December wrap up

Every time I look at the calendar I can't believe how fast the time is going. The theatre will be open until 5 pm Thursday Dec. 22 and then close and reopen Jan. 3. If you have any last minute gift certificates you need stop by tomorrow to pick those up. I just sent out scripts for the next murder mystery dinner theatre event March 8-10.We will do Murder by Magic. A producer is trying to take over the Market House Theatre and turn it into a year round haunted house. The producer tries to bring back the ghosts of a famous magician and his assistant who tragically died in the theatre with the help of a local psychic. Of course not everything goes as planned and one of the company members are murdered. See if you can solve the mystery and win a prize. Tickets will go on sale Jan. 3.

Escanaba in da moonlight is taking a short break for Christmas and will be back in rehearsal before New Years. That show opens Jan. 12 and it looks to be lots of fun! WARNING- if crude language and bodily function humor are not your cup of tea- this is not the show for you. If watching 5 male hunters go to any length to bag a buck, "wit lots o drinking o de maple sap whisky" and "yur males bonding wit de tall tales of da deer hunting" written by Jeff Daniels then this is da show fur u!

That was my limited attempt of the Upper Peninsula Michigan accent. There are websites devoted to this show about Yoopers and all things U.P.

The board of directors met last night with a pot luck get together to celebrate the holidays and review the first half of our current fiscal year. We've had lots of positive response to the news that MHT ended the second consecutive year in the black. We used almost all of the surplus to pay for maintenance repairs on the buildings in the current fiscal year and the consultants we've been working with on a future plan for MHT. Hopefully by the time we announce our 49th season in March we will have made some decisions about facility improvements and some exciting new programming for our 50th Anniversay in 2014!

Speaking of announcing our 49th season the play selection committee headed up by Denise Bristol is madly reading plays for consideration for next season! We have to have our list finalized and work on securing the rights by the end of January if at all possible.

January has auditions for The Adventures of Nate the Great on the 9&10, Getting Sara Married on the 23&24. Two weeks later on Feb. 6&7 are auditions for Hairspray.

The January newsletter is going through its final proofing and should hit mailboxes soon! We have lots of information about some new acting classes for adults that will start in Jan.

We have received some donations in memory of JC Dudley this past week. JC will be missed a great deal by everyone who knew him. He gave me a tie tack a few years ago that he wore to the theatre for opening nights. It is something I treasure. I've worn it a couple of times in his honor on the Sundays when he would be in the audience. I couldn't help but smile when ever he entered the theatre.

On behalf of the Staff and the Board of Directors Merry Christmas, Happy Hannuka, we hope that everyone has a safe and joyous New Year! See you in 2012!

November 12 2011

The 39 Steps opened Thursday night. It has been a tough show with lots of technical elements. There are well over 100 light cues and 100 sound cues, smoke machines, flash devices, still and video images and dozens of costume and sets pieces. We have been changing things right up to opening night. A great example was that the night before the final dress we eliminated all the scene change crew from coming onstage requiring the 4 actors to do all the scenery changes in front of the audience. After the final dress rehearsal we hung several of the furniture pieces like chairs, tables and stools from the walls to make the show more theatrical with actors getting their set pieces from all over the stage to create the next scene. The actors found out about this change when they walked in for opening night. After opening night I realized it took too long for the actors to hang their scenery pieces back up on the walls after the scene so we now have the pieces carried offstage where they are stored until intermission when they are put back up onstage.

The cast and crew have done a great job of adapting to these last minute changes. The creative process is extremely stressful when you have that deadline of opening night. Sometimes when you fix one problem you discover that two other problems were created. Tension builds and often I find myself getting more blunt the closer to opening we get- barking at the crew when the lights are late or the scene changes don't happen fast enough. Stopping a scene during the dress rehearsals and by yelling "No, No, No! Do it again!" I really do try not to yell and scream as a director or designer but there are times when I find myself doing just that.

As I read the paper today about the Tilghman HS game big win over their playoff rivals Owensboro. One of the players said "we aren't going to hear about the 56 points we scored, we're going to get yelled at because we let the other team score 17 points against us!"

That is what I feel like at times- focusing on the small things that go wrong and trying to make every joke funny, make every dramatic moment filled with a real human drama and easily go from one moment to the next. With very difficult shows like this my hat is off to the cast and crew who make magic happen with each performance and put up with my ranting and raving to make the show better. When we do it right, it looks effortless. Getting it to look that way is far from easy. Thanks again to a wonderful cast - Fowler, Landon, Roy and Heather. Thanks to a great crew- Assistant Director/Stage manager Denise Bristol, Light board operator Jim Roush, Sound operator Lisa Humphrey, stage crew, Jim Keeney, Betty Wise, and Tomas Lesnowinsk, and dressers Diane Byrd and Kris Shanks . If you don't come to see The 39 Steps you will have missed a great performance.

October 29 2011

To say that October has been a whirlwind would be a big understatement. We have just completed the run of Charlotte's Web, The Downtown Walking Ghost Tours, and the Masquerade Ball. The annual fund drive is in full swing and The 39 Steps is in rehearsal. In addition Escanaba in da Moonlight had auditions this past Monday and Tuesday and the Murder for Hire troupe is getting the materials together to present Murder at the Company Party on Dec. 3rd for Hilliard Lyons Investment firm and then on Dec. 8 & 9 at the Market House in a dinner theatre setting. As I write this we are about an hour from getting set up to do the final Oak Grove Cemetery and Mausoleum tours. Last night we did 4 tours that were either sold out or very close to sold out. Having written all that I need to break that down a little.

Charlotte's Web had a terrific run. The cast was outstanding and Ella as Wilbur, Martha as Fern, Maria as Charlotte were especially superb in their performances. The run ended with a standing room only crowd on the final Sunday performance and exceeded our budget goals for ticket sales. The cast did 6 school matinees and 6 public performances all told. April once again did a great job directing the production.

The Downtown Walking Ghost tours ran 3 weekends during the same time Charlotte's Web was performing. The opening night there was a mystery bus tour group from Missouri that found themselves with tickets to Charlotte's Web and then filed out of the theatre to find me in full ghost tour guide costume where we boarded their bus and did a downtown and lowertown tour of haunted locations. Cat Tilker gets a special thank you as she led tours along with me all three weekends. Fowler Black and Marsha Cash also get a big thank you for taking tours one weekend each with Cat and I as we did up to 6 tours a night. This weekend with the Oak Grove tours Cat, Fowler, Marsha, Kim Yocum and I will spend about 5 hours in the cemetery telling its history and the stories of its more colorful and sometimes ghostly apparitions. Special thanks to goes to all of the guides for spending time learning the stories and making the event very successful for the theatre. With all the tours together we hope to make about $7,000 in tour ticket income. This income helps to pay for additional items that come up during the year not covered by our regular shows and fundraisers.

