The time is near if not already here (a rhyme!). The AACTFest '09 Tacoma Organizing Committee is "shoulder to the wheel" already about an event that is sixteen months away. That seems like along time, but no so much when I start to review my monthly "to-do" list for those ensuing months. And it has occurred to all of us: Now is the time that folks should be planning for the '09 cycle. We'll have info to share in Bellingham this summer, but now's the time to:

1. PICK YOUR SHOW: Something you can do well, within your resources, that can travel, and that could be part of your season or taken from your season next year (you can do a piece separate from your season, but there's lots of reasons why it is better not to).

2. BUILD SUPPORT: Whether Volunteers, Board, Staff, whatever . . . you need their support to do this. Make sure you have it, especially if this is the first time you have participated as a performing company.
3. PLAN AHEAD: Be sure you take the time to review the budget and time considerations involved and have a plan of action.

And if you still can't find your way to bring a show to Kaleidoscope next March, plan on coming anyway, if just for a day. Once you've come, you'll want to come back AND bring a show!

We've launched a new online blog for folks see what shows are playing around the state and to share experiences and comments. I cannot stress enough how using a cyber forum like this, and extending it to your patrons an volunteers as a place to look for information about productions is a great on line promotion tool.
And we have it all set up for you already! All you have to do is use it, and encourage others to use it.

This Journal will now shift purposes and become the archive for the ON MY MIND sidebar portion of the WASHINGTON THEATRES TALK! If you want to know what was said last month, come here. if you want to know what is current, visit www.wsctaonline.blogspot.com

See you at the Show!

January, 2008

Where did November and December go? Like many of you, I too was caught up in that seasonal rush for the holiday ticket revenue. Well, rather than comment on it, given that we are all likely to do it again in ten months, let me share instead these pithy, witty and oh-so-appropriate New Years thoughts from those far more esteemed than myself:

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan

Many people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits. ~Author Unknown

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin

New Year's Day is every man's birthday. ~Charles Lamb

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty. ~John Selden

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. ~Hal Borland

The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months! ~Edward Payson Powell

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~Oprah Winfrey

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850

The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to. ~P.J. O'Rourke

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past. ~Henry Ward Beecher

New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. ~Mark Twain

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

May All Your Houses be Full!
Most Humbly,

Judy Cullen
Your WSCTA President


IMPORTANT MEMBER NOTE: Mark Your Calendars NOW for the Bellingham Theatre Guild's Shindig Festival for all WSCTA members: June 28th!

October, 2007

“’Tisn’t life that matters! ‘Tis the courage you bring to it.”
Sir Hugh Walpole

It is so easy to get caught up in what we don’t have and what we can’t do. Okay, I am all for having boundaries. Boundaries often are created by the resources at hand, or the lack there of. Those resources, or the lack there of, are also what makes us most creative. In producing theatre, we do it all the time. None of us can afford to build a truly and originally posh, upscale period drawing room. But we can create something that looks like one! Why let our creativity end there?

The majority of the community theatre’s in this nation are small companies with budgets of less that $200,000. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, “but we can’t afford a website!” . . . often from the same folks who are noting that their audience is predominantly grey haired or wearing hearing aids. You want to capture the young adult market? Then you have to find them where they live: ONLINE.

Now back in the day, you had to have someone who knew html or how to use front page to do a website. Those days are long gone! Visit www.jdcdesigns.blogspot.com and you will see what I mean. Now, this is not really a shameless promotion of my design work. What it is, is an example of what you can do on a free blog service for no money and very little time. I set up my site in less than 8 hours. It was up and running within two days of my finding out about the service from a visual artist friend.

Don’t have a website? Get one! Don’t have an email address? In these days of hotmail, gmail, and yahoo, there is no reason why you shouldn’t. Want to sell more tickets? Find a way to sell them online. Not only are there more reputable online vendor services than before, but there are more ticket services like Portland’s Ticket Turtle that was featured in the Spring WSCTA Journal, or Seattle’s Brown Paper Tickets. Olympia Little Theatre sells their tickets through an online ticket service in Olympia that sell tickets for several area events.

No, it isn’t really that we have so much more time now than we did 30 years ago, nor that our lives are so much more complex. We’ve made them so through the creeping understanding that time is relative. So while your relatives are sleeping, you can be online ordering tickets. When planning what to give your relatives as gifts, you can go online at the last minute and order them or gift certificates. Don’t let the “Can’t”s step between you and your community. More than that, don’t let them come between your company and its future. Be Creative! Take advantage of what free resources you can in the continual transforming of the sows ear we lovingly call community theatre into the silk purse that we know it truly is.

