By Joyce Kryszak
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wbfo/local-wbfo-931078.mp3
Buffalo, NY – There are only about fifteen thousand people living in the small Southern Tier city of Olean. It is best known as the home of Saint Bonaventure University. But this summer Olean thought it would be able to add professional theatre to its bragging rights.
As it turns out, pinning their hopes on the Twin Tiers Theatre Festival was nothing to brag about. The good intentioned venture had poor financial oversight and no local board control. The summer stock festival folded half-way through the season amid scandal.
In a special two-part, WBFO investigative report, Joyce Kryszak takes a look at what went wrong and what ibeing done to fix it.
The small, mostly rural community of Olean isn't where you'd expect to find professional theatre. Folks there travel to Buffalo and other larger cities to see equity-caliber productions. So, when theatre producer Rohit Kapoor presented his idea of mounting an Olean summer stock festival, people jumped at it.
But Kapoor's dream came at a high price. The festival closed with half the plays un-staged. And dozens of vendors, actors and crew were left holding the bag for tens of thousands of dollars.
"Nobody's ever done me like this. Never. I've never had an experience like this," said Whitney.
That is John Whitney, director of the Southern Tier Symphony. Whitney said the festival owes him and other symphony members more than $17,000. They were the house orchestra for "Into the Woods," one the productions this summer. Whitney said all they have gotten so far are broken promises and bounced checks. He said those checks were written by the festival's founder, Kapoor.
Others came forward to say Kapoor wrote them bad checks too. But many said they did not get anything at all.
New York City sound designer Brett Jarvis was not paid his $2,750 design fee. But Jarvis said he would settle for getting his $25,000 worth of equipment back. He said it was never returned.
"As a matter of fact, today I had to turn down another rental simply because I don't have the equipment to cover it, because of so much gear being stuck up in Olean," said Jarvis.
Jarvis is not alone in his complaints. Even vendors and actors who have gotten some of their money, say it wasn't without a lot of hassle.
Eric Yaple is an account executive for PRG, a production company based in New York. Yaple said they were owed about $36,000 for lighting. After a series of bad checks and multiple wire transfer attempts, he said Kapoor finally came up with about half. But Yaple said the whole thing was pretty sketchy.
"Oftentimes he would tell us that, oh, he was opening an account at another bank, depositing money there. Ok. now that bank wasn't working for us so we opened an account at anew bank," said Yaple.
Perhaps not surprisingly, all of this caught the attention of the state attorney general's office, the department of labor - and most recently - the Cattaraugus County District Attorney's office. Assistant District Attorney for the county John Luzier said they are considering legal action.
"The investigation with regard to the allegations against the Twin Tier Theatre Festival is an ongoing investigation. There may be criminal charges laid. We have not made that decision at this point," said Luzier.
Luzier said right now Kapoor is their primary focus. A festival official tells WBFO that Kapoor was the sole proprietor of the theatre company, and that only he had access to the financial information and festival bank accounts.
So how much money was in those accounts to begin with? And what happened to all of it? Well, WBFO interviewed Kapoor in August before the festival opened. Kapoor said then that he had all the in-kind services and all the money raised that would be needed to run the summer-long festival. Here is what he said then.
"Because this year everyone's been so excited about it and really wants to be a part of the start-up, we're probably getting the entire thing done - including the renovations on both spaces - for somewhere around $200,000," said Kapoor. "That's paying everyone, that's putting up the shows, that's paying for rights. That's the whole bit."
But the owner of the Washington Street theatre, Leslie Patrone with the Olean Theatre Workshop, said the renovation was never finished. And according to an investigation by WBFO, festival artists and contractors are still owed more than $63,000.
That amount is probably much higher. WBFO was only able to confirm unpaid fees for about half of the roughly one hundred people who were contracted to work for the festival.
A new board was recently appointed to clean up the financial mess. But the board declined WBFO's request for details of those finances. Festival co-producer and board member Amy Kyzer said they are still restructuring.
"Right now we're looking into also getting an attorney and someone as a financial advisor because at this point there is no financial over view. All this has to be collected and put together by a professional," said Kyzer.
Wednesday in the last part of our series, WBFO talks to some people who say that they have an idea how the finances got to be such a mess. And we will talk to some others who think the festival still can be saved.