Kristin Williams and Melisa Mast poured their heart and soul into MHT's first ever Masquerade Ball. Along with Kathryn Joyner, Cindy Miller, Susan Gafnee Evans, Susan Ybarzabal, and Sarah Bynum this group of very talented individuals created an event that had all of Paducah buzzing! Incredible food from Laura Duff of Pampered Palette and one of the best bands I've heard in a long time -The Nash Vegas All Stars created an evening that attendees will remember for a long time. Special thanks goes to Karson Kelly and his band of stilt walkers who entertained everyone as they entered for the evening. The theatre raised approx. $25,000 after expenses in income from tickets for the event, sponsorships, and the live and silent auctions and costume rentals. We would like to thank all those businesses and individuals that donated items and services to help MHT raise money for our programming. A huge thank you goes to Darlene Mazzone of Paducah Life for her support of the event and to Natalya and Jack Cody of Creatures of Habit for their support and donation of part of the proceeds of the costume rentals. Thanks also to MHT staff Marsha Cash for manning the registration desk with help from Kristy Waddie. Jim Keeney spent the evening taking great photos of the event for us to publish online. The committee is still talking about how to make next year even better. If you have suggestions we would love to hear them. Please send comments and suggestions to info@mhtplay.com. Next years event will be Saturday Oct. 20, 2012! Start planning your costume now!!

Cindy Miller has been hard at work for weeks now preparing and creating MHT's annual fund drive. Over a thousand letters went out recently to past donors and other who support MHT in a variety of ways. A general support letter is currently at the printer in process to go out this next week. MHT is needs to raise $70,000 this year in annual tax deductible contributions that support our youth and adult programming.

The 39 Steps starring Fowler Black, Heather Tomko, Roy Hensel and Landon Baker is in high gear getting ready for Tech next Sunday and opening night on Nov. 10! There are so many scenes and characters in the show the actors have been working for two weeks now on characters and timing. The show is very theatrical with actors using all kinds of individual objects to create the locations called for in the play. One of the props is a rolling door unit that the performers moves across the stage and then walks through it to create a new scene separate from the scene they just ended. If you like fast paced action and comedy this is the perfect show for you.

The auditions for Escanaba in da Moonlight were held last Monday and Tuesday. We are still needing additional men to audition. The first part of this season has called for lots of men to perform and we did not have enough men audition to cast the show. We have several very talented male actors audition for this hysterical deer hunting comedy but can't complete the casting until we find one more male actor ages 20-50 to complete the company. If you are interested please contact Michael Cochran at 270-444-6828 ext. 214 to set up an audition.

The Murder for Hire troupe is in the process of receiving their scripts for the show Murder at the Company Christmas Party. Troupe members Renie Barger, Fowler Black, Marsha Cash, Tom Dolan, Audra Hall, Roy and Travis Hensel, are preparing once again to challenge and audience to witness a murder right in front of their eyes and solve the clues to who-dunnit! The dinner theatre shows on Dec. 8 & 9 will be catered by Neil's Catering. The menu will be Roast Beef, Poppyseed Chicken, 3 vegetables, rolls and tea. Beer and wine bar will also be available for purchase at a cash bar. Tickets are $35 each for the event. A special nod goes to Fowler Black for learning lines for 39 Steps, Ghost Tours and Murder at the Company Christmas Party! Fowler's memory is going to need a rest over the Christmas Holidays!!

The theatre has finally completed most of the maintenance repairs on our historic properties. This year we had unexpected repairs of over $20,000 to our roofs, masonry, and back lot due to water damage from last spring. In addition the main Air conditioning unit in the Market House building had to be repaired at a cost of over $11,000. The City of Paducah is picking up a sizable portion of the at cost as owners of the Market House building. Last week when it got cold out we turned the boiler on backstage and discovered a major leak in the heating cools for the stage unit. That we expect to also be a major expense to repair. These maintenance repairs have really been a burden on this years budget. Events like Charlotte's Web exceeding its budget by $2,000 and making our budget goals for the Masquerade Ball and the annual fund drive become even more critical to keeping the theatre up and running.

As October comes to a close the thousands of people who have volunteered, purchased tickets and supported MHT in fundraising and annual fund drive events continue to show why Market House Theatre is one of Kentucky's leading community theatres.

Happy Halloween!

The show must go on

It has been up and down this past week. We have overcome lots of obstacles and each time it seems that something else comes up to challenge us. The main theatre air conditioner after 2 days of trying to find out what was causing our continuing problems was finally narrowed down to the main compressor unit had worn out and was constantly overheating and shutting down. We were notified 2 1/2 hours before show time on Thursday Sept 8 before the start of our second weekend of performances. The compressor unit was had to be replaced but the earliest it would arrive from out of town was Monday Sept. 12. Then we would have to get a crane to take the old one off the roof and put the new one on.

The weather mercifully cooled off for that weekend and we were able to do the shows with the overhead ceiling fans running during the performances with very little audience discomfort. The compressor unit didn't show up the following Monday but did arrive the next day and was finally installed and the system was working at 100% about 4 pm on Thursday Sept. 15 just in time for the 3rd weekend of performances of Putnam County Spelling Bee.

On Saturday Sept. 17, thirty minutes prior to opening the auditorium to allow the audience in for seating for the 7:30 show that night the stage lighting system crashed and became totally inoperable. That's the interesting thing about live theatre. You never know what is going to happen. You also have the motto- the show must go on!

I've been working in theatre now for over 35 years (that makes me feel really old!). Each year some new challenge comes along that demands you come up with a solution in a crises situation. I feel like the character on the old TV show McGiver some days when you have to improvise something out of whatever is on hand to get out of a tough situation. There are always several paths you can take when faced with what seems to be a hopeless situation. One of them is to give up. To cancel the show. When ever we have rough weather everyone assumes that is what we will do- cancel the show. It seems to amaze people when we don't do that. We have only canceled in extreme circumstances (the ice storm).

Thing I love about theatre people is that we all have a show must go on attitude. It's not a silly thing that "show biz" people say. It truly is a code of conduct. When you are faced with difficult situations you don't give up. You find a way to not just survive but succeed! Sometimes our best performances come from very difficult circumstances.

So we madly scrambled and were able to rig up 4 floodlights using stage lighting cables from the backstage to put just enough light on stage to keep the entire stage illuminated. We dug out our 30 year old portable lighting dimming system that you plug into a wall outlet and then plugged the lighting cables into that. We were able to at least bring the four floodlights up and down to give some different lighting to the show. Our old system however can only handle 1,000 watts per channel for up to two channels. During the Saturday night show one of the channels kept flipping its breaker so we kept trying to run the lights at only about 75% or 750 watts to keep it going.

We were able to take a show that had over 100 lights and almost 100 light cue changes and redesign it as the performance progressed to do the show with 4 lights and a follow spot and still created about 40 light cues all made up as we went along. Lisa Humphrey, Jim Roush, and Jim Keeney all did a great job of following my verbal instructions to change the lights with each scene. Sunday Jim Keeney and I came in early and re-hung, re-cabled and re-lamped the flood lights so they wouldn't keep blowing the old breakers and we could all rest a little easier that we wouldn't lose all the stage lighting if one breaker went out.

This morning we called the lighting repair company that we use to come out and see if our 20+ year old lighting system can be fixed. I want to say how proud I was of the actors and the crew who not only overcame adversity with so many problems that developed during the run of the show but gave some of their best performances in the toughest situations. Bravo to the cast of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. You did an outstanding job kicking off our 48th Season. Cindy Miller and Joe Plucknett also outdid themselves musically on the show!

We don't get to rest however. Today we will move the Charlotte's Web set on stage so the cast can start rehearsing on it tomorrow and get it ready for it's opening in 3 weeks. Tonight is the first rehearsal of The 39 Steps with a terrific cast and the first meeting of the play selection committee to look for plays for the 49th season.

The show must go on...

