A quick check-up:

ACT Theatre, according to executive director Carlo Scandiuzzi, has cut its budget by 20%.

"Last year, our budget was $6.4 million," he says. "The projected ’09 budget was at $6.7 million before I came in [in August 2008]. We have since brought it down to $5.6 million."

The cuts are coming in production (reusing sets, hiring one designer for several shows instead of a new designer for every show), marketing, and leaving vacated positions empty. So far, there have been no layoffs or furloughs.

(Scandiuzzi also notes that this year's Christmas Carol beat all previous Christmas Carol records with a take "somewhere north of $650,000." He attributes that success to the bad economy, theorizing that people especially wanted to watch the Dickens story—and hear its moral about the milk of human kindness being better than money—this winter.)

The Rep is more coy about its numbers, but it sounds like they're being squeezed harder than ACT. Their budget, as of a 2006 tax return, was $9.3 million. Rumors have been circulating that they're looking to cut anywhere from 20% to 40% of their budget (down around the low $7 millions). Managing director Ben Moore confirms:

We are talking about everything from 20 to 40 percent; on better days it looks more like 25 or 30. It’s too soon to tell. Yes indeed, rumors will fly especially when there are so many moving parts, and the need to examine every one of them carefully. We will sort this out. We did it once before in 2003. That re-engineering was successful. I have reason to expect the same in this case.

The Rep has had two official layoffs and 55 of its staffers have taken a two-week furlough.

Intiman hasn't yet announced its damage.

(And, while we're talking numbers, the Seattle Men's and Women's Chorus—aka Flying House Productions—has volunteered that its budget has shrunk from $3.2 million to $2.9 million. So far.)