Inside Exit Theatre, The Tenderloin's Performing Arts Empire

Inside Exit Theatre, The Tenderloin's Performing Arts EmpirePhotos: Exit Theatre/Facebook
Jean Schiffman
Published on November 19, 2015

Established on Eddy Street in 1983, Exit Theatre has grown horizontally over the years, and now has five storefront theaters ranging in size from 25 to 80 seats. “We’ve built a little empire by networking and by knowing the neighborhood for so many years,” Exit Theatre founder and artistic director Christina Augello tells us, and it’s true. Exit Theatre is, as Augello says, the grande dame of Tenderloin performing arts organizations.

One of the venues is around the corner at 277 Taylor St., where Cutting Ball Theatre, the anchor tenant there, just renewed its lease for another 10 years. The Eddy Street complex includes a concession area with a tiny stage where you can have a small meal and glass of wine pre- or post-show. “Funders would like to see a bigger and bigger budget,” conceded Augello, “but I’ve always believed in and enjoyed intimate theater, a reach-out-and-touch-people environment.” 


The “little empire” commissions, develops and produces new plays and offers low-cost rentals to other small companies. Its highest-profile event is the non-curated Fringe Festival, which is going on its 25th year and attracts a huge crowd every September (performing groups are selected by lottery; applications for next fall will be available in December on the website). And Diva or Die Burlesquefusing theater and burlesque, is a monthly series; it’s under the umbrella of DivaFest, a project of Exit that was very personal for Augello, who saw a gap for women in the arts that she wanted to fill. Now DivaFest is its own, volunteer-driven program that occasionally stages other shows as well.

“We produce under so many different names,” Augello said, “but the focus is always on the artist and the development of the artist.”

In addition to Exit’s own productions, several theater companies are in residence in the complex, including Breadbox Theatre and Dark Porch Theatre, mentored by Exit; actor/magician Christian Cagigal is a longtime Exit artist in residence. 

In 2010, Exit established its own publishing arm, Exit Press, which has by now published more than 16 play scripts. Most of the material is original and most of it has been produced or developed at Exit. 

A scene from the show SCHACHNER VS. SCHACHNER during this year's Fringe Fest.

It all began when Augello, an East Coast transplant, relocated here, working full-time as a bartender in North Beach (she’s the daughter of a proprietor of a theater saloon and piano bar in Buffalo) and pursuing a career in theater. She was introduced to the Tenderloin through her friend Richard Livingston, who was working in the neighborhood, where he’d founded community development, advocacy and refugee organizations. At that time, said Augello, theater artists and audiences did not want to be in the Tenderloin, especially at night, when retail shops were closed. “But where I come from, this is the type of neighborhood where theater usually is,” Augello said.

So she decided to start her own. Rent was initially $300 a month. “Where else would you get that but in the Tenderloin?" she said. "We had a good long-term lease, space to share at good rates—it was a perfect fit for us.”

Christina Augello. (Photo: Laurie Gallant/Facebook)

Now 68, Augello is living her life’s dream of operating a nonprofit theater that she can share with San Francisco’s close-knit theater community and in which she herself can perform; she’s scheduled to take the stage for three different productions in 2016, including an initial tryout of a play based on her own life story, “Denial Is a Wonderful Thing,” which she has created with playwright John Caldon.

Augello runs the theater full-time along with volunteers and a very small staff, including Livingston, who is managing director and Exit Press publisher. “I could never have done it alone,” she said. Livingston can do all the things that she finds difficult: talk to bureaucrats, negotiate leases, deal with the technical aspects of running a performing space. 

Still, she is concerned for the future of Exit and other theaters of its size. “When we started, we could do a show for under $1,000. Now it’s more like $10,000, and maybe that’s not enough. And funding is thinner." 

“No one thinks of this as a downtown theater district,” she added, “but it is.” She hopes the increase in small alternative venues like CounterPulse and PianoFight, and the success and stability of Cutting Ball, will elevate the neighborhood’s image, despite the ongoing problems on the street. (Exit recently worked with the police to remove street parking on the north side of Eddy Street, which, it is hoped, will discourage drug dealers.) 

A postcard featuring an illustration of the downtown theater district in 2012 by Claire Rice.

“I don’t think we’ll expand any more,” Augello concluded, “but try to solidify what we’ve accomplished and look to the future ... Things are changing. A lot of the artists have had to move [out of the city]. When a city changes as much as San Francisco has, you don’t know how it’s going to play out. We’re hoping to sustain and grow an audience for indie theater.”