September 7 2011

Tomorrow begins the second weekend of Putnam County Spelling Bee. Audience volunteer spellers have been great this past weekend. Ticket sales for this weekend are picking up and hopefully word of mouth will help us sell the third weekend. Cindy Miller has done an outstanding job with the difficult music in the show and percussionist Joe Plucknett has really added to the musical support in the show. Performers, Fowler Black, Tony Bohannon, Audra Hall, Al Knudsen, Cheri Paxton, Chris Schnarr, Heather Tomko, Kim Yocum, and Chuck Wilkins are doing a terrific job of bringing the middle school angst to their characters. Every audience member that has stopped me after the show has complimented the acting and vocal performances of the cast. Tuesday I was the guest speaker at the Lion's Club meeting. Al Knudsen and Cindy Miller came with me and Al sang "I'm not that smart" from the show while Cindy accompanied him on piano and we gave away a pair of tickets for the show. Today at Rotary Al and Cindy again performed the song and we gave away another pair of tickets.

While the first show of the season has been running smoothly I can't say the same for our Air Conditioning units. Opening night you would have witnessed me standing in front of the theatre, drenched from a water hose that back pressured on me, looking up a long ladder to the two technicians working on the roof. Fortunately we have had air conditioning for every performance but we have been only running the units during the performances due to overheating of the main units on the roof. Today we had the service techs back out to service all 4 of the air conditioners on the main market house building. The main coils both outside and inside the building had become so clogged up the units were quickly overheating. All should be running smoothly by showtime Thursday night with audiences never knowing that we have been hard at work this past week to keep them cool.

While that has been going on we have finished up the roof repairs on the three buildings owned by the theatre. Last month we repaired the brick and mortar of the parapets on top of the three buildings. Hopefully we will get the interior water damage from the spring rains repaired by the end of September and be in good shape for quite a few years.

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week the consultants from Webb Management based in NYC were back in Paducah to talk with city officials and others about MHT's future plans. We are looking forward over the next few months to identify specific facilities recommendations to meet our current and future demand. Facilities issues have really taken up a lot of time and money since last January.

Auditions are next Monday and Tuesday for the next comedy, The 39 Steps. I'm hoping for a good turnout. We have only 4 roles in the show but these roles are very complex. While that show is auditioning and starting rehearsals we will also be in high gear to do the Downtown Walking Ghost Tours and the Oak Grove Cemetery Tour again this year. Stories are being brushed up with a few new ones added.

August 16 2011

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has been in rehearsal for almost a month now and it is hard to believe that next Thursday is 2 weeks to opening. Single Tickets went on sale today for the production. We had to wait until we had processed all of the season tickets before we could release the rest for sale. If you haven't visited our facebook page recently and seen some of the photos and rehearsal comments please do. It is a really wonderful cast and they are going to do a great show. Many of the actors are really struggling with keeping a straight face as we rehearse this comic musical about. When we first started, I didn't really think this was the kind of musical you walk out humming the songs, however I have been proved wrong. Some of the music in the show is really funny and infectious like "Pandemonium" and other songs really go right to the heartstrings with "The I Love You" song.

The audience participation in the show is going to be a lot of fun! We have been having MHT board members and family members of the cast acting as our audience volunteers. Each performance we will select volunteers, from those who are interested, to become "middle school" contestants in the spelling bee. They will get a shot at winning the Bee. The show will be one you won't want to miss. However we do have to warn our audiences that the show contains some comedic mature subject matter so we recommend parental discretion. The roles are played by adults who portray all the comedy and angst of middle school students when it comes to competition, friendship, love and their own libidos (hence the parental discretion).

The theatre has just announced our brand new fundraising event scheduled to take place on October 22. The Masquerade Ball. A full out Masquerade costume ball to be held at the Paducah Convention Center Ballroom. We have an incredible food from Pampered Palate, a full cash bar, a knock out band to dance the night away, additional entertainment, and great auction items. This promises to be the event of the season. At a Masquerade Balls ticket holders wear a mask to hide their identity so it will be lots of fun. Tickets went on sale today. We have reserved VIP tables of 8, single general admission tickets, and a few young adult tickets for ages 21-29! Ticket buyers are encouraged to dress up and theme their tables to go with their costumes. Prizes will be awarded for best costume and best table decorations.

Auditions are next Monday and Tuesday for Charlotte's Webb. Lots of people have been coming in and checking out scripts. Footlights classes start Saturday Aug. 27. We are encouraging all footlights parents to pop into the studio theatre the first day of classes and have coffee and donuts on us and find out additional information about auditions, classes and other things the youth and adults can do at MHT.

The MHT board of directors voted at the July meeting to move forward with Phase Two of a consultant study related to MHT and its facilities. We are currently in negotiation with the City of Paducah on a long term lease for the main auditorium. We are also looking at other properties around the theatre for expansion of theatre programming. We have been bursting at the seams for the past couple of years and have some exciting ideas and plans for the future. Our 50th Anniversary is only 2 years away!!

The staff and board have been hard at work getting our sponsors and program advertisers all lined up for the first program of Putnam County.

July 13, 2011

Auditions for Putnam County Spelling Bee were held on Monday and Tuesday of this week and a terrific cast of performers was posted this morning. Rehearsals begin next Monday for the September show.

Each morning this week rehearsals have been going on for The Environmental Show summer musical drama camp. The kids have approx. 8 rehearsals and present a short musical on Friday July 22. Along with the rehearsals the kids received classes on technical theatre and special effects. Tomorrow they will rehearse for part of the morning and then work on creating set pieces for their show. These shows are always amazing to me in how much can be accomplished in such a short time. In my past experience with professional theatre in Kansas City adult performers would come in and rehearse for 2 weeks for 8-10 hours a day for 2 weeks before opening the full length show. Granted these camp shows are only about 20-25 minutes long but they have lots of choreography and music and are being performed by elementary school kids, some of them in their first show, and not seasoned performers.

Marsha Cash is working hard to get all the season ticket orders completed before the end of the week. She has been trying to contact ticket buyers who had changes in their orders and new season ticket holders over the past couple of weeks. We are almost 3 weeks ahead of where we were last season with processing orders.

This past week with the extreme heat the theatre saw temperatures and air conditioning pushed to the max. At auditions in the main theatre on the hottest days of the week even with the air conditioning on max the temperature didn't drop below 80 degrees. With the storm that came through Tuesday night we finally dropped into normal temperatures.

6-27-2011

We are in the last week of our fiscal year. We are still having rehearsals and performances right down to the end. Last Friday and Saturday the 101 Dalmatians Kids camp put on a performance of their show. With only 8 rehearsals the cast did a great job of bringing the 30 minute musical to life. Saturday's performance was also a benefit for the Project Hope No Kill Animal Shelter. Audience members brought in large bags of dog food, cat food, and cleaning supplies. In addition they made financial donations of $140 for the shelter. Some of the pets that were up for adoption were brought to the studio theatre and after the show both cast and audience members visited the real animals.

Sunday afternoon the Story Theatre cast of Little Red Riding Hood rehearsed in the main theatre in preparation for 6 performances this week at the McCracken County Library Tuesday and Wednesday with performances each day at 10 am, 1 pm, and 3 pm.

This Friday, July 1, the ballet class will be putting on their performance of Sleeping Beauty in the studio theatre for parents. That performance marks the first one of our next season.

