Nothing to worry about.

In staff meeting today, we went 'round the table and each shared one thing we were excited about and one thing we were worried about with respect to this Friday's sold out Super Duper Groovefunkathonic Concert Extravaganza: Dr. John and The Neville Brothers.

This is a huge show for us on many levels:

• It's expensive. I'm not gonna lie - it's tied for the most expensive show we've done here. Legendary artists demand - and get - large sacks o' cash to play.
  
• Despite that, it's a fundraiser, with a silent auction and a raffle (the prizes are cool: two winners, and each winner gets backstage passes to all of the Summer of the Arts events AND two "Golden Tickets" to the Englert that will get you in the door for anything all year).
• It's our first collaboration with Summer of the Arts.
• It's essentially two whole shows, back to back, each with all of their own gear (which is coming in from Chicago that day), their own management and their own quirks.
• Each act has an incredibly long and comprehensive rider (do you know how long we spent trying to find someone who had a specific rare kind of fish who could also cook it a particular way? No, you don't.).
• We have more coffee makers and tea pots (thank you, Board!) than what would reasonably seem to be necessary.
  
• It's sold out.
• People are literally begging for seats.
• There will most likely be a lot of people in line that night for standing-room-only tickets, so crowd control will be key.
• There are a lot of sponsors, which means a lot of work to make sure everyone gets their benefits and is thanked in the right way.
• It might snow.
• ...and so on.
  

it is safe to say that this show has dominated our collective attention over here for quite some time. There are certainly a great many details that have to go exactly right to pull off the event without a hitch, and a great many of those details are outside of our control.

Despite that, around the table today, the worries people expressed were all minor enough that I think I can say that we're not really that worried at all. We're anxious, sure. But more than anything I think we're excited.

Excited to see this place bursting at the seams with people. Excited to experience two musical legends on our stage. Excited to do what we do.

In other news:

• I'll be at the Twestival tomorrow night, at least for a little bit. We donated a couple pair of Mason Jennings tix to be given away. If you're into Twitter, stop out. If you don't know what I'm talking about, start here.
• We just booked Lez Zeppelin for April 8th! Tix on sale... soon.
• We're getting some people together tonight for a first meeting about a reeeeeeally cool thing happening this October.
• I have 8, um, tubes? things? of lip balm on my desk, courtesy of one of our board members who works at Raining Rose in CR.
• One of our window microphones in the box office is broken - again. C'mon, Telex people. Get it right this time. Please. Thank you.
  

Auditions

This was from last weekend, which is ancient history in "web time," I know, but I still thought it was worth mentioning.

First round of auditions for Wizard of Oz went great. I know David Kilpatrick (Producing Artistic Director at Old Creamery Theatre) was very excited by the enthusiastic turnout, and the many talented people who auditioned.

I personally was very impressed by Paul Dieke, the music director. He had a wonderful and kind way of both complimenting and coaching the kids. Someone would come up, sing their song. Paul would stop them, compliment them. Coach them. They'd do it again, he'd stop them. Compliment. Coach. Again. Stop. Compliment. Coach. By the end, each kid's performance was substantially better than when they walked in the door.

This bodes well for the quality of the show.

Katherine, our student designer (and part of the brilliant Donate Design program at the University of Iowa) has been busy whipping up logo and poster ideas for the show, and I'm really excited about the direction things are heading. When we settle in on final versions, I'll throw them up here.

Strength in numbers.

Twenty one. That's the official "man count" at last night's sold out performance of Menopause the Musical. Six hundred and ninety-nine women, and 21 guys.

Apparently all of our bathrooms became women's bathrooms.

People loved the show. We'll try to bring them back. Kudos to the Iowa Women's Foundation for making it happen this time.

We're off to be the Wizard...

Had a great meeting yesterday with David Kilpatrick from the Old Creamery Theatre and a handful of other Englertians to talk about this summer's production of The Wizard of Oz. This will be the first time we've worked with Old Creamery, after having done other Big Collaborations with City Circle/Iowa Children's Museum a couple of times (Seussical and Schoolhouse Rock).

