger productions, until it collapsed.

The organization you were "running" was so incompetently managed, that with a few more bald-faced, self-serving statements on your part, you'll be clear of this tragedy you foisted on everyone, and free to purse the development of those new musicals.

"The details are still rough, but Hobson and Groshong tentatively plan to be involved in the development of 50 new musicals over the next five years, on a tight budget of about $1.5 million." -- http://goo.gl/zAOtUI

PS: It's not like you have any friends left on the old Board, right? Not after you called them a bunch of cowards for closing. Screw those guys. And let that be a lesson for anyone else who would cross you. You've got a big future in the arts, and you can't let this get in the way.

"Details are still rough" -- Hahahahaaa, yeah, I bet they are.

It's like the universe just can't STOP doing you favors Jake. You are magical. Just keep it together and all of this will just be another funny anecdote you won't even bother to tell.

@92:

For someone who, on at least two separate occasions, has claimed to be done with this thread - you keep bouncing back like a rubber ball. Are you masochistic, or just unable to control your own impulses?

And where, pray tell, was there any "threat" in my comments to you, implied or otherwise? Do we need to add latent paranoia to your growing list of visible social mal-adjustments? I attempted to keep the conversation somewhat civil (snarky grammar lesson notwithstanding), but you seem intent on indiscriminately lashing out in every direction; not exactly indicative of someone with a solid case to make.

I suppose calling me a "talentless hack" might have stung - a decade ago, when I was still actively performing. But hey, if ad-hominems are all you've got left in your magazine, permission to fire away; I've taken far worse hits over the years, and I'm still standing. Will YOU be able to make that same claim 10 years from now?

Seriously, if you want to drown willingly with the SS Balagan along with Groshong, Hobson, and whomever else is still desperately clinging to the gunwales, be my guest. It wouldn't be the first time some of the crew - and passengers - have gone down after the captain has scuttled their own ship.

@108 Speculative history is just that....speculative. Nobody knows what "could" or "never could" have been, given the right juxtaposition of events and people. And frankly, when things go south, there are always a million critics of everything that was wrong. Plainly lots of folks have complaints. It is our nature: Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. This same dynamic plays out the same way in battles that change the balance of power world wide, to a small theatre group closing in a mid-sized Pacific city. But now every time I go to a small production, part of me will be wondering, "Did the lighting guy get paid? Am I supporting some sort of criminal enterprise? Can it be a moral choice to enjoy theatre if I don't know that everyone involved has been treated fairly?" Where is that sort of information available, anyway? Maybe we should have a list of all the various production companies and have a scale to rate them....one lemon for basically good to five lemons for complete bastards.

@109:

Guidestar.org & Citizenaudit.org are your friends in that regard.

Giving y'all the benefit of the doubt(s), theoldirish and Learner, I can see why the public vitriol here might seem a little outsized. Let me try to put this in perspective:

Comparing this to the Intiman, let alone anything larger in scale, really isn't apples to apples. Balagan, despite its ambitions over the last few years, began as a fringe company, and was see as, at best/most, a fringe-company-made-good when it started to blow up. And the kinds of numbers under discussion are disastrously large by those standards. Hell, I belong to a company that pays its artists hourly wages, and we were in a panic a couple years back over about $10K in debt (which we have repaid, thank you very much).

The question of whether Balagan was one of the city's best fringe companies, artistically speaking, will never be answered. I felt pretty good about the two shows I did with them (and for the record, I was always given the stipend for which I was contacted; then again, I'm large-ish, shaven of head, tattooed, and trained in several martial arts, so maybe people just don't want to risk provoking me ;)). I thought August Osage County was genuinely excellent, in a "straight" kind of way. I'm too ambivalent about musicals to have seen much of their output in that regard, and in any case, as I've said in another forum, I think that the attempt to sell properties like Urinetown or Spring Awakening as "edgy" (Misha's words in an interview article with Hobson) is indicative of how square (for lack of a better word) audiences and artists in this form have become (not that "edgy" is a cardinal virtue, mind you, but Spring Awakening is edgy like the Monkees were the Beatles; classifying it as such is just another step in the process of turning theater into a museum-bound curio).