Staff members are already taking some vacation days this week as we try to get recharged for another season. In addition we are doing some major maintenance on some of the buildings the theatre owns. With all the rain we have lots of water damage from this past spring that needs repair. We recently just completed tuck pointing the studio theatre and the administrative office building parapets along with the base of the back wall behind the studio theatre. Water had eroded the bricks over the past few years and was starting to do structural damage. We turn now to repairing the roofs on the three buildings. After those are repaired we can then repair the damage to ceilings and walls inside the buildings. MHT budgets over $15,000 a year to maintain the buildings. While we don't own the main Market House building the theatre is responsible for all the maintenance inside our portion of the building and on all the heating and cooling units. All of the buildings are on the national historic register. They need constant care and repair.

One week from the end or our current fiscal year it is looking very positive that we will end the fiscal year in the black for the second consecutive year, even with a down economy. The theatre continues to grow its programming and increase the number of participants we serve. The board of directors has done a great job of fundraising and the Curtain Call committee led by Valerie Pollard did an outstanding job of raising funds. Additional income from the Walking Ghost Tours and big box office shows with great performances from the casts of Alice in Wonderland and Annie boosted single ticket income above budgeted goals. In addition the theatre staff has worked extremely hard to keep costs low and work with small budgets. Those extra funds will help cover the cost of some of the repairs that I mentioned above.

As we say goodbye to our 47th season we are well into planning and evaluating programming and operations well beyond our 48th season. We completed an organizational assessment in January of 2011 and hope to begin the second phase of a facility assessment this summer. This assessment will look at existing facilities and evaluate support and market demand for possible expansion of those existing facilities.

June 4, 2011

As we headed into the final push for the season everything that didn't fit within the 7 day, 14 hour a day work schedule got put in the to do stack. Unfortunately one of those things was my blog. I looked back today and realized it had been 3 weeks since my last blog. My apologies to those who read this blog. I'll try to do better in the future.

ANNIE. Wow! We have over 50 talented people working on this production. Chanyng Floyd as Annie has been a real joy to work with. This is her first show as an actress after lots of time in front of audiences as a dancer with the AMPA dance company. Chanyng like so many others has a lot of innate talent with singing and acting that she had never used before. Her mom told me just last night that before the show she didn't know Chanyng could sing. During the rehearsals musical director Doug Arnold has worked with her to develop those natural talents and I think audiences will be very impressed by her musical ability. In addition Chanyng has to play a tough optimistic kid who boldly searches for her parents and yet has vulnerable moments when she finds out the truth about why they left her. It is a credit to Chanyng that she is able to pull off the optimistic tough kid who threatens the older bigger kids with "do you want to sleep with your teeth inside or outside of your mouth" while retaining the vulnerability of an 11 year old alone who desperately wants to have a mom and dad in the song MAYBE.

Amy Perdue who plays Grace (Warbuck's personal secretary) in the show along with Landon Baker who plays Officer Ward and Drake (Warbuck's head butler) also do an outstanding job in what I think are difficult roles. Both have to be prim and proper and also exude a real sense of comedy and emotional connection to Annie that is not easy to pull off. Tom Dolan as Warbucks gives us a terrific portrayal of the loud commanding billionaire tycoon whose heart melts after spending time with Annie. It's easy to play that role as 2 dimensional always yelling, but takes a lot more talent and work to give us the feeling Daddy Warbucks character that Annie turns to as a father. Kelly Ann Rathunde as Miss Hannigan gives us a wacky version of the head of the orphanage and one of the chief villains. Between menacing the kids and being ditzy, Kelly, pulls off the role with lots of fun. Kelly along with Scott Salchli as Rooster and Mary Dorr as Lily provide a nice blend of comedy and their rendition of the song EASY STREET is really fun. Dorr in particular has a wonderful comic laugh that audiences loved.

I can't say enough about Katy Miller and Analiese Jones. They choreographed the big dance numbers HARD KNOCK LIFE, EASY STREET, I THINK I'M GONNA LIKE IT HERE, NYC, YOUR NEVER FULLY DRESSED (orphan's dance), and ANYTHING BUT YOU. Many of the adult actors at first thought they would never be able to dance some of the complex choreography. But after working really hard they pull them off and make them look effortless. There is so much going on with the choreography in layers on the stage that you almost have to see it twice to watch all the wonderful dance moments that happen. Analiese also deserves a huge pat on the back for the way she has shepherded the orphans in their performances. Taking the notes I've given the orphan actors and working with them while they are offstage constantly improving their performance and keeping them focused (which is no small task!)

The chorus of the show is filled with company members who play so many roles. If you look closely in the Hooverville scene and the big dance number NYC you will see almost the entire company disguised and costumed as people on the street of New York. It's fun to see Chuck Wilkins, who plays a homeless guy, rant about former president Herbert Hoover and later on see him as the President FDR in the wheelchair. Roy Hensel, Scott Salchli, Mary Dorr, Diane Byrd and Chip Bohle all play three to four different roles in the show. The chorus of homeless people, pedestrians in New York, and servants and radio performers make this show sparkle and so much fun to watch.

Denise Bristol keeps everybody on task in her role as stage manager calling light sound and technical cues for the show and Jim Keeney keeps the scene changes flowing with 3 stage crew and the help of the actors. Musical Director, Doug Arnold, has done a terrific job of bringing together a talented orchestra and getting a great vocal sound from the performers on stage. Sally Moore of Lodi Kennels tells me that Ashes, the yellow lab, who plays Sandy runs to the door and barks when it is time to go to the show because she is so excited. Sally does an outstanding job with training and is so easy to work with. I can't say enough good things about her abilities and I think she is just as good as any of the dog trainers I've seen on television on Animal plantet.

Finally the ten girls who play the orphans completely knock the audiences socks off! From the youngest Addie Beth Franklin to the oldest Leiren Jackson they have worked so hard and do such a great job in the show. The youngest Addie Beth, who plays Molly, holds her own with all the others in the choreography and singing and steals the show in some scenes.

WC Fields used to say never work with animals or kids because they always steal the show. Fortunately there are lots of talented adults in ANNIE who are able to hold their own against those odds although the kids and the animals really do give them a run for their money. I wouldn't hesitate to work with this talented bunch again.

Monday night while the actors are taking some well deserved time off will be the first rehearsal of the Curtain Call performance cameo cast. They will get to step on stage for the first time and learn where to walk and a little bit of the choreography for their big night on the final Saturday night performance of ANNIE June 18.

This has been a very successful season and the production of ANNIE wraps up the year with a beautiful red bow to top it off. I hope that everyone gets a chance to come see it.

5-2-2011

Yesterday the theatre wrapped up a very successful run of the Dixie Swim Club. Director Lisa Humphrey and cast members Marsha Cash, Sue Fletcher, Victoria Parrish, Cat Tilker, and Sandra Wilson wowed audiences with great performances and received standing ovations throughout the run. The final weekend played to most sold out audiences. Crew members Kris, Debbie, Keirstyn, and Thomas did a great job of making things flow smoothly. TD Jim Keeney filled in on the stage crew helping with some of the changes as well. The cast had lots of fun "live theatre" moments with the show on the final weekend. Saturday afternoon Marsha Cash's blouse zipper came apart in the middle during a fast change and she did the entire scene trying to keep her blouse from falling off her. Most of the audience wouldn't have really noticed because she did such a great job, but the cast discovered the costume trauma when she walked onstage and sat down on the settee. Cast members did their best to "hang on" to the back of her blouse to help her out whenever they were standing by her.

I got a voicemail message last week from one of the playwrights congratulating us on our run and wishing us lots of success. We've had more and more playwrights reach out and connect to us over the past couple of years. With the internet and facebook playwrights are more connected than ever to theatres doing their plays.

