Preparations

The Trolley Ghost Tour held on Oct. 3 and the walking ghost tour that was held last Saturday Oct. 10 were a huge success. We sold out both events. This weekends continuation of the walking tour on Sat. Oct. 17 is also selling so well that we added two more tour times. A 7:10 tour and an 8:40 pm tour. We have this weekend and next weekend. I can already tell that this will be an ongoing event of the theatres. We had lots of stories left over that we didn't use. There are still some tickets left for the Sat. 17th tour and the Sat. 24th tour. We will take group reservations for additional bookings by request. We are not doing the walking tours on Oct. 31. We have a performance of Tom Dick and Harry that night.

Next Monday and Tuesday are the auditions for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever at 5 pm in the classroom above the studio theatre. April will direct. She needs lots of adults and kids to fill the roles. It's a great chance for the whole family to do a show. Rehearsals are generally from 5-7 pm. The show opens Dec. 10.

Tonight was to be the start of and Adult Improv class taught by Joey Judd. Joey is a terrific teacher and is great at improv games. We did not have enough people sign up for the class at this time so we will cancel the class for the fall and try again next January. I have a free workshop this Saturday at 9 am on Script Analysis. The workshop is open to anyone interested in acting and there are lots of openings available for people to still sign up.

We are putting the finishing touches on the Annual Fund Drive Campaign. The campaign letters should go out in the mail before the end of this month. A core group of board members have been working on this project and we hope that some of the changes we have made will make a big difference in how people understand donating to the theatre.

Tonight for Tom Dick and Harry is a run through of Act Two. Maria Miller who jumped in as Katerina has been gone since last Sunday on Fall Break. The other actors will be happy to see her back. This week so far has been spent on working on Act One off book. We open two weeks from today and things are tight but on schedule. The set got all of the doors yesterday for the first time and we worked on timing with the doors. The play has such rapid action that the doors are critical in their function. We tried out 3 different wheelbarrows over the past week to find just the right one that will carry Jim Roush on and Shawn James off. We have also rebuilt the couch and tonight will do our trial run of having Jim Roush fall into it and then having Al shut the top and sit on it. We raised it up about 2 inches so Jim could get into it with ease.

Kelly Salchli came in yesterday and today and painted the scenery for the City Mouse County Mouse Tour of Story Theatre which goes out November 2. She has painted the wall of the country mouse with seed packets as decoration and the city mouse home has framed postage stamps as her wall decorations.

I'm off to check on the new posters for Tom Dick and Harry at IVS before tonight's rehearsal. The billboard went to Lamar today for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever show. We always seem to have at least 3 shows in process at all times and often working on marketing for even more.