Watching the drama surrounding a new theater for the Rochester Broadway Theatre League, sometimes I feel as if I'm watching a game of chicken.

Clearly, both RBTL and City Hall want the theater group to stay in the city. And city officials seem to agree that the Auditorium Theatre can't be fixed to meet RBTL's needs. But that's a long way from city officials enthusiastically embracing a new theater. And they'll have to do that if the theater is going to get the public funding it needs.

Last Friday, representatives of Christa Development, Morgan Management, and LaBella architecture and engineering company presented a proposal for a theater on part of the Midtown Plaza land. That site is one of three that RBTL is considering. The other two are in the suburbs: Brighton and Irondequoit.

Unquestionably, the right place for a new RBTL theater is downtown Rochester. And the Midtown site - specifically, its northeast corner, with the main lobby and entrance fronting on Main Street - makes a lot of sense.

What we saw on Friday were simply conceptual drawings, not architectural renderings of what the building would look like. But the concept - the idea - is exciting. Set aside your concerns about the Auditorium Theater and your hostility to RBTL or Broadway shows or whatever. And set aside questions about financing. Just think about a theater drawing thousands more people downtown at night.

It's common for promoters of sports stadiums and theaters to insist that their project will boost economic development for their cities. I think they overstate the impact. But I do think a big theater at Midtown would boost the development that has slowly been taking place downtown.

It would add to the night-time population already created by Geva, the Eastman Theatre complex, the Little Theatres, Downstairs Cabaret, and the clubs. It would provide more customers for downtown restaurants. It would make downtown a more attractive business location.

Also important: A new theater would fill a hole in the downtown fabric.

Midtown Plaza is coming down, whether we have anything to replace it or not. And I don't know which is worse: empty buildings on Main Street or enormous empty lots.

Ah, but there's that unavoidable question: Who's going to pay to build a new theater (with a cost now estimated, on the Midtown site, at $70 million)? It's obvious that a theater at Midtown would require substantial public financing.

Many of us wouldn't object to some public funding for a theater. The question is, how much private money should we insist on?

RBTL's Arnie Rothschild says there'll be a campaign for private funds. How much hasn't been determined. And a similar campaign for a Ren Square theater never got off the ground.

So here we are again. Both the city and RBTL seem to agree that building a theater at Midtown will require a "partnership" among RBTL, the city, the county, and state and federal governments. They all seem to want this thing to happen. But RBTL and city officials don't seem to trust one another. And both insist it's up to the other to pull the partnership together.

Isn't that great?

Is RBTL using the threat of a suburban location to get concessions from the city? And how likely is it that a theater is feasible in Brighton or Irondequoit, anyway? And: Are city officials being reasonable in insisting on more assurance about the theater's finances? Or are they being obstructionist when they should pull together county, state, and federal officials whose support is essential?

Maybe it's a little bit of everything. But I keep thinking about the big empty lot we'll have when Midtown Plaza comes down. And how great it would be if we could add still more thousands to downtown's night-time population. And what a loss it would be if RBTL took those thousands to Brighton or Irondequoit.