Story Theatre is still out on tour however last Friday's show scheduled for Sikeston MO. was postponed to the end of May since the bridge access in and out of Cairo was closed due to flooding. It would have taken us more than 2 hours to drive there one way. This morning we were scheduled for Unity Elementary but Massac Unit 1 schools are closed due to the flooding. Hopefully it will stop raining and our region can dry out a little in the next couple of days to help all the communities struggling with rising water.

We've had several people call us to ask if the theatre is flooded. So far (knock on wood) the city's floodwall is holding just fine and we hope to escape without any damage. We've had audience members who have been unable to come to the Dixie Swim Club because of blocked roads. Our crew members from Livingston County Debbie and her granddaughter Keirstyn didn't make it in last Thursday when Smithland was shutdown.

Today Jim Keeney and I will transport all the Dixie scenery pieces back to our warehouse and bring platforms and scenery pieces back for Annie which rehearses onstage tonight at 6:30. EAT which is rehearsing in the studio theatre goes into technical rehearsals next Sunday for its opening the following week. We are still putting together the scenery and props for that show.

The dog trainer from Lodi Kennels stopped by Saturday and we talked about her dog Ashes which will play Sandy for the play ANNIE. Unfortunately Ashes is in heat for the next two weeks so she won't be able to start working with the show until after that. I will say in 30 years of directing this is the first time an "actor" couldn't make rehearsals because they were in heat.

On a funny note we had a season ticket holder call who had received her season ticket renewal order for next season. She was very concerned and wasn't sure if she would be able to renew here tickets because of one of the shows announced. She wanted to know if we were going to have the actors in Hairspray wear clothes. She apparently got the musicals Hair and Hairspray confused. After we assured here that yes the actors were going to remain fully clothed in the production she happily renewed her season tickets.

4-18-2 2011

The Theatre sends it's condolences and prayers to the Keeney family on the passing of Jim's Grandmother. Services were held Saturday in Benton.

Three Little Pigs Story Theatre Tour presented 3 productions last week and Dixie Swim Club had it's Technical Rehearsal yesterday. Just before we started the rehearsal yesterday I told the cast and the crew that we would work to get our costume and set changes down to 30-45 seconds. That is the longest an audience will sit during a scene change without losing energy from the previous scene. The cast and crew started to protest that wasn't going to be possible. As we got to the first scene change at 45 seconds I had the lighting person bring up the lights and we discussed what had happened and how close we were to finishing the changes. We worked through scene change issues making the movements more economical so that the crew person did things in an order that allowed them to not have to go offstage with removed items and then return. They brought items on and placed them and then took the other items off. The cast discovered who could help each other with changes and then we ran it again. By the third time we were ready to go at about 40 seconds. By the time we finish the run of the show I expect to have that time down to 25 seconds. It really is amazing what can be accomplished in 30 seconds when you are focused.

The cast for Dixie Swim did a great job yesterday working with costumes and props. Victoria who pours martinis throughout the first scene of the play ran out half way through the scene and then pretended to pour. She realized that she was going to have to make twice as much as she originally thought. On the other hand Lisa Humphrey who filled one of the martini glasses with milk for the one character who doesn't drink put way to much in and the actors had to be very careful not to spill the mill as they walked and talked. I programmed telephone rings into the sound cues and realize I had too many rings in for the amount of time it takes the actress to get off stage to answer the phone so I removed some of those rings. We had a pregnant padding for one of the actresses. Unfortunately it made her look ridiculous so today we will take some of that padding out. In another scene a dress that was supposed to look ridiculous didn't look that way so we will find another that looks even worse. Today will be spent hanging some additional lights and refocusing others to eliminate some of the dark spots that I noticed yesterday during the tech rehearsal. That's the process for this week. You create something you think will work and then you test it during the rehearsal that night. What doesn't work gets reworked the next day.

The board of directors held a planning meeting at First Presbyterian Church on Saturday afternoon and we worked through several items that needed longer time than our regular board meetings. Lots of progress was made in several areas and we hope to have some exciting announcements coming up in the next few months concerning fundraising events. The board also tackled several tough facility questions and we will move forward on the repairs for some big items we had been struggling with. One of those items is the water drainage behind the studio theatre that has been flooding our back hallway during heavy rains. We hope to have that corrected by the end of June.

On today's schedule are rehearsals for Eat, Dixie Swim Club, and Annie.

3-22-2011

Phantom of the Market House Theatre had a successful weekend with an almost capacity audience on Friday night and over 2/3 full on Saturday. A great deal of thanks goes to the Cast- Renie Barger, Fowler Black on followspot, Chip Bohle, April Cochran, Tom Dolan, Audra Hall, Roy Hensel, Steve Schwetman, and Host for the weekend Valerie Pollard. We performed the same show the first Saturday in March at Caldwell County HS as a fundraiser for their Junior Class. If you missed out on seeing Phantom of the Market House Theatre you still have one more chance. The LATA group has booked the the Murder For Hire Troupe to perform Phantom on Friday April 1 at the Robert Cherry Civic Center as a fundraiser for Relay for Life. You can contact Audra Hall at audra.hall@lataky.com about tickets.

Another big thanks goes to Don & Renie Barger, Audra Hall, Steve and Kristy Schwetman,Fowler Black, Chip Bohle, Emily Yocum, and Luke Wilkins who stayed after the Saturday night performance of Phantom and helped us move the tables and chairs out and the put the theatre seats back in! Jim Keeney and I are extremely grateful for the help!

Footlights rehearsals moved onstage Monday in preparation for their troupe performances this weekend. The Dixie Swim Club had a run through of Act One last night in the classroom/rehearsal space which I attended. They are eager for their chance to get onstage after the Footlights performances with 4 weeks until they open.

EAT starts staging the first scenes of their show tonight in the Studio Theatre. This morning I'm taping out their set. The April Newsletter is in process and trying to get to the printer with the information about our next season along with Dixie Swim Club and a new session of Footlights that starts April 9.

March came in like a lion and seems to be going out the same way! See you at the theatre.

3-13-2011 Winning and Losing

I had several people comment in person and post on my personal page about a status of seeing Wizard of Oz last night. This is one of those things that I have to be really careful about when I post something because I don't want to give people the wrong idea. I just got back from attending the regional Odessy of the Mind competition for Middle Schools yesterday and I watched the 6th grade Lone Oak Middle School team (of which Jade is a member) compete for a spot at the state competitions. There were several good friends of hers competing for Paducah Middle School at the same time and the kids were all cheering each other on and hoping that both teams would go on to state. As each team got their scores some were elated and some were depressed. They immediately wanted to compare their scores to the other schools scores. Who was better and who was worse. Who won and who lost.



