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Friday, April 24, 2009

All is Right - We Have All the Rights!

Yesterday the Rights for the last (actually, the first) show came in. Whew! Stay tuned for announcements, likely in the newsletter and the program for the Footlight Festival and hopefully some sort of formal announcement. We need to get on it to gather interest for the auditions for the first show. These will likely be in June and will require lots of strong women of various ages...

Speaking of the Festival... There are a variety of events happening for the festival. It runs the last week of May to the first week of June and there are five One-Acts, 2 Staged Readings (which I am involved in), a late night variety show, a workshop, and some round table discussions. Many of the events are 'pay what you can', so come out!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Four down... 1 to go...

We now have confirmed the rights to 4 of the 5 shows. Ah. I anticipate no problems with the remaining one, but it is the first one of the season so I want those rights asap so that we can launch the season and set auditions.

I spent the morning in at the theatre today. I planned to get a lot more work done than I actually did, but it was good to chat with the Administrator and I did get a number of questions answered about my job and how I want to proceed. There are challenges to running an organization where everyone pretty much has another day job. There has to be a bit of flexibility with expectations while still maintaining the standards of the association. I hope to develop ways to help people do that.

The big job I started today was writing the "Thank you" letters for those individuals who submitted pieces to direct that were not selected. I had many good people (with good plays) submit, but there are only 5 slots in the season and I did want to direct myself. I am hoping that some of them can still participate with Walterdale in some capacity despite not getting to direct this season.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Merrily we roll along...

Confirmed rights for 3 of the 5 shows. Our 6-Pack selection is the February show . We had wanted the October show so as to get a jump on the season, but this will be good for the small cast show we have in cold February. Email communications have started about launching the season. Whew! Still waiting on those last two shows...

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Check!

The Rights for all 5 plays have been applied for. We have received definite 'yeses' on two of them and the other 3 have received confirmation of application. They are with Samuel French and the reply says 2-4 weeks for processing. I am not anticipating any problems, but I want to know for sure so that we can move on to the next step... budgets!

One of the plays is by a local playwright so that is very exciting to me. It is great to be supporting not only Canadian, but Albertan playwrights. Another deals with two young gay teenagers who fall in love. It is a beautiful play and so well written.

I read the latest APN newsletter and it talked about female playwrights and I was disappointed in myself in that none of the plays I proposed were written by female playwrights (both of my back-ups were, however). I did select the shows with women in mind, at least with regards to acting roles, but I totally ignored the playwrights. Hmmm. I still want to select strong scripts so for next year I am hoping that the submissions include some strong pieces by women! I do have 3 female directors lined up. It is an interesting situation. I do not want to be partial one way or another, but I would rather pick the best candidates. If they happen to be women, that's great, but if they aren't, I would hope that people realize I was selecting on merit.