Posts from — June 2008

Last night we officially opened our premiere season!  Quilters performed to a full house that could not have been warmer or more gracious to us and to the wonderful actresses.  We got a very enthusiastic standing ovation at the end and let me tell you, it was one of the most overwhelming moments I can remember!  So if you are reading this and you were in the audience last night:  THANK YOU!  Your support means everything to us.

After the show, we had a fantastic opening night party at the beautiful home of Tom and Ivy Mitchell.  Ms. Mitchell is a member of our advisory board and, as I discovered last night, a great hostess!  She laid out an incredible spread of food for us and kept the wine and champagne flowing.  Steven gave a lovely toast for us and we all felt really lucky to be a part of this beginning!

So thank you to the Mitchells, to our board, to our incredibly hardworking company, and to the best audience we could have possibly hoped for…now tell everyone you know to come join the fun and buy a season subscription!

Well, all the stars are colliding - our fantastic Foreigner cast will have its first rehearsal tonight, Of Mice and Men is in great shape, and the lovely ladies of Quilters are currently in their final tech rehearsal before opening tomorrow night!

We got a fantastic write-up in the Daily Press on Sunday - you can read the article here.  We also had a wonderful editorial written about us in today’s paper which you can read here.  We’re very thankful to our friends at the Daily Press for giving us such wonderful attention!

Today I’m at the office for awhile, and then I get to skip on over to the Yoder to see how Quilters is coming along.  Everyone has really been working hard to make this beautiful show as goods it can be - our crew deserves a round of applause for the hours they’ve been putting in! Our designers, carpenters, props runners, stage management, and everyone else who’s been involved in getting this production looking beautiful in the space have been a godsend for TRR.

Well, time to knock a few more things off of my to-do list - the day is flying by!  Hope you and everyone you know have already gotten their season subscription, and I’ll see you tomorrow night at Quilters!

It’s almost here - in eight days, we open our season!  And once we open, we stay open for the rest of our season.

This Sunday, four of the seven lovely ladies from Quilters appeared at our local Patrick Henry Mall to sing some selections from the musical.  It was great fun, and we were able to get some of that beautiful music out into the community.  Many mall patrons stopped at our table and took our information, and we had a couple of very special and dedicated fans sit and chat with the actresses afterward.  Three-year-old Hailey was particularly enamored - she may be both our youngest and biggest fan!

Yesterday, Steven, our wonderful artistic director, and Jordan McArthur, a very talented young actor from the Of Mice and Men cast joined me in the shop as we created dozens of stand-up posters on foam core for distribution.  For the rest of this week, it’ll be my job to brave the nasty heat and get out into the Hampton Roads community to give stores, restaurants, and any place I can find some TRR posters, stand-ups, and cards.

You can expect to see us in the Daily Press this coming Sunday in their Arts & Entertainment section, and you may already be hearing from us - we have advertisements playing on several local talk radio stations.

So tune in, read the paper, patronize your local shops, and stay cool in this heatwave!

Oh yeah - and buy your tickets!

Well hello! Long time no see. As you can imagine, it’s been an insanely busy and wonderful couple of weeks! We’re really starting to get the word on Tidewater Rep out in our region, whether through print ads, going out into the city and distributing posters, or the radio interviews and advertisements our artistic director has been recording. Tickets are starting to sell, but we’re encouraging people now more than ever - buy a ticket! Come opening night! We can’t wait to see those first few faces in the audience on Wednesday, June 18th.

Quilters is really getting going now - they had their design run through last night, which, though I wasn’t able to attend, I have heard went very well. The design run through is basically where all of the designers - lighting, scenic, props, costume, sound, et al - are able to come and watch the show while its still in progress so they can get a clearer notion of the work they still have ahead of them. It’s not a performance, but it does give the actors a unique opportunity to have an ‘audience’ at an early part of their process.

I wasn’t able to go to the Design Run for a very good reason - our very first rehearsal for Of Mice and Men was yesterday evening! Our out-of-town performers for the production arrived Sunday and Monday and I can’t tell you what a thrill it’s been to meet and get to know them. We have actors from all over the country coming together to work on a play that every single one of us loves dearly, and that’s an exhilarating feeling. We read through the play last night, and there are simply no words to describe how happy I am to be assistant directing what is sure to be a phenomenal show. I can’t wait to get back in rehearsal tonight.

Both sets of cast have had a chance to meet and greet - it’s funny how we’ve gone from an entire production of women to a production that’s almost all men. We’re finally balancing out the sexes here at TRR!

Our crew is working harder than ever now, and as our time to move the Quilters set into the Barn approaches, their work will get even more intense. As for our administrative staff…Elizabeth, Laura, Katie and I (and Steven, of course) are actually breathing a little easier these days! Though there’s still lots of hard work to be done, it’s flowing smoother and it’s a whole lot more fun as more and more actors arrive to brighten our days!

I hope everyone has their season subscriptions - and is telling everyone they know to get on board!