The point is, reasonable people smart enough to know good from bad can certainly offer reasonable arguments as to Balagan's artistic output. And maybe there are mitigating fact or numeric adjustments that will make some of this vitriol look foolish in a few months. Maybe not. But given a peevish mission statement right out of the gate (before someone else points it out, I believe Brendan first used that word in relation to the statement; I wish not to plagiarize, but, really, to use the best word for the job, and will happily attribute it to its author, if I remember him correctly) that basically called the rest of the town's fringe companies losers and charlatans (it's been changed now, and I can't find the original, but it used to say something about "restoring professionalism to Seattle's stages"), and ongoing anecdotes about mistreatment of artists, what you're witnessing might be less a public shaming and more a public exorcism, a throwing off of all kinds of bad feeling that has been building for some time.

Outsized, then, perhaps, but hardly unjustified.

@112:

And this is just another of the many reasons why you continue to be one of my heroes!

Thank you, COMTE.

Everyone else/would-be typo trolls: First draft typing, after morning shift, nap, emissions inspection, and coffee, wedged in before evening shift starts, = lots of missing "s"es. And at least one "n." And don't pretend you don't still know what I'm saying. :)

Also, turns out it was Tim Appelo, not Brendan Kiley, who referred to Balagan's (original) mission statement as "peevish."

@112 and 111 - 112, that was the first response I've read here that didn't begin with the assumption that I must be somehow in cahoots with the folks being blamed for the demise of a theatre company I really enjoyed, which is really all I wanted to say. This particular string is the very first time I have ever commented on Slog stories - and wow, what an education! For the sake of all involved, I hope that the alleged monetary shenanigans turn out to be smaller than first thought, or otherwise explained in time. If people were mean, that is never forgivable without a proper apology. @111, will those sites really let me know who are the good guys and who are not? I am a guy who spends an inordinate amount of his not very large disposable income on theatre and live events. Mostly I go to shows put on by groups like WET, Balagan, Theatre Off Jackson, or stuff at Rebar. I will shell out more dollars for shows by ACT (loved their production of Little Shop....Grey Gardens was good too), and 5th Ave and Paramount, as well. This whole situation has made me feel bad about my support of some of those places, and wonder about the rest. And from your description, 112, let me say I always enjoy seeing you.

@117:

Truth be told they'll only inform you based on your ability to parse labyrinthine IRS tax forms, but they're a good start. For example, just the fact that I had to go to a secondary source (Guidestar being the default) is informative in and of itself.
.

@117 ugh. Maybe folks should use the lemon system I suggested. One lemon, decent enough. Five lemons, total bastards. Above three lemons, support their work at your own moral peril!

@118:

This has been known - at least to some of us - since their first press release, so probably was too obvious to mention. But, thanks for the reminder. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. ..

Dani Franich knew and actively

SCCC kicked Balagan out of the Erickson because they were rude and didn't follow the rules of their contract. This is common knowledge.

Why does Broadway World have a dude who was cast in plays at Balagan interviewing it's Executive Director about financial misconduct?

http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/BWW…

I have to wonder: if the Erickson Theater was so integral to Balagan's business plan, why didn't the company treat the space with more respect?

And the ship (along with the reputations of several individuals of note) is now officially SUNK:

Balagan Theatre Amassed Unpaid Bills of ….

Would love to hear a certain someone's response to THIS...

Actors and designers look the other way when this shit happens in the present because they want to get into productions and on stage so bad they're willing to look the other way when things clearly stink. This whore-like mindset among the theatre community has got to go if things are going to change for the better. The performers and theatre techs have got to get some perspective and be willing to sacrifice exposure for doing the right thing when the situation calls for it.

This probably could have been stopped and prevented a long time ago, on several occasions.

Hoo boy! Am I glad I remembered this thread and checked back. SO MUCH has happened since I left on Sept 25th. Just, woah.

Only popping back to comment because I need to say that COMTE, once again, is my hero.