Week wrap up

We took down the set for Wedding Belles last Sunday after the final performance and had a wonderful cast party at Sue and Frank Fletcher's home. Monday Jim Keeney spent the day moving the continuing the strike and moving the Wedding Belles scenery back to the warehouse and clearing the stage. On Tuesday Jim and I removed the chairs from the auditorium. Wednesday Jim got the rental tables from the Carson Center and put those up. He and I measured on Thursday to space them evenly in the theatre. Wednesday evening was the board of directors meeting where the theatre reviewed our financials as of the end of March and looked ahead with a list of names to meet with for nominating for board of director positions next year. We are doing very well for the year so far after taking steps to cut our expenses at the beginning of the season. For the 3 quarters we have completed so far this fiscal year we spent over $50,000 less than last year at this time. On the income side we have taken in $37,000 more than last year. We ended last year with a budget deficit and this year we are looking good so far to end with a small surplus. The board of directors has been working hard on fundraising and annual fund drive while the staff has worked hard to cut costs. The performers and crews for the shows this year have been terrific and all the shows have met or exceeded budget so far this year and we have only 2 months left in the fiscal year. Our biggest show of the year is the final show Cinderella Enchanted. With a production budget of over $25,000 it always is our biggest expense show of the year. We are seeing a steady stream of donations to the theatre with our season ticket forms and we are within $10,000 of meeting our annual goal for contributions. We still have about $53,000 left to raise in income this year to meet budget but we are feeling very positive about our prospects. We also moved the date for our annual Curtain Call auction next year to March 4. We have moved the date a couple of times already and the announcement of Wizard of Oz at the Carson Center next year on March 11 forced us to move the date to the 4th.

The Youth Season will produce two plays next year. The Disney Musical Alice in Wonderland October 14-17, 22-24, and the powerful play based on a book 100 Dresses to be performed February 24-28. The theatre is also planning to produce the play EAT which was written by Linda Daughtery, the playwright who wrote The Secret Life of Girls. EAT is about teenage girls and boys with eating disorders and tools for coping with these pressures.

Thursday the Murder for Hire Troupe went back into rehearsal for an event this Saturday for the Paducah Remediation Services group. They are doing a benefit performance of our murder mystery to raise funds for The American Cancer Society.Two weeks ago the murder for hire troupe had a great time performing for Community Christian Academy and their spring formal.

The studio theatre tonight is rented for a group to do a performance. All week Cinderella has also been in rehearsal. Story Theatre's Pied Piper performed today at Unity School outside of Brookport IL for grades K-8.

This past Tuesday we had a meeting of arts organizations in Paducah and held a follow up meeting this morning. Several of the arts groups are going together to make a presentation to the McCracken County Fiscal Court on May 10. We all shared our schedules and issues. We do this quarterly and it is a time for all of us to work together as a group.

This afternoon we are working on brochures, newsletters, and fundraising campaign mailings. There is never a dull moment at MHT.

Mid Quilt Week 2010

We kicked off the week by redoing our box office lobby. Crounse Corportation contacted several non-profits that they were moving out of their old headquarters and were donating the office furniture to non-profits. I got a call from Darlene at the Paducah Symphony to tell me about it. I went over with Jim Keeney on Monday and we found a desk to replace my office desk. Two of the drawers in my desk had literally fallen apart a year ago and I have been looking for an economical replacement. The price was right! While we were there they asked if we needed any cubicle dividers. We didn't, but my mind suddenly began to think about the fact that I have wanted to partition our box office lobby into a ticket area and work/meeting area for years. I began to look at those dividers in ways that they hadn't originally been intended to do. We selected 5 panels and brought them back to the theatre. They are now installed in our lobby.

Tuesday Story Theatre went to Joppa Maple Grove in the morning and New Simpson Hill in the afternoon. We returned in time for me to finish up my presentation to the Paducah City Commission on funding for next year. We were among a group of several non profits all seeking funding.

Today we have Mary Kathrin Dorr shadowing the Tech Director and Grace Allen shadowing the Education Director. Jim clearing and cleaning the backstage and shop areas. April is teaching and prepping for her puppetry workshops with the Girl Scouts this weekend. Marsha is working on Season Tickets and Rhiannon is working on Wedding Belles tickets. I'm trying to finish the set design for Cinderella, design the Cinderella Billboard and do my shift working for the Rotary Quilt show. Lots going on!

Thursday Wedding Belles goes back into performances and Story Theatre heads out to Sikeston for two back to back performances. Lots of meetings are also taking place this week as the board gets ready for the April meeting on Wed. 28. We have budgets, nominations, fundraisers, and lots more to get squared away for next season.

Wedding Belles Pied Piper Death of Dr Pepper

It has been a wild week since last Saturday. We had the technical rehearsal for Wedding Belles on Sunday afternoon. Kathy Keeney has been working every day this week on putting plants and flowers on the set for the show. She has done a great job of making a garden look overgrown and yet with a few touches having it clean up nicely for the final scene of the show. Tonight was the preview performance of the show with about 10 family and friends of the cast and crew watching the final dress rehearsal to give the actors the sense of how an audience reacts before opening night tomorrow. Diane Byrd, Marsha Cash, Sue Fletcher, Audra Hall, and Kris Shanks are all doing a great job with the show.

This is one of those prop shows that the actors are constantly having to make sure they accomplish certain tasks at certain times. Audra has to put on 3 dresses in a short time so they can comment on each dress just as other actions occur in the script. Table clothes and dishes, vases of flowers, quilts, cakes, ice cream and all sorts of things are going on. Not to mention the wigs, hats, gloves, purses, and packages they all have to carry during the show.

Pied Piper has their final dress rehearsal tomorrow morning and then performs Friday morning at Farley elementary here in Paducah. The cast rehearsed in costumes for the first time today along with most of the sound. Tomorrow we add wireless microphones and then its on the road for the next 4-5 weeks. Miki Abraham, Sydney Hughes, Julie Price, and I are in the cast singing and dancing in a 35 minute musical audience participation show.

The Death of Dr. Pepper has their final dress rehearsal Thursday at 4. We ran the show twice today and used the guns for the first time. It is always a little scary the first time the actors have to shoot someone so we work with the blanks and the gun safety issues. Renie and Don Barger, April Cochran, Roy Hensel, Julie Price and Steve Schwetman are in this particular show that is going to be performed for the Community Christian Academy Prom on Friday night. Julie is doing double duty acting in Pied Piper and Dr. Pepper. She is so much fun to watch in both shows! The whole cast for Dr. Pepper has worked hard to memorize lines and action for the show with very few rehearsals due to spring break. The funniest moment for me was watching Renie, Julie and April who all have three very different accents in the play keep switching their accents. April has the same problems I do in that if she is next to someone with an accent she picks it up. During one point in tonight's rehearsal she was Italian, Swedish, German, and Russian. Add that to Renie's Southern and Julie's kind of Brooklyn/Valley Girl/ who knows what accent and you have a laugh riot.

The big news this week was also that MHT was featured in the National Endowment for the Arts Quarterly Magazine as the cover story. This was a real tribute to hard work of the MHT staff and volunteers behind the scenes to keep MHT running and to produce the many shows that we do each year. I've posted a copy of it on our face book page.

Please make plans to attend Wedding Belles which opens tomorrow!