Changes in planning

It was a difficult week. With the news of the death of Mary Jane McGuire we were all in a kind of shock. It was also the week for the Kentucky Arts Council grant to be submitted no later than Friday at 5 pm. During the week we found out that the date of our Curtain Call auction event was also the date that Lourdes Hospital had selected for the American Cancer Society fundraiser Dancing with the Stars. We try not to compete with other fundraising events if at all possible. When we selected our date last July there was nothing scheduled on March 27. However things happen. The committee chaired by Valerie Pollard got together and decided to move our date, even though we already had advertising out, in order to not conflict with the Dancing With the Stars event which also has some Market House Theatre supporters involved in. So after a lot of schedule shoving, phone calls to make sure that no one knew of any other conflicts and April being gracious enough to sacrifice her final dress rehearsal for the Footlights troupes in the theatre space, we moved the date up to March 19. The Footlights troupe shows will be the next day on the 20th. We held the Feb. MHT newsletter from going to press until we could make that change.

Jim Keeney, Mike Brewer, Jeff Spicer, and Steve Schwetman all pitched in and moved the majority of the old seats to the warehouse last Thursday. We still have a few at the theatre but the auditorium is almost totally empty now. We will try to shampoo the carpets and get the new seats ready for their debut. The company shipped us the wrong arms on the chairs without the space for a plaque but they are now shipping the correct ones and we should have them all installed before Feb. 4 when God's Favorite opens.

It always seems like there is plenty of time to finish up the details to avoid the last minute rush on the grant and yet it always seems we are down to the wire. I submitted the grant online by 3 pm in the afternoon. But because of problems getting my supporting materials to load onto a disc I walked into the post office at 4:55 pm to get the grant package postmarked by the 5 pm deadline.

Saturday the funeral service for Mary Jane McGuire was held and many of the Market House Theatre performers and friends were there to honor Mary Jane. I was asked to be a Pall Bearer to represent the Rotary Club of Paducah and was honored to do that and represent MHT as well. I've thought a lot about the many shows and events I worked on with Mary Jane. I will miss her. She was a dear friend.

Saturday morning I met with Cindy and Bonnie and Ross Daniels to discuss the auditions for Cinderella Enchanted. That show should be lots of fun and we had a good meeting about the classic love story that has lots of modern overtones and humor in it as well. Saturday night I worked on a model of the set for April for Boy in the Girls bathroom set. It will be a challenging show to produce with the many scenes and locations that are needed. Many of the scripts today are written like movie scripts where characters walk from one location to the next with no break in the dialogue. Audiences don't like to sit through lots of scene changes anymore so we have to incorporate the scenery transitions into the action of the play.

Monday evening is play selection committee and hopefully we will narrow done the choices to our final slate of plays. We have several good plays to pick from. The challenge is to build a season out of them.