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May 6, 2004
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May 6, 2004 |
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Little Art is like home for its owner
Sometimes when Jenny Cowperthwaite Ruka sits alone in the auditorium of her Little Art Theatre, she feels a comforting presence around her, a sense of home. “I look at the screen and seats and the lights, and they don’t seem like things,” she said. “I feel embraced.” Lots of Yellow Springs residents might say the same thing about the beloved tiny theater downtown, the destination of many villagers as they stroll down Xenia Avenue on a Saturday night. They might also feel grateful for the opportunity, while living in a little town in Ohio, to see the latest art film from China or France. “Sometimes we have guests from Tokyo who are shocked to find a little theater here showing what the hip theater in Tokyo is showing,” Migiwa Orimo said recently. “The Little Art is extremely important to Yellow Springs. It sustains us.” “The Little Art is invaluable to this community, especially to the arts community,” said local film editor Jim Klein. “Jenny programs wonderful films that otherwise we wouldn’t see unless we lived in a major city.” In addition, Cowperthwaite Ruka has offered substantial support to area filmmakers, Klein said. “Jenny has made her theater accessible to local media artists time and time again,” he said. “We built an amazing audience for independent film here, and Jenny is a major factor in making that happen.” While Cowperthwaite Ruka feels grateful for villagers’ loyalty, it’s not easy to keep the theater afloat, and it keeps getting harder. Since the beginning of 2004, the Little Art has lost about $2,000 a month, she said, which means about 100 fewer people per week are attending its movies. While the theater has frequently experienced financial ups and downs, this sustained downturn is unusual, she said. People are busy, she knows, and new technology, in the form of cable TV, videos and DVDs, creates competition for everyone’s attention on a Saturday night. But going to the movies is special, Cowperthwaite Ruka believes. “There’s nothing like it,” she said. “Sitting in the darkness, the big screen — it consumes you.” Cowperthwaite Ruka first began feeling the Little Art’s magic as a child, when she came to see movies free while her big sister, Leslie, worked in the box office. When she was 15, she started working there, with a memorable beginning — on her second night, she and another employee, who was also 15, were held up at gunpoint, then locked in the bathroom while the thieves ran away. “I was literally looking down the barrel of a gun,” she said. “I’ll always remember its color and how shiny it was.” While the robbers made off with some cash, they couldn’t steal Jenny Cowperthwaite’s love for the Little Art. Back then, Cowperthwaite Ruka saw hundreds of films. “That’s when I began falling in love with foreign films,” she said. But even more than her love of movies, Cowperthwaite Ruka loved horses, and she also worked as barn manager and teacher at the Riding Centre. In 1975, she left Yellow Springs and went to Pennsylvania for a year, to pursue her dream of working in the world of show horses. But that world quickly proved disillusioning, and when Cowperthwaite Ruka came home, she found herself once again working at the Little Art, trying to figure out what to do with her life. Around then, the theater’s manager quit, and encouraged Cowperthwaite Ruka to take the job, something she had never imagined doing. “I was scared,” she said. “I wasn’t grooming myself for this work. I felt intimidated by trying to program the films, afraid I didn’t know enough.” Cowperthwaite Ruka ended up as co-manager, handling the theater’s business operations, while programming duties fell to Andy Voda. At the time, the Little Art was owned by the Art Theater Guild of Scottsdale, Ariz., and was the only theater in the chain that didn’t show pornography, Cowperthwaite Ruka said. It took time for Cowperthwaite Ruka to grow in confidence, and two years later, when Voda left, Cowperthwaite Ruka still felt unsure about assuming programming responsibilities, so Joe Hill took on that part of the job, while Flo Lorenz and later Jeff Simons wrote program notes. Three years after she began as manager, Cowperthwaite Ruka took on programming responsibilities and later began writing program notes. When the Art Theater Guild decided to sell the Little Art in 1987, the company offered Cowperthwaite Ruka the opportunity to buy it, but she said she felt then that the theater would do better “under the umbrella of Antioch” and the university assumed ownership for $1. The university later sold the theater to Jon Saari, who owned it for seven years, while Cowperthwaite Ruka served as manager. When Saari decided to sell, in 1997, Cowperthwaite Ruka was ready to take over, and on Jan. 1, 1998, she became owner of the theater in which she’d invested so many years. While the Little Art currently has 12 part-time employees, Cowperthwaite Ruka’s the only full-time worker, and the buck stops with her. Her responsibilities include picking the films, ordering them and dealing with distributors, managing employees and “lots of details,” including paying bills, doing paperwork and errands. “I do everything from unplugging the toilet to writing the program notes,” she said. She said that her greatest challenge remains programming, which includes picking the right mix of independent movies, foreign films and mainstream features, which come to the theater several months after they hit large theaters. “Everytime I sit down to program it’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and there’s definitely always a piece missing,” she said. “But you do the best that you can.” While she’s seen thousands of films by now, Cowperthwaite Ruka, who is 45, never thinks of herself as a film critic, but rather as someone who loves to watch movies. “I don’t approach a film from an academic standpoint,” she said. “For me, it’s a kinesthetic experience, a visual and emotional experience. I think. I feel. I like the whole gestalt.” Keeping the Little Art afloat financially is also challenging. “The truth is, this has always been a marginal business,” she said. “We’re not about to go under, but it’s like walking a balance beam daily. It seems to be getting harder.” Three years ago, on the advice of a fellow small theater owner, Cowperthwaite Ruka began Friends of the Little Art, an annual membership drive of people who contribute from $40 to $1,000 for operational expenses. Cowperthwaite Ruka said that she wouldn’t have considered such a move without her friend’s suggestion since the theater is a commercial business. But finances were shaky, and she decided to reach out to the community. The response was quick and positive. “I was so touched by the people who immediately wanted to contribute,” she said. “It’s a miracle that this theater is here. I often feel like it has a guardian angel.” But the guardian angel has apparently been on vacation the past four months, and Cowperthwaite Ruka knows that support from Friends of the Little Art is what’s keeping the theater going. And while Friends of the Little Art has kept finances on an even keel the past three years, contributions have dropped about 30 percent since 2001, Cowperthwaite Ruka said. She’s continually trying to think of new fundraising ideas, “figuring out ways to keep it fresh,” she said, and is considering a Buy a Seat campaign to purchase new seats, in which Little Art supporters could contribute money for a seat, on which a plaque would be placed. Cowperthwaite Ruka expects a lot of herself, and it’s not enough that she has kept alive and lively a treasure for almost 30 years. But she worries that she’s not doing enough, that she should offer more film festivals or other special events. “Sometimes I feel I’ve let the community down,” she said, by not offering more film festivals. “But I don’t have the time and energy. I’m a one-man band.” But talk to villagers about the Little Art, and no one mentions feeling let down. Rather, people can’t say enough about how much they value the theater. “Jenny is so community-minded in everything that she does,” said filmmaker Patti Dallas. “The Little Art’s cultural value is beyond description. It’s phenomenal that we have such a place in Yellow Springs.”
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