Now, I'll be honest - I have never been a huge Wizard of Oz fan. Maybe it's because I had to sit through a hundred thousand endless rehearsals when my sister was a munchkin in a tedious high school production way back in the day. Or maybe it's because I always looked at the movie and thought the special effects weren't all that, well, special.

But I have to admit I'm excited about this collaboration. First, because I know it's going to be a good quality show with the peeps at Old Creamery on board. Secondly, because there are soooo many marketing opportunities, it has that side of my mind racing in overdrive.

But mostly, talking about auditions and performances and rehearsals and all that, it reminds me of how much fun I had doing community theater when I was a kid. Putting on a big show in one's spare time is unlike anything else I've experienced: getting a group of people for one purpose, for a short amount of time, having a lot of fun, working ridiculously hard on something, and then it's suddenly over. Incomparable.

Just for the record, Old Creamery is professional - not community - theater. But we are looking for a special someone in the community to be our Dorothy.

Which brings me to this: auditions. Not just for Dorothy, but for the whole show and in fact the entire Old Creamery season. This show will combine the best of our region's talent with professional actors to create a great experience for the audience. (btw - it's not necessary to be a member of Actor's Equity, but members are of course welcome)

This Saturday, January 31st
9 AM to noon - kids
1 PM to 5 PM - adults
Anyone ages 8 to 70+ are welcome to audition

What to bring:
- Two contrasting monologues
- If you sing, two short selections from contrasting songs (an accompaniest and CD player will be provided)
- Picture and resume, if you have them

So, think you or your kids are the next Judy Garland? Start your story here, on the Englert stage. Come on down, give it a shot.

190

I've found that people generally fall into one of two camps:

1) "Boy, it seems like the lights are always on down there at the Englert. There's always something going on."

- or -

2) "There's never anything going on at the Englert. You guys don't have enough events."


In 2008, we had 190 "event days."

The most obvious event day is a performance, but it can also mean a rehearsal day for a big event like The Nutcracker, or a private reception in the Gallery, or other random things. Some of these events are "Englert Series," meaning we book the performer, promote the show, assume all the risk, etc. The rest - the majority, actually - are community events (theater, etc.), rentals for private events, collaborations with other non-profits, etc.

Here's a look at how our event days have grown over the last three years:




Is this a lot or a little? Well, like most things, it depends on how you look at. We started off 2008 with the following assumptions and goals:

1) There are 365 calendar days in the year, but they're not all "bookable." Take away holidays, maintenance days and home football days (scheduling against the Hawkeyes - even after the game - hasn't worked yet in four years), and that takes it down to around 338.

2) We're Iowa City, not New York City. So out of those 338 available days, we have to account for the fact that we have a relatively small market, there are a lot of other things going on, and people just aren't going to go to the theater 5, 6 or 7 nights a week. We projected that on average, we could have 4 events per week. Some weeks less, some weeks more.

3) That brings us to 188 bookable days. Our actual goal was 160, with 188 being the "max" end of the range.

We did 190. Some of that was due to displaced organizations looking for performance space after the floods. Some of it was due to more Englert Series shows than ever before.

Is that enough events? Too few? What kind of impact did it have on our budget? What about our staff? What about fundraising?

Can we do more? If we just do more events, won't we eliminate the need for fundraising? For investments from sponsors and the City?

So many questions! Answers (or at least our point of view) to come...

Happy Holidays!

This video was something I originally put together for the Festival of Carols, but Mother Nature had other plans that night and we had to cancel it due to weather. Not wanting to see it go entirely to waste, I thought I'd post it up here. Sort of a "year in review" video, although it doesn't begin to capture all of the 160+ events that were in the Englert this year! Happy Holidays!

A-list at the E

Here are some pics from the night. We had a screening of Ashton's movie "Personal Effects." Seemed to be a decent movie from the little bit that I saw. There were a lot of adoring fans screaming as he took stage. Overall a good event for a good cause. Oh yeah, Ashton and Demi were very nice.