May 16

It is about 11pm Friday night and I'm working from home on the newsletter. Thursday I spent most of the day working on the website. Creating descriptions for next seasons plays and putting in the audition dates. I also updated several pages with new photos on the photo gallery page and added descriptions for preschool classes on the home page, summer workshop page and on the classes page. I also updated the story theatre/workshops page. We finalized details for the summer lunch box theatre show during the summer festival and talked with the caterer about food prices for the event.

The afternoon was more of the same except for the phone call from the representative for AACT which is the American Association of Community Theaters. The representative called me to talk about our credit card processing fees. AACT has worked to get a lower fee structure for member theatres. I've shopped these fees before. I was amazed to discover all of the hidden fees that are associated with our accepting Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover. Each credit card has a different percentage that is charged to the theatre for accepting it based on the amount charged. In addition there is a transaction fee charged to the theatre for each transaction. Visa and Mastercards also have different rates depending on whether it is a debit card, a standard card, and a corporate card (like a Shell Visa card or a different company Visa). My head was swimming with numbers by the end of the call trying to sort out exactly what we pay to do business with credit cards. In addition there are different companies for our in house box office and our online ticket sales. To jump to the end we pay almost $5,000 a year in fees to accept credit cards.

Many theatres charge you a transaction fee for every transaction. Market House Theatre does not. We don't charge to do phone sales or walk up sales. We do charge a fee to cover our costs for online sales. We have struggled for years to keep up with rising costs and wrestled with adding fees. We have come down on the side of our customer and kept any costs incurred inside the ticket price except for our online sales. If you walk up to the box office or order tickets by telephone we are one of the few theaters that doesn't charge you more than the cost of the tickets. I don't know how long we will be able to hold out against that trend but the public is safe for at least another year.

Today I worked on articles for the newsletter and then had to make a quick trip to South Livingston Elementary to check on a bad microphone for the story theatre tour. One of our wireless body mics isn't working well. I stopped at Rowton Audio on the way back and rented a unit that we can use until the end of the tour in 2 weeks. These units are very expensive to purchase. I had just dropped off a unit on Thursday that went bad earlier in the week. We have had some of the wireless packs for 10 years.

When I returned to the theater Jim Keeney and I talked about some of the set pieces for Anything Goes. We need two beds, a bunk bed, a rolling bar unit and several tables and chairs. I then went back to the office and Marsha was working on a big poster for the lobby for Anything Goes. We purchased a large format printer used several years ago and haven't used it for a couple of years. I dragged it out of the scene shop office were it was collecting dust and down to the lobby and tried to load drivers and get it up and running. I only partially succeeded. I'll have to work on it again Monday.

Saturday brings footlights in the morning, and Zink in the afternoon. April is at home this evening getting ready for the cast party on Sunday at our home for the cast. It is traditional that after the last performance the cast strikes (takes down) the set and then goes to the directors house for a party. April tries to make a couple of special items for the party. Two more performances of Zink and then the show is over. It has been a good run for the cast. We are 3 weeks from opening for Anything Goes.