Our culture is so focused on winning that if you don't place first many people feel like they lost. I've seen personally time and again at American Association of Community theatre competitions with 10 completely different kinds of shows competing that the 9 who didn't win feel like they failed, in casting shows that the 75 people who didn't get cast for 10 parts feel like they failed, even with shows that the Carson Center and the Market House Theatre or WKCTC produce that, that our nature is to want to declare a winner and a loser, one better than the other. This is really frustrating for me because every production, every audition, every creative endeavor is filled with personal challenges that we should be cheering on. There were great moments last night in the Wizard of Oz at the Carson Center, there were great moments in the Market House production of Wizard of Oz. Even 15 years ago at what was then PCC when they did Wizard of Oz there were some great moments. For the kids from Paducah who performed last night in Wizard of Oz at Carson Center, that was a really great moment. To perform in front of over a thousand people for each of 3 performances. That is really great. To take the risk of going out onstage and doing all the dance steps and singing with only a few rehearsals and to have the audience and parents cheer them does something magical for a person. That's what MHT does as its mission every single day. For the professionals in the show last night they have to be willing to go onstage and give it their all and risk doing a bad show in order to create something really magical. There reaches a point in the life of any show where the actors just start going through the motions. They start feeling like they don't have to go out and prove themselves every time they take the stage. The truly great performers are ones who really work at creating something new everytime they are on stage. Having said that I also have to say that just because you step onstage doesn't mean you should get a standing ovation every time. Some performances really create that synergy between performer and audience member and there is an electricity that makes a performance truly incredible. Some performances things just don't work out or the actors aren't really connecting and you are left with just an okay performance. We still applaud the effort for some really great moments, but we don't have to give a standing ovation every time.



I heard a great interview on Fresh Air the other day with the well known actor Alan Arkin, who talked about his time at Second City in Chicago. Each night they would go onstage and collect ideas from the audience and then take 10-15 minutes and create a play based on that audience's suggestions. They knew that each night a significant portion of what they created was going to fail. Sometimes miserably! But other moments might be pure genius. It is the most liberating and personal character building experience there is to put yourself into a a situation where the chance for failure is not only high but in some ways expected. It allows you to create something that is much better than you ever could have done if every thing you had to do was to succeed. Each mistake in the process is a building block that makes the final product better. Alan Arkin doesn't do Broadway shows anymore because it is so difficult to go out night after night and try to do exactly the same performance without making a mistake which is what the producers expect. The Spiderman show on Broadway is in previews. I personally think it is a mistake to charge audiences high ticket prices for shows that are still in process and to have every single performance minutely critiqued when you are trying to be creative. That doesn't seem to be a positive environment to create in. Audiences can be great partners at the right time in the creative process for feedback but if they are involved too early it kills the neccessary process of trial and error to create something better.



I can't tell you how many times we try something on stage that doesn't work. How many sets I've painted and designed that had to be redesigned or repainted after I saw how they worked and often didn't work. But I didn't have an audience watching me make those mistakes. If you want to be truly creative you have to fail in order to get better. The musical performer Sting talked recently about many musical efforts he does that fail in between the successes. He doesn't release every single thing he works on to the public to buy. One of my favorite writers once wrote that if anyone ever saw her first drafts they would believe that she was totally psychotic, without talent and must have stolen all her work from someone else because she could never be capable of creating anything of value. When casting a show we make the best decisions we can and sometimes we make mistakes. The process at Market House of having everyone watch auditions is probably the worst for both the actors and the directors. Many theatres do not allow spectators or other actors into the audition process because it puts a lot of pressure on both the person auditioning and the director. Everyone then becomes the judge of who they think should have got the part or how someone else did compared to someone else. It makes the director hesitant to try different things with different actors during the audition because the audience will think not everyone got to do exactly the same thing. Even though the director might be able to get a better audition out of each person. The audition spectators tend to pick winners and losers. If MHT had a bigger lobby we probably would do private auditions with just small groups at a time to eliminate some of that pressure on the performers and the directors. Private audtions also help that everyone gets to do a scene or dance for the first time without those who go last having the advantage of seeing how everyone else did theirs and correcting for others mistakes.



I guess my point in all this is that the Carson Center, WKCTC, MHT and all of the groups that are producing shows in our area should be proud of their work. When I see a Carson Center show it makes me proud of the many talented people who perform at MHT without taking anything away from the professional performers and when I see an incredible show at MHT it doesn't take anything away from the Carson Center shows. We need to go to plays and celebrate or commiserate with the performers when things go really well or things fail. We need to take pride in what we do and continue to strive to make it better while at the same time accepting failure without assigning winners and losers.



Creating something is incredibly rewarding, if we are willing to work hard at it and learn from our mistakes and make it better each time we perform it. Every show at MHT should be better than the last show because hopefully we have learned from the mistakes we made in the last show. Every performance should be better than the last performance. At MHT we are striving towards getting just a little better with each show and with each season. For the individual performer it means that with each audition you strive to get a little better and keep trying to improve yourself to get that call back or get cast in that show. Don't give up after the first time you don't get cast. Also just because you got cast doesn't mean you don't have to work at it. My favorite moment as a director was when I cast a young man in the lead in the first show he auditioned for. He just happened to be at the right place at the right time and the others who auditioned fit into other parts. In the next show he auditioned he got cast as a non speaking rock. His father later came up to me and thanked me saying it was the best thing that ever happened to his son. In another instance a local adult auditioned and got the lead in his first show which required a certain look and certain kind of accent. He never got another lead while here at MHT because his accent was too strong and he didn't work on changing it and his appearance tended to work against all the roles he wanted. That actor has since gone to L.A. and lost his accent and made some changes to his appearance. He is getting work as an extra with a few lines or small recurring characters on some television series. He is still waiting for his big break over 20 years after that first lead role at MHT, but he is happy acting in the roles in which his looks and voice work well for.



Even though both April and I have been in theatre for over 30 years we still have to go out and prove ourselves every time that curtain goes up. We still are working to create something very special with each performance and risking failure every time. So congratulations to the Carson Center on Wizard of Oz. I'm looking forward to seeing Nunsense at WKCTC in April. Here at MHT we are working hard to create a great performance of Phantom of the Market House Theatre on March 18 & 19, The footlights shows on March 26 & 27, Dixie Swim Club the last two weeks of April, EAT in May and ANNIE in June.



I'm also excited for my daughter and her LOMS Odessy of the Mind team. Even though the team placed 3rd in their competition, they get to go to the state competition and try again to create something special with their orginal Odessy of the Mind presentation. I haven't heard yet, but I hope the kids from Paducah Middle School made it to the state competition too! We can wish success to both of them, just as we do with the Carson Center, MHT, and WKCTC!
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Five Events in Eight Days

It is only the 8th of March but it feels like a month has already gone by. We closed The Hundred Dresses on Feb. 28 with school matinees and no sooner did we get the set taken down that day then the theatre filled up that night with over 75 youth auditioning for ANNIE. The following night we had almost 30 teens and adults audition for ANNIE. The show calls for 8 children and over 25 adults. I worked hard to cut the 100 plus auditionees down to 25 children and 25 teens and adults for call backs. It was a very difficult decision on who to cast in many of the roles. I narrowed it down to the 7-8 strongest singers for the kids roles and then selected my choice for Annie from among the top 5 singers. Chanyng Floyd was selected for the role of Annie. This was the first time I've ever met Chanyng and was impressed by her strong dance, singing and acting abilities. I think she'll do a great job. I added three more kids as orphans from the most expressive kids who auditioned. I chose 10 orphans total because that was 5 bunk beds on the stage for the first scene and I felt that was all I could fit for the big Hard Knock Life dance number and keep everyone visible. I wish I could have cast 10 more! For the adults I only had 8 men audition for over a dozen parts. I will be trying to double and triple cast some of those men. I was fortunate that we had lots of talented men who auditioned and I could have cast the lead roles in a couple of different ways. For the women's roles two of the leads also went to first time auditionees- Kelly Ann Rathunde and Amy Perdue will play Miss Hannigan and Grace. Both gave very strong auditions and I feel they will do a great job.

