Boise Contemporary Theater canceled its closing production of Sarah Rule's "Eurydice."

Hailey's Company of Fools is ending its season with the two-character "Souvenir" instead of the nine-character "House of Blue Leaves."

Both decisions were made because of the economic crisis, and both groups say their actions pre-empted a larger loss this season and greater debt for next. BCT also laid off some staff.

The economy deeply affects how arts groups operate in Idaho and across the nation. Ticket sales and audience numbers are down in many cases, and donations and grant monies are expected to be down in the coming year. It's still early, but the folks who manage foundations and distribute grants say a crisis is coming.

"This is a real shift, and it is the current truth," he said "Things are changing, the question is to what. All I know is, it won't go back to what it was."

Arts groups are being forced to make difficult choices to cut services, change programming and layoff staff as they restructure their organizations to meet an uncertain future.

They're also changing how they do business.

Idaho Shakespeare Festival has created a layaway plan for its season tickets, to help bolster sagging sales for its summer shows. It doesn't have any plans to change the season.

BCT experimented with a $10 red-light ticket sale. They sold about 420 tickets in just six hours, a strategy they will revisit, said BCT artistic director Matthew Cameron Clark.

ECONOMIC SHIFT

In some ways, the current lack of funding for arts and culture groups is similar to what happened after Sept. 11 most everyone's resources went to help in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Eventually, the nation rebounded and donations came back to pre-9/11 levels, although from different sources: dramatically fewer corporate contributions, more personal giving.

Ben Cameron was executive director of Theater Communications Group during 9/11. He is now the director of arts programs at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in New York.

"9/11 seemed like a contraction that eventually passed. This potentially feels longer and more dire É that fundamentally, we are moving into a new financial reality," Cameron said.

The Duke foundation is one of the largest endowed funds in the country. It gives nationally to environment, medical research, child abuse prevention and the arts, and groups such as the Boise-based Trey McIntyre Project.

What the landscape of giving will look like when this crisis passes, no one knows, Cameron said.

BCT and Company of Fools now join a growing number of theaters to either shorten or amend their seasons because of the faltering economy. Twenty percent of American theaters canceled a production this season; 50 percent laid off staff, according to a survey by Theater Communications Group.

ART HISTORY

Boise has long prided itself on the health and quality of its arts community, and rightly so. Few cities of this size enjoy an orchestra, a nationally celebrated Shakespeare festival, contemporary dance company, a classical ballet, professional contemporary theater and community theater.

Even so, the story of BCT and Company of Fools could become more common.

"I think nonprofits need to do their very best, hunker down, be conservative and flexible," said Alice Hennessey, interim CEO of the Idaho Community Foundation, one of the largest foundations in the state.

ICF manages about 400 individual endowments, some of which are assigned to specific causes, such as the Gladys Langroise endowment that gives about $120,000 to the Boise Philharmonic for education.

The ICF grant amounts that groups received this year was the same as last, Hennessey said. That likely will change.

The foundation also distributes its own funds through community panels. It is likely that those monies will shift away from cultural programs to services such as food banks and domestic violence shelters, Hennessey said.

"My feeling is they will be looking very hard at basic human needs," she said.

NATIONAL CRISIS MODE

When the stock market began its meltdown in the fall, local, regional and national foundations began reeling and regrouping, said Susan Coliton, vice president of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation in Seattle.

"A lot of our colleagues in the region are thinking about how they're going to narrow the scope of our giving to focus on the emergent needs from the recession," Coliton said.

Based in Seattle, the fund gave $22.7 million in grants in the Northwest, some of that in Idaho to groups like Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Boise Art Museum and Company of Fools.

Coliton says she hopes to do about the same total this year.

While the arts are still part of the mix, however, they might not receive what they did in the past.

The foundation has added an economic relief program for nonprofits geared to support for basic needs, including food, shelter, and other emergency services.

One reason for this shift is that these funds and endowments now have "significantly less to work with," Cameron said. Some funds lost as much as 35 percent of their financial base.

The Allen Foundation is directly funded by the Microsoft co-founder, but "our donor, like everybody else, has been impacted by the recession," Coliton said.

Dana Oland: 377-6442