Thanks largely to a sold-out Valentine’s Day cabaret last Monday, Intiman Theatre is $120,000 closer to its looming goal: to raise half a million dollars by the end of March to keep the theater open. But the work doesn’t stop there. They’ll need another quarter-million by the end of June, the same by the end of September—and that’s in addition to their annual fundraising goal of $1.75 million. Put simply: The theater needs a lot of cash to bring you its 39th season, opening March 25 with Arthur Miller’s WWII tale All My Sons.

Intiman officially went into survival mode on February 11, when it issued an open letter to the arts community detailing the troubled story of its mismanagement: inaccurate accounting; months of bookkeeping backlog; unauthorized transfers of endowment funds to the operating budget by the managing director; lapsed payments to unions. Though managing director Brian Colburn resigned in November after 18 months on the job—citing personal reasons—it’s unclear how far back the problem goes. Intiman is conducting an audit of the 2009 and 2010 seasons that will be finished in June; they’ve since replaced Colburn with former director of development Melaine Bennett, and slashed the 2011 budget by 25 percent. The staff is working a four-day week. The rest, to a degree, is up to you. They need Seattle to go to the theater, and to donate.

Intiman will host a free season preview on Monday, Feb 28, at 7pm (cocktails at 6) led by artistic director Kate Whoriskey, associate producer Andrew Russell, community programs director Zaki Abdelhamid, and actor Daniel Breaker (star of the upcoming The Playboy of the Western World). Director Valerie Curtis-Newton will also be on hand to discuss All My Sons, which will star Broadway veteran Chuck Cooper as Joe Keller, a father whose mistakes during WWII threaten the stability of his family. Such strange parallels.

Read on for more on Intiman’s 2011 season.