We had an unusually large number of families with two or more auditioning for the show. With the limited stage space for the orphans I had to make some tough choices and not cast some family members while casting others. This was something that I felt really bad about. We have 6 families with two people in the cast. Kelly Ann Rathunde and her daughter Aubrianne, Amy Perdue and her daughter Ally, Scott Salchli and his daughter Belle, Chuck Wilkins and his wife Lisa, Chip Bohle and his wife Denise, and Roy Hensel and his daughter Emily. Each of these family members were cast independent of each other and it was quite a surprise when I discoverd that we had so many families represented. We had a couple of other first time auditionees that really impressed me- Heather Tomko and Adrianne Gleeson. Market House Theatre is blessed with a great deal of talent. We have cast members from Carbondale, Murray, and Benton. MHT is truly a regional theatre.

No sooner did I have call backs and we were taking out the chairs and putting in tables and individual chairs for the Curtain Call fundraiser Friday night. The theatre raised over $13,400 from the live and silent auction without ticket revenue from the event. Several cameo roles were auctioned off in live and silent auctions along with vacation packages and lake get away packages. A huge thank you goes to every who supported the theatre by buying a ticket and bidding on the auction packages. Several restaurants graciously donated the food and a truly hard working committee of volunteers put together auction packages and decorated the theatre for the event. Paducah Bank held a competition for an orphan girl role along with Elaine Spaulding and Mary Hammond. Elaine won a role along with Paducah Bank. Elaine and Mary graciously gave their role to a little girl who auditioned for Annie but didn't get into the final cast. Some of the large roles that were auctioned off for the one night only performance of Annie. Surprise winners were WPSD Vice President of Sales, David Jernigan, who will don a red wig and a dress as Annie to sing Tomorrow, April and Michael Cochran who the crowd all chipped in to buy the role of Miss Hanigan for April and Daddy Warbuck for me. April and I were both honored and extremely flattered by the generosity of the auction bidders in purchasing those parts for us. Don and Renie Barger purchased the role of Sandy the dog. Renie says she has a Dalmatian costume and can't wait to be Sandy for the special performance!

At the Curtain Call event we presented Todd Duff with a plaque honoring his $7,000 fund raising events of Magic shows and the finale performance of Stage to Street. After presenting the plaque to Todd it was time to announce the 48th Season lineup.

In September 2011, MHT will kick off the season with the Tony award winning musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. This is a very funny show about kids (played by adults) at a spelling bee. The audience in addition gets to be contestants in the spelling bee as well! October 2011, MHT's Theatre for Youth presents Charlotte's Web about Wilbur, Charlotte and Templeton. November 2011, MHT is thrilled to be one of the first community theatres in our area to produce The 39 Steps. This Hitchcock thriller combines Monty Pythonesque humor with a tingling spy thriller. Four performers play all 150 parts in the play with lots of special effects including plane crashes on stage! January 2012, during a break in hunting season MHT will produce the hysterical hunting comedy Escanaba in da Moonlight. A tale of the Soady family father and his adult sons who are out to overcome the shame of the oldest son never having bagged a buck. This is the hunting story that beats all other hunting stories and a riotous comedy. February 2012, brings MHT's Theatre for Youth The Adventures of Nate the Great. A young boy dons a fedora and takes on all the neighborhood mysteries. In April 2012 the romantic comedy Getting Sara Married takes the stage with a very funny comedy about a young woman who's Aunt kidnaps a young man has him bopped on the head and delivered to her niece's door. The Aunt thinks that he would make the perfect groom for her niece. After several concussions and lots of comedy the Aunt may be right. Wrapping up the season in June 2012 will be the hit musical Hairspray! Can Tracy find true love and integrate the Corny Collins show!

The Curtain Call Event was a big success and before the last audience members left from the event a group of staff and volunteers tore down the tables and chairs and reset the seats for the show that happens on Thursday of this week. But that didn't wrap up the week. On Saturday night a group of 10 in the Murder for Hire troupe left in two vehicles with a sound system and a set and drove to Caldwell County HS in Princeton and presented The Phantom of Princeton. A murder mystery play with a clue hunt that will be presented at the Market House as a dinner theatre on March 18 & 19.

Monday and Tuesday of this week April held auditions for EAT (It's Not About Food). Also on Monday the first rehearsal of Dixie Swim Club was held. Five separate events in 8 days!

Tomorrow McCracken County Gifted and Talented student will do their final rehearsal at the theatre for their performance on Thursday night. March is certainly coming in like a Lion as far as MHT is concerned.

February 23 2011

This has been an incredibly active month behind the scenes at the theatre. Since The Complete Works of William Shakespeare closed on Jan. 23 we have presented Todd Duff and his performance of from Stage to Street, rented the theatre to Bawn in the Mash, started rehearsals for Phantom of the Market House Theatre Murder Mystery, auditioned Dixie Swim Club, and had lots of meetings about our big Curtain Call Fundraising event for Annie coming up March 4.

The Hundred Dresses will have it's first performance tomorrow morning with two school matinees followed by an evening show that night. Over the next 5 days the Hundred dresses will average 2-3 performances per day. That is the equivalent of an entire 2 week run for our mainstage shows into 1 weekend. There is a mix of newcomers and experienced MHT youth and adult actors in the production.

As with most youth productions we are struggling with all of the scenic changes and technical elements which are prominent in books for young audiences. Dozens of location changes, day dream sequences out of reality, and how to bring a book to life onstage. April has been working day and night in addition to her teaching schedule at the schools to create the music for the production. She uses a variety of sound effects and musical underscoring to set the tone of the play. I am always amazed at her ability to create a sound track for the youth productions and her ability to set just the right mood with just the right piece of music which only comes from hours of painstaking work. It has also been a challenge to create a set that changes locations so many times without slowing down the pace of the show with scene changes. April wanted a basic set that wasn't set in any specific location and to use certain areas of the stage for the school, a home, an abandoned house, the woods, etc... I designed a set with the idea that the walls would be representative like a small town quilt. Artist Theresa Perry has taken some quilt paintings that I found online and transferred those onto the set walls to give the feeling of a rural town in the 1930's. As with every show you take 2 steps forward each day and 1 step back. Things that you create during the day then have to be readjusted and redone after you see them onstage that night with the cast in a rehearsal. The creative process is rarely straight forward and ends up often with lots of trial and error which takes time yet that opening performance clock is counting down quickly.

The Curtain Call Committee chaired by past MHT President Valerie Pollard has been working very hard to come up with great auction items for the fundraiser a week from this Friday. Mary Hammond and Elaine Spaulding are raising money for the theatre to compete for one of the roles of the "oldest" orphan girl in the opening number "Hard Knock Life" in the show. There are so many committee members I can't even begin to name them all. Auction packages of vacation get away's, girl's night out, fishing parties, a day on boat at Kentucky lake, and many more will be auctioned off that night. In addition several cameo roles for the June 18 performance of Annie will be auctioned. There will be lots of great food along with beer and wine at the event and limited tickets are on sale at the box office.

Last night the arts and culture organization of Paducah/McCracken County went to the fiscal court budget workshop to request funding in the economic incentive funds. The commissioners asked lots of questions and got lots of information about all of the jobs and economic impact that the arts groups have in our community. We will hopefully hear more from the Fiscal Court in the next few months as to our possibilities for support. In total the 5 organizations last night will spend $5.5 million during the course of the year. That is paid for from tickets, fundraising events, individual and corporate donations, and support from local, state and federal government funding. The recent bills in the US House of Representatives have offered cuts of 25% to National Endowment for the Arts funding. NEA funding makes up about 15% of what the Kentucky Arts Council grants to local arts organizations. With budget cuts at the federal and state levels expected, arts groups are really struggling with providing services and programming at accessible prices for all in the community. It is the education programming that is the most subsidized by government grant money. Many groups like MHT have kept their student prices extremely low. Our children's ticket prices for youth shows have only gone up 50 cents per child over the past 10 years. Our story theatre shows have only gone up 25 cents per child over the past 10 years. When governments cut grant funding these are the programs that are hit the hardest.

