Post My Way

We finished up the final weekend of performances with My Way. The audiences were smaller than we had hoped but the audience enthusiasm more than made up for it. Sunday's final performance received a wonderful response from the audience. The cast of Cheri, David, Fowler and Victoria became a wonderful ensemble who you could tell by watching loved singing with each other. We had the cast party at Cheri's last night and everyone had a great time to celebrate the show.

Saturday night before the performance Fowler sang in a wedding at First Presbyterian that didn't get over until after 7:15 pm. Curtain for the show Saturday night was 7:30 pm. We joked before we opened the house that if Fowler wasn't there at curtain time I would have to stretch my curtain speech by doing trivia or stump the band. Fortunately for the audience Fowler was in place to start the show at the regular time-although I did hear that people at the wedding saw him tapping his foot during his final wedding song trying to pick up the tempo a little in the Lords Prayer!

Sunday we did the drawing for the 37" HD flat screen television. Paula Briggs from Southern IL was the winner who was contacted by telephone. A big thank you to everyone who purchased tickets to help the seat campaign. about 7 seats will be purchased from the raffle proceeds.

Today is a day to return equipment and to clear out My Way and prepare for High School musical to move in to the main stage this week. We have a board meeting Wednesday night to check on our progress so far this year on fundraising. It's hard to believe that we are already at the end of the first quarter. Year to date our income is below our projected budget. It is always difficult to cut back when we had cut the budget to bare bones to begin with. I'm trying to be creative in how to cut back without damaging the program. It's always that damned if you do and damned if you don't. Things like cutting back on marketing but then you sell less tickets which cuts your income even more. It always seems that any expense areas are always tied directly to income areas.

I often marvel at for profit theatres and how they make money. Like restaurants many big city theatres, I've worked at, turn to the bar at intermission or before the show, to turn a profit. I don't think that case can be made in Western Kentucky however. We did a survey a few years ago and asked if MHT audiences wanted bar services before the show and at intermission and the answer was an overwhelming no. We decided long ago not to have a "gift shop" because most of those weren't making much money either. Part of our mission to make theatre available and affordable for the community is to keep our ticket prices low. So I'm left to scour the financial data for the next few days and see where I can eek out a couple dollars here or there to trim our expenses.