May All Your Houses be Full!
Most Humbly,

Judy Cullen
Your WSCTA President

September, 2007

“Castles in the air – they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build, too.”
Henrik Ibsen from the play "The Masterbuilder"

I was taught, oh those many years ago, that they way to build a strong financial base for a non-profit institution was a three-stage process. As follows:
Consistently finish each financial year in the black (with a positive dollar amount).
Build a Cash Reserve equal to one quarter of your annual budget (“experts” differ, some saying half, and even a few suggesting equal to your entire annual budget).
Build an Endowment to give you some investment revenue annually to your operating budget (I’ll be happy to share what I know about endowments in a later blog if there is interest).

This has always made perfect sense to me. But the importance of building to this level of financial stability – no matter what the size of your organization – came home to me brutally during a recent interview on Charlie Rose. Mr. Rose was interviewing a panel of esteemed experts on the history and probability of a Pandemic. No one wants to be alarmist, and bringing up a Pandemic in the same conversation as non-profit finances may be bordering on that. But here’s what REALLY happened in my mind . . .

The last great Pandemic was in 1918. An estimated 675,000 Americans died, more than had died in World War I. In October of that same year, Tacoma Little Theatre (where I worked for many years) was founded and presented its first production. That is remarkable when, at its full force, citizens around the world were being asked to stay at home and refrain from public gatherings of any kind unless absolutely necessary. Indeed, the U.S. cities that were most successful at stopping the spread of “La Grippe” were those that successfully stopped all such public gatherings, including church. WOW! Imagine the miracle of your community theatre surviving with no audience – unable to perform because (even if cast and crew were healthy) it is suddenly not in the public interest to do so.

When we try and plan for disaster, we tend to think of it in terms of a “bad season.” We’ve all had them. Seasons where the audiences did not come out to support the productions as we had thought or hoped they would, the furnace blew up, there was a transition in leadership and things just didn’t happen. Everybody has one or two of these a decade, and companies typically struggle to survive such events. Some do not make it.

What if the “bad” was bigger than that? An earthquake? A volcanic eruption? A pandemic? How many of our companies that we work passionately to support could survive? And is it just as simple as closing and locking the doors? Who decides that and how? What opportunity is there to serve our communities in such circumstances: an opportunity that, perhaps, is a little “out of the box” from our general missions.

How could we deal with any of these aspects if we don’t plan. We always like to think that it will not happen to our communities and the things that we care about – but it does. For me, it fueled the fire of why sound financial management and planning are vital to how we build our companies and our communities right now. Following such models, we ensure that our institutions can survive and thrive under normal circumstances. We additionally ensure that under extreme and remarkable circumstances, we can have the liberty to continue to serve our communities in what ever way is appropriate.

Just a thought!


May All Your Houses be Full!
Most Humbly,

Judy Cullen
Your WSCTA President

August, 2007

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin

It is hard to believe it has been six years! In October it will have been six years (thanks to a commitment made by a predecessor at the community theatre I was on the staff of) since I made my first foray into the world of the WSCTA. I remember, I brought bagels and cream cheese. A great way to make friends: I fit in right away!

Who knew that in six years I would go from being community theatre staffer to community theatre advocate? I never imagined my involvement in the WSCTA would take me to Florida, Texas, and most recently Charlotte, N.C. ? That I would meet so many people around our State and around the country. Or, that I would come to value that "special magic" that happens when people share the gift of performance with their friends, neighbors, and colleagues in the community. Everybody in community theatre has stories of those special families and life long friends they have gained through those transcendent shows where everyone seemed to click. I’ve worked in professional theatre. The experiences are great, but they are different.

So here I am, six years later. I’m working on the national AACTFest ’09, coming to the Scenic Pacific Northwest in just 22 short months. I don’t even work for a community theatre anymore! But I still am committed to that "magic." Involvement in the WSCTA has helped me see beyond the immediate concerns of a single company or a local theatre scene, and take a broader view of what community theatre is in this country: how we are unique, and the many ways in which we are alike (does anyone in this country have enough talented technical volunteers?). As I continue my journey, my investment in knowledge, I hope to share what I find with you – at least for the rest of my term!

We are all the better when we share the wealth of knowledge and experience. None of us is patenting the next great soft drink here! If you have something to share of a material nature, some special props or costumes to make available to other companies, something special you require for your upcoming production, be sure and check out the new forums section of the WSCTA webpage. When renewal certificates are mailed late this month, user names and passwords will be sent as well. Also, if you have a great informational resource to share, or an inspiration that you think might benefit others, feel free to email me through wsctaorg@hotmail.com. No theatre is an island! I’d love to learn about and share what you’ve found, as much as I get excited about sharing my own discoveries. See you in September!

May All Your Houses be Full!
Most Humbly,

Judy Cullen
Your WSCTA President

Welcome to the WSCTA Blog.  Our President, Judy Cullen, will post comments from time to time.