Next Monday and Tuesday are auditions for Annie. I meeting today with Musical Director Doug Arnold and talked last week with Choreographer Katy Miller to prepare for the auditions. We've had lots of interest and expect a big turnout next week. The children audition on Monday night and the adults on Tuesday night.

The February Board of Directors meeting will be tonight at 5:30 in the box office lobby. They will be hearing from the Curtain call committee on last minute items left to do for the fundraiser next week and having an in depth discussion about MHT facilities and our current needs.

Life is never dull at MHT! We hope to see you at The Hundred Dresses and Curtain Call!

Jan. 30 2011

A lot has happened since my last post and it seems I just posted! Complete Works of William Shakespeare had a wonderful performance run. Steve, Al, and Chuck really outdid themselves and the audiences were very responsive.

The Kentucky Arts Council Grant was submitted on Jan. 15 after about a week of work. I wrote on Facebook that no matter how much prep time I get in I'm still always down to the wire to get it submitted.

In the middle of the run of Complete Works we learned that long time MHT actress and friend Mary Margaret Hoffman passed away. The service was held on the Saturday morning before Complete Works of Shakespeare shows that afternoon and evening. I spoke with Mary Margaret's niece Mary and we arranged to have lots of photos and the painting that is hanging in our lobby at the funeral. Thank you to Betty Wise who went through the photo albums to find pictures of Mary Margaret. I went through the boxes of old publicity photos and found lots of candid shots. The theatre is looking for an appropriate way to honor Mary Margaret and her long connection to MHT. I hope to have something to announce very soon.

Auditions were held for the Dixie Swim Club and 11 talented women auditioned for 5 parts. Because of the smaller turnout for the two nights of auditions I was able to read everyone several times and was able to cast the show without callbacks. Newcomer Sandra Wilson will play Lexie. Veteran Sue Fletcher will play Vernadette, Cat Tilker will play Sheree, Marsha Cash plays Jeri Neal, and Victoria Parrish plays Dinah.

Todd Duff brought his talents to the MHT stage on Sat. Jan. 29 to a sold out audience with all tickets going to benefit MHT Youth and Outreach programming. Todd and Tiffany Gust did a wonderful performance and audiences were very enthusiastic. Todd had a dress rehearsal Friday night the 28 and after the rehearsal we reconfigured the theatre seating to give Todd better access to the audience. We took the seating that was created for The Complete Works and turned the front rows sideways so they faced the middle of the theatre. This put half of the audience withing 4 rows of Todd's performance. Todd and Tiffany did a great job adapting to the new setup. A huge Thank You goes to Todd for all his work raising over $7,000 for the theatre during November, December and January.

This afternoon (Sun. January 30) Bawn in the Mash rehearsed on the MHT stage for a couple of hours to prepare for their performance next Saturday night. They are really excited about their performance and the opening act Pokey LaFarge. In December we rented the theatre to the Doo Wop group for their Christmas show and agreed to rent the theatre to Bawn in the Mash. We have very few dates available for shows like this due to our heavy performance and rehearsal schedule but it seemed to work out well. The musical groups have really commented on how much they enjoy MHT's acoustics for a music.

April is working on several shows all at once in the school system. With all of the snow dates some of her after school rehearsals have been canceled and they are really getting tight on time. In addition The Hundred Dresses is in rehearsal.

We've had a couple of groups contact us about our Murder for Hire Troupe so we are looking at a couple of scripts right now to produce with performances in March.

The Board of Directors met last Wednesday and approved the slate of plays for next season. We will announce our 48th Season at the Curtain Call Auction on March 4. The board also continued to work on the Curtain Call event coming up and reviewing the results of our Webb Management consultant report. President Cindy Miller has formed a couple of "task forces" for certain areas and we will come back with the results on a board retreat on April 16.

We have just under a month until auditions for Annie and our Curtain Call fundraiser. The Curtain Call committee chaired by Valerie Pollard has developed some great themed auction items for the event and everyone is excited.

1-11-11

It’s two days before opening for the Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged and the theatre was full of activity- but not from the Complete Works cast- they had the night off. Director Ross Daniels has the cast tuned up and ready for the opening and decided that what they really needed was a night off. A great deal of the show has the actors improvising with the audience. It is difficult to rehearse these sections without an audience and keep them lively so Ross suggested it and I agreed that a night off wasn’t a bad idea. This will also help the performers be fully rested for the performances this week. Crew members Denise Bristol, Diane Byrd and Kris Shanks have been refining their dresser duties backstage for the past week to make it seemless for the actors to walk offstage and immediately back on in a new costume. Lisa Wilkins and Jim Roush are running lights and sound for the show.

In the Classroom Tuesday night everything was buzzing with almost 70 auditionees trying out for roles in The Hundred Dresses. April said she had a great turnout with lots of really talented new people as well as the veteran youth and adult performers from past shows. Tonight was the second night of auditions for the show. As I write this April is busy pouring over the auditions forms looking at which actors might work well in the roles, looking at schedule conflicts listed the auditionees listed on their auditions sheets and trying to determine a call back list. The Hundred Dresses opens in about 6 weeks!

As many people already know Rhiannon Dodds McIntosh left the theatre after 7 years as a box office assistant over the Christmas break. Rhiannon found a job much closer to home and can now be home in the evenings with her son, daughter and new husband! We wish her the very best. We have had several calls and emails asking if we are going to hire someone to fill the vacant position. At the present time we are doing a thorough review of all the administrative duties and staffing positions. The last time we did a review was just before we hired Alexis as the Box Office Manager almost 5 years ago. After we finish our review we will post any open positions on our website and in this blog and seek applicants to fill the position or positions. We currently hope to have new staff in place and trained by the opening of The Hundred Dresses in February.

This week and last has also been spent working on plays and royalties for next season as well as writing the Kentucky Arts Council Grant for our next fiscal year. The grant is due Jan. 15 and it is always a race to get it submitted by the deadline. Each year I spend two weeks writing about the economic impact on our community, the 50+ jobs that MHT supports in the community, the 300+ performers and technical crew members at MHT, the over 40,000 people who participate in some manner in MHT programming, the money that is raised in local tax revenues for the city of Paducah from MHT programming and audience spending, and the 15-17 plays and productions created each year. The staff collects samples of our programs, advertising, and other things that we include with the grant to prove that we credit the Kentucky Arts Council for their funds and prove the quality of our programming. The same kind of grant writing for Kentucky Arts Council funding is happening at the Symphony, Carson Center, Yeiser, Maiden Alley Cinema, and Quilt Museum. In a continuing tradition of making my life difficult, this year’s ART’s DAY at the Kentucky Capitol building in Frankfort is once again the week we open a show- The Hundred Dresses.

Valerie Pollard and the Curtain Call Committee meet this week to start the intensive work until the first week of March and the auction to raise funds for the theatre by auctioning off roles in a special performance of ANNIE in June. I spent a couple hours today going through the Annie script and pulling out cameo roles that could be auctioned off. Each year it gets harder to top the previous year!