Studio theatre and Lowertown

This weekend were jumping between events as usual. Friday afternoon Jim Keeney and Aaron Spoden set up the Market House informational tent at the Lowertown Art and Music Festival. That all happened while I was at Lone Oak Elementary performing Pied Pipers final shows. Saturday morning April had her dress rehearsal of the Footlights Elementary Troupe musical in the Studio Theatre. Joey Judd was having a run through of the Footlights Troupe High School Improv show in the Studio Theatre. We checked in on the Lowertown Festival during the day and prepared for The Way Home performance on Saturday night in the Studio Theatre.

Saturday evenings performance of The Way Home was terrific. The studio theatre was about 80% capacity for the benefit performance and a nice reception was held afterwards next door at Two Street Studio. About $1,000 was raised to help local artist Sarah Roush with her medical bills as she battles cancer.

Sunday saw the Lower Town Festival for its final day. The temperature was sizzling in the mid 90's on the blacktop streets but lots of people came by the MHT booth over the weekend and got information on classes and shows. Sunday afternoon Cinderella had a run through and I took some rehearsal Flip Video which I'll post on the face book pages and the MHT website.

Wednesday evening is the MHT board meeting. We are in the last two months of our fiscal year and are working on board nominations for next year and budgeting. This week will have lots of long days as we are in the final push for Cinderella. We bring in the costumes on Thursday evening and have the full tech rehearsal on Sunday.

I was disappointed to read in the Paducah Sun yesterday that the County government has decided not to fund the arts request. It takes time to show that the benefits of arts funding is just as important as recreational sports funding. While soccer and baseball got some limited funding the arts did not. Hopefully next year we can make our case again. The arts in Paducah returns $6 in local tax revenue for every $1 local government invests in the arts. In tough economic times people tend to view the arts as a luxury and not as an economic growth engine. We are making some headway but we obviously still have a long way to go to get that message out.