Formerly Labeled a Juvenile Deliquent, Matt Strauch is Now Leading Bas Bleu Theater Into the Future

Matt Strauch is talking marketing and money as he checks his email.

He talks about print advertising, telemarketing, focus groups ... nothing especially unexpected for the general manager of one of the fastest-growing companies in the region, until you consider that the company he heads isn’t involved in renewable energy or microchip manufacturing or anything else that comes to mind when one thinks of “big business” in Fort Collins.

In fact, Strauch is the GM of Bas Bleu Theatre, a cultural mainstay in the ever-evolving Fort Collins arts scene and No. 1 on Northern Colorado Business Report's recent Mercury 100, the publication’s annual list of the area's fastest-growing companies.

While the walls of Strauch’s office, covered with show posters and Mardi Gras paraphernalia, reveal clearly enough that his business is in entertainment and culture, his operating philosophy—“I want us to effectively operate and to not spend money on things that probably aren't going to work”—could be adapted to anything from automobiles to iPods.

Strauch emphasizes the value of one-on-one contact with potential theatergoers and the simple success of positive public experience at the theater.

“I always thought that arts could make the world a better place, and I think they can. There is something about the arts that make them so attractive, just something so altruistic,” he said. “It makes you want to grow, to learn, to discover new things and to try new things. The arts themselves are an experience and you want to get involved.”

Throughout his years in theater, community leadership and political involvement, Strauch has served on numerous boards, councils and committees, including Americans for the Arts, the American Association of Community Theatre, Arts for Colorado, the Larimer County Board of Adjustment and the Fort Collins Youth Advisory Board. He has sat on more boards and organizations than could be listed here, and he’s currently one of Colorado’s main advocates for arts at the federal level.

What makes Strauch’s accomplishments even more amazing is that until recently, he wasn’t even old enough to drink.

In most cases his age is no barrier to his pursuits—especially now that he can grab a glass of wine with a potential donor or sponsor. In fact, it’s likely his youthful energy and his dedication, that have made Strauch—and Bas Bleu—as successful as he’s been.

And while he hasn't amassed the same amount of experience as others in similar leadership positions, his life experiences have given him a unique perspective on adolescence, arts and philanthropy.

Strauch was a latchkey kid at a young age.

His parents divorced when he was a toddler, and the separation turned into a difficult custody dispute that lasted many years. The little boy's weeks became fractured among parental visits, with time spent at mom's house for a few days, dad's house for a few days and weekends split between them. His mom, suffering from health problems, lost her job at Hewlett Packard and became disabled. Surviving with the help of government assistance, Strauch lived in poverty during much of his childhood.

But in seventh grade, Strauch began to demonstrate an astute business mind and an unconstrained cleverness. In his early teens, he developed a business called Matt's Coins, where he bought rolls of state coins produced by the U.S. Mint in Denver from local banks and sold them on eBay and other Web sites for $11 a roll, making thousands of dollars before he hit puberty.

“I've pretty much had a job or run a business since I was 12,” he said. “Most of the jobs I've created, or they are jobs that were created especially for my talents.”

Sometimes the “jobs” stretched the bounds of legality, and although declining to elaborate, Strauch said he got into serious trouble with the law from the time he was 13.

“I committed a variety of crimes,” he said, “white-collar crimes in and around my junior high school. I won't get into the details, but I ended up being adjudicated as a delinquent juvenile. I had four felonies and three misdemeanors, ranging from burglary to fraud to theft.

“That radically changed my life.”

He was sent to an alternative junior high, where he did well and was soon transferred to the Teen Learning Center, the place that “made me who I am.”

“It was a school for kids who maybe weren't in legal trouble but who just didn't fit into what a standard junior high was. It just wasn't their gig, and obviously I was that,” he said.

There, Strauch maintained a 4.0 GPA and was popular. At TLC, he also met Tinka Greenwood, who helped to craft who Strauch has become and who taught him respect and integrity.

“She always defined integrity as what you do when no one is looking,” he said.

Meanwhile, Strauch was on probation and doing hard labor on county work-crews to pay off court-ordered restitution, digging trails in rural Larimer County, shoveling horse manure and building fences. As a part of his community service, he even compiled a cookbook to raise money for the Edora Skatepark by collecting recipes from professionals of the Eight Judicial District. He still has the book in a box in his office.

