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!