I run a small professional theatre company.

There are days when I think “There is no better job than mine. Times are tough but right now we’re surviving, and it looks like we’ll survive another few months, and we’ll worry later about what happens later.”

There are days when I think “Why would anyone start a theatre in this economy? Remind me why we thought this was a good idea!!??” *laughing*

And there are moments where I think “Perfect or not, this is pretty great.”

This is one of those moments.

After another great review (This one from the Lansing State Journal), Williamston Theatre is happy to announce WE’RE EXTENDING THE RUN OF HATE MAIL!

Instead of closing the show on the announced March 30th date, we will add two weeks of performances, and run the show through April 13th!

This is the first show we’ve extended at WT, and we’re really excited about it, for a couple of reasons:

1) Extending a show means we’re doing even MORE to fulfill our mission of providing quality professional theatre at affordable prices.
2) It’s a sign of success!
3) We’re able to provide 2 more weeks of work to a handful of deserving artists, all of whom are fantastic.

So, needless to say, I’m very happy about the news. Of course, now the challenge is to fill the seats for those last two weeks, so it doesn’t completely backfire on us. And who knows, as much as we don’t want that to happen, it may. But the whole company is built on faith and a little confident risk-taking, so why stop now?!

Hate Mail has gotten another great review, this one from the Lansing City Pulse.

You can check out the whole review here, but some highlights are:

Williamston Theatre continues to take advantage of its intimate space to present another story about the delicate nature of relationships. It’s latest production, “Hate Mail,” is like “You’ve Got Mail” for cynics. More accurately, it is for romantics who hide their idealism behind a brick wall of cynicism.

…a highly entertaining mix of absurdity sprinkled with just enough touching moments to satisfy the uncloseted romantics.

What “Hate Mail” captures most effectively is how people who desperately need each other can alternately help and hurt each other. The play also nails the way cycles of personal fulfillment are rarely aligned between two people.

Audiences are loving it, and it’s nice to see that in this review, again, the actors are praised for their quality work!

Good Thing #1:
So recently I finished up watching the series Slings and Arrows on DVD. Man, what a great show. They only did 3 seasons, which apparently was the plan all along, and I loved all 3. It’s a Canadian show about a theatre – the (fictional) New Burbage Theatre Festival. There’s so much of my life in that show, I can’t even begin to tell you. It was hilarious, poignant, satirical, horrifying and inspiring. I absolutely recommend it to anyone who works in the theatre, enjoys theatre, or just enjoys good television! (Thanks to John and Emily for loaning me their DVD’s!! Now I want a set of my own!)

Good Thing #2:
Had a big fat wrestling match pillow fight with the kids tonight. Got my butt kicked.
Kid Quote of the night, from Maggie: “He’s got my toe! He’s got my toe!! OH THE PAIN! THE PAIN!!”
Tonight’s “Things I Never Thought I’d Hear Myself Say, But Now I Have Kids!” quote: Max, you may not throw the dog at me.

Good Thing #3:
A mummified dinosaur was found in North Dakota. This story is just really cool!

This morning we took Max, my seven year old, in for a follow up appointment. At his emergency room trip a couple of weeks ago, they found that he had an alarmingly low platelet count in his bloodstream ( a count of 40,000 when normal is around 150,000). We went in for some bloodwork last week, and it was still low. So we went in this morning, and it’s moving steadily up – this is really, really good news. It means that he’s probably just had a virus that wiped out his platelet count, and that it’ll self-correct in the next 4 to 6 weeks. This is much much better than some of the other options that involve the body either not making enough platelets, or self-destroying more platelets than it should be. They’re pretty sure it’s just a simple “this happens to a lot of kids” thing, but we’ll have to go back in a month to make sure. Needless to say, hearing that it’s almost definitely nothing was a tremendous relief. This week has been very, very stressful with worry about what it might be. Of course we tried not to worry, since it doesn’t help anything, but when the doctors say “Take him to Dr. So-and-so at the Cancer Center” your heart stops. Thankfully, the best outcome was what we got.

The doctors at the U of M hospital that we went to this morning, in the Cancer Center, were just incredible. Dr. Pawar was kind to Max, engaging, comforting, thorough and spent a bunch of time with us talking on a level we could understand, not talking down to us. I am truly appreciative of her wonderful way with her patients (and their terror-stricken parents.)

And now, the funny story about the trip: Dr. Pawar was great with Max during his exam, and as they talked she learned of his fondness for video games. When she was done with him, she sat him in front of the computer in the exam room, and connected to disney.com and told him he could sit