After junior high at TLC, Strauch made the jump back to traditional schooling at Fort Collins High School, where he got interested in theater and student government.

“That's where theater became real,” he said.

In 2002, Strauch saw his first local play: OpenStage Theater & Company doing The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940. The next day he called to see if he could help out. Since then, Strauch has not stopped pursuing involvement in theater, and he joined Bas Bleu Theater in January of 2003 as a house manager.

“We were saying, 'He's so young. That's what we've always said,” said Tricia Navarre, Bas Bleu production manager who interviewed Strauch for his first position at Bas Bleu. “Anytime new responsibilities would come along, we would say, 'But he's only 15,' then 'he's only 16, only 17, 18, 19.' And every time he has exceeded our expectations.”

Strauch never wanted to be thought of as a hooligan, he says of his juvenile delinquency. Likely, he just needed to channel his energy and intelligence toward positive challenges.

“I was never interested in doing what other junior high kids were doing-whatever it was that they were doing,” he said. “One of the things people remembered about me was that I always had something in my hands. I was always doing something. I was always busy.”

And Strauch has maintained that quality. Choosing not to go to college straight out of high school, he took jobs at Bas Bleu and the Lincoln Center. He has been the general manager at Bas Bleu for two years and does almost everything non-artistic, including fundraising, marketing, operations, fiscal management and staff oversight.

“I love it. It's my gig,” he said.

With a yellow T-shirt pulled over his nice black button-up, Strauch is talking philanthropy over a burger.

CB & Potts has turned into a mad house at lunchtime on Tuesday: The restaurant is doing a fundraiser for the family of Nicholas Greenwood, a local child who was tragically killed in a recent accident. The boy was the grandson of Strauch's Teen Learning Center teacher Tinka Greenwood. The yellow T-shirt was purchased out front, the funds going toward the family's extensive medical bills. Strauch also used his birthday party as a fundraiser for both the Greenwood family and Bas Bleu Theatre.

Much of Strauch's work revolves around fundraising—and his daily challenges reflect the financial obstacles of the average nonprofit arts group.

“There's the larger question of the role of arts in nonprofits: the struggle we have to get people to support the arts in the nonprofit setting,” he said. “There are so many ways people can support nonprofits or charitable causes. … There are so many social organizations to support, the arts can get left behind. And I am constantly trying to tell people that the arts play a significant role in the community. It beautifies it. It makes it more of an understanding place and a more tolerant place, a more educated place.”

Donations are down over the past few years, and Bas Bleu and other cultural organizations fight for dwindling donations as well as potential audience members.

He calls the current arts scene “excellent but stagnant.” Even with the growth noted by NCBR's Mercury 100, Strauch says increased revenue is simply a byproduct of Bas Bleu's current capital campaign, an effort to pay off and retrofit their new location. Challenges truly abound for the local arts groups.

“Facilities are maximized. We are all struggling to exist. We have no sustainable funding for the most part,” he said. “It's hard to branch out to the community as a whole. We have a great connection to our Old Town friends, 80524 and 80525 (ZIP codes). But there are no arts in the south. They just don't exist. Past Horsetooth there's nothing. We need to fix that or we need to find a good, convenient way for people to come to theater up here.”

Many of the barriers Bas Bleu faces can likely be overcome by education: about theater in general, about the performances and even something as simple as how to say “Bas Bleu.” But as Fort Collins' arts scene grows—with new facilities and performance venues planned—the worries also grow for the smaller cultural organizations that must compete for audiences, he said.

“With so much growth in the mix there are some concerns that we will get blown out of the water. We will always have our die-hard supporters. But we have to be careful. People only have so much money to spend on arts and entertainment,” he said. “So, we have to be smart and we have to have the attitude of arms wide open and be willing to adapt to the environment that we are in, in terms of arts and culture.

“We can make it. I know we can.”

But despite that stress, Strauch considers this his dream job. Still, he has begun taking classes at Front Range Community College and hopes to soon start at Colorado State University, double-majoring in theater and political science. That will give him an education to back up his experience and his zeal.

“I have a passion for my job that most people don't have,” he said. “I really work all the time. I'm a person who likes to stay busy. And I like to do good work. I just can't be idle. There is a mechanism in me that won't let me stop. But you know what they say, 'It keeps you out of trouble.'”