FOWLER, IN — You can smell the burger patties sizzling, 15 at a time, from Fifth Street, where folks stream toward the source past fading red brick facades in the dusk of summer.
Eating out in Fowler, Indiana, 30 miles from downtown Lafayette, usually means Pizza King or Subway. But on this Friday night, there’s a third option: the theater.
Volunteers sweat at a grill set up under a couple of canopy tents in the waning heat; business is good out here. Not so much inside, where smells of popcorn replace beef, where it would take 4,000 burgers sold out there to save the 85-year-old Fowler Theatre.
Of course, the theater isn’t banking on burger sales alone, though the cookouts seem to be helping; this is the third one of the summer, with two more to come. A board growing more creative by the day has scheduled a ghost hunt and spooky painting class for September, concerts and an adults-only night for the typically family-friendly spot (families buy more concessions).
Running the theater as before isn’t enough, Executive Director Jill Byrd says, because the summer attendance that once carried the business through the slow months of fall has slipped from 100 to 30, without explanation.
“We don’t know why,” Byrd says in front of the popcorn machine in a cramped concessions window, smiling faintly. “I’ve been here 15 years. Each summer is sold out.”
It takes $5,000 a month to keep the doors open. If current revenue holds, the theater will shutter in December.
Most of the money here comes from concessions sales. The theater keeps less than a third of its ticket revenue, sending the rest to film studios. The popcorn is so good, volunteers say, that people will bring their 85th anniversary buckets in just for the $2 refill, without seeing a movie. Amid their revenue slump, Byrd and the board have decided to raise candy prices, from $2 to $3.
“Notice the prices at this theater,” board member Bob Resner says, “$6 for adults, $4 for kids is admission.”
Popcorn is $2, $4 and $6, depending on size, and cups of soda are $1 or $2. “You cannot beat that,” Resner laughs.
Retro prices match a vintage interior.
Past the concessions room with a 1950s diner feel, complete with a neon-rimmed clock and Art Deco ceiling lights, lies the auditorium. Its design is near a century old, its decorations much newer; the entire room was refurbished in 2015.
The chairs fold like those you’d find at a ballgame. The screen is small by movie theater standards —quaint.
“It’s such a beautiful theater inside,” Susan Plank says. “And if we can help?” She turns to her husband, John. “It would be missed if it closed down,” he says.
The Planks come frequently, Susan says, though not as much as they once did, according to John.
They, of course, aren’t alone in that shift.
“I can understand it,” says Robin Brown, from Oxford. “So many people are streaming movies. I think it’s just easier for working parents today. It’s just easier to keep them at home and put a movie on.
“But kids need the theater experience. This is like a cool thing. They need to experience that, a movie on the big screen. Some movies just aren’t the same.”
The movie “Wicked,” she says, wouldn’t have been the same without the Fowler Theatre’s big screen.
Byrd and board members suspect business has been hurt by a lack of interest in what the theater has to show: It usually runs a movie for one or two weekends, sent by the large studios that make them. The studios choose movies they think will do well based on past performance, but often lately, they haven’t.
The theater’s leadership is wary of asking too much of its community by raising prices and requesting donations. Everyone there Friday night, it seemed, had seen a candid Facebook post from the theater’s account Aug. 12 detailing its struggles. The post had 537 shares and 343 likes by Monday morning.
“I think it’s really hard for the board to admit the fact that we’re struggling,” Resner says. “It truly is that we do not get any funding other than attendance or donation.”
The tiny community of Fowler, a farming, drive-through town intersected by U.S. 52, wants to do all it can. Byrd hopes it’s enough.
“Our community is 65% free and reduced lunch,” she says. “So we do have to keep that in mind. We keep it as affordable as we can.”
Jeff and Judy Tuttle, a retired couple, strolled up Fifth Street to join a growing line at the theater’s ticket counter, about an hour and a half after the burgers started sizzling.
They live “about six blocks that way,” Jeff says, pointing back the way they came. “We moved here about the first of July.”
They’re waiting in line to donate a few bucks, Jeff says. Judy brings their grandchildren to the theater on Wednesdays, when it offers free admission, popcorn and a drink for kids.
“They just want to bless the community,” Jeff says, a bright grin bracketed by a horseshoe mustache.
“We’ve only been here a month. We see the value of it.”
Reach Israel Schuman at ischuman@gannett.com or on X @ischumanwrites.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Small town of Fowler spends a night at the theater as it threatens to close its doors
Reporting by Israel Schuman, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
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