This Northwest Folklife Festival job just might be bigger than Costco

Last year, Robert Townsend needed a job.

The one-time actor found himself in Seattle because of his wife's relocation, and with no tech-savvy skills or retailing genius, the stuff of Amazon and Microsoft, he was not.

Still, Townsend possessed a practical and organized mind and was handy with punch lines. So to him, his professional destiny in this land of technology and large-scale commerce was obvious:

"I thought I'd be a terrific greeter at Costco," Townsend, 57, said.

Or maybe something just a bit closer to his arts background. Within months, he was hired to run Northwest Folklife, the organization charged with staging one of the city's most beloved rituals, the Northwest Folklife Festival. The free four-day event — held at Seattle Center over Memorial Day weekend — marks the emotional start of summer for many. The 37th edition of the fest starts today with more than 7,000 musicians, dancers and artists on the schedule.

About 250,000 people are expected at Folklife 2008, making it one of the largest community arts events in North America.

"We have 1,034 discrete events that link an audience with a practitioner," said Townsend. "If we had one stage and presented all the shows 24 hours a day, it would take 28 straight days to finish."

Townsend started his Folklife job just five months ago. "The thing I'm looking forward to is just experiencing it."

It'll be the first Folklife for Townsend, who for the past eight years was the producing director of the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, also a free outdoor event held every May in the city's largest public park.

Planning for this year's festival — the theme is "Urban Indians" — was well under way before Townsend took over. He succeeded Michael Herschensohn, who held the job for nine years and was credited for guiding the event out of debt before he retired.

Most of Folklife's $1.5 million annual budget comes in during the festival (there's no admission, but a donation of $10 per person or $20 per family is suggested). For that reason, three days of rain during last year's festival left the organization with $167,000 of new debt, which Townsend inherited. So throughout the four-day fest, Townsend's duties will include encouraging audiences to donate and become "part owners" of Northwest Folklife, an independent arts organization that receives no public funding apart from a modest grant from the mayor's office.

"The financial health of Folklife is an important facet of what I do," Townsend said. "I'm learning about that culture in Seattle and learning where to go for resources. With the numbers of people we draw here, we have a real opportunity."

Finances and fests are his world now, but Townsend's background is theater, which he studied in college. He moved to New York in the early 1970s to start an acting career, appearing in David Mamet's first play in New York. Despite some initial success, Townsend found himself "at the bottom of the pyramid" of actors in the city, spending the better part of a year without much work. When he was 26, he was hired as a stage manager. That was the turning point of his career, as he began to make a living producing plays in New York and in the New England area.

His tenure in St. Louis was a natural step in his career. The weeklong Shakespeare event drew 30,000 people every summer and featured jugglers, string quartets, acrobats, belly and ballet dancers, and scholars who entertained audiences between plays.

"It's not unlike what we're doing here," said Townsend. "The artistic mode is a little different, but the practice is largely similar."