This week, on Tuesday, Capital Repertory Theatre opens the musical “Once.” It’s the final production of the 2024-2025 season.
It’s more. It is also the final play at Albany’s Capital Repertory Theatre under Producing-Artistic Director Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill.
“Once” runs through August 10. On September 1 Miriam Weisfeld, currently the Artistic-Producing Director at Adirondack Theatre Festival in Glens Falls, assumes the responsibility of guiding the professional theater company’s future. She will continue her post at ATF, while running The Rep.
Weisfeld will have huge shoes to fill. The 30 years that Mancinelli-Cahill operated the area’s leading theater company has been filled with accomplishment. The most important success is that under her leadership the organization survived. She took over a fiscally struggling company and kept it alive.
It would be wonderful to say that she brought to it financial security. But that’s not the case. Capital Repertory is still, and always will be, a struggling theater company. The Rep is a small theater with limited seating capacity.
Therefore, it’s not a knock on her to acknowledge that Capital Repertory Theatre almost went bankrupt several times during her tenure. If you are a company that abides by the contracts and benefits dictated by Actors’ Equity; if you employ the best technical people in the areas of set, costume and sound - you have no margin of error when forecasting budgets and revenues. Good luck on predicting how snow, economic recessions and general apathy will affect ticket sales.
And, during Mancinelli-Cahill’s tenure there was COVID, a couple of economic recessions and severe cut backs in city, state and federal funding. She had to keep her theater afloat while being able to sell tickets for a theater that holds less than 300 seats.
On the subject of theater spaces, she operated for 25 years in a space under a parking garage that was formerly a Grand Cash supermarket. The bathrooms were located in the basement at the bottom of a steep staircase. Not only was size and lack of comfort a problem, it took creative staging to direct a play in which the line of sight was not marred by steel pillars. The company, during her tenure in 2021, moved about a mile north on Pearl Street to a modern, comfortable space with unobstructed views. That alone would define some careers.
But it’s not the building for which Mancinelli-Cahill will be remembered. It’s what she put on the stage that matters. During her 30 years at The Rep she became acutely aware of the tastes of our region. She programmed responsibly, took some risks and devotes one show per year to producing a world premiere.
No one expected “The Lehman Trilogy” produced in March to make money. Maggie felt the play was too good and too important for the community not to experience, so she produced it anyway. It is, arguably, the hallmark of her directorial career She’s a terrific director who has directed more than 125 shows at the Rep. Few individuals have as strong a rapport with actors as she does. Her ability to work with various size casts and create indelible stage images are unmatchable.
Too, there are the intangibles. The Rep’s “On the Go” touring shows annually reach 15,000 students as it tours area schools. Inside The Rep, in an upstairs theater, the company hosts Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate N.Y. Capital Rep is immersed with community - hospitals, senior programs, neighborhood initiatives and the like.
Mancinelli-Cahill also recognized that Capital Rep has a substantial pool of local professional talent. People like Kevin McGuire, Oliver Wadsworth, John Romeo, David Girard, Brenny Campbell, Yvonne Perry, Eileen Schuyler, Shannon Rafferty and several other local actors often worked came her direction to create a number of memorable shows, such as last season’s “Twelfth Night.”
She also encouraged Albany’s Pulitzer Prize winning author William Kennedy to write a play, “ Grand View” which she produced in 1996. Her reputation as a theater creative who worked well with new playwrights was strong enough that other nationally recognized writers trusted her with their forays into theater. “Dreaming Emmett” by famed writer Toni Morrison is just one example.
Mancinelli-Cahill would be the first to tell you she didn’t do it alone. Philip Morris, CEO of Proctors Collaborative, provided funding and support in the company’s darkest hours.
She has developed a Board of Directors that works tirelessly to raise funds and otherwise gives support to professional theater. And there are the individual donors. Since box office receipts are less than 40% of a theater’s revenue, raising money is an important aspect of a Producing-Artistic Director’s job description.
Maggie is a fundraiser extraordinaire. How can you say “No” to someone who looks you in the eye with passionate sincerity and explains to you how important the arts are to our culture and well-being? And after you write that check, it is followed by an equally sincere personal letter of gratitude. Maggie is the most relatable arts leader in the area. It’s almost impossible to believe, but if you’ve attended more than one show at the Rep, she probably knows your name.
It is everyone’s goal to leave a challenge better than you found it. I don’t know that Maggie Mancinelli-Cahill changed the world. But she did make Albany a better, culturally richer place. She will be missed.
Bob Goepfert is theater reviewer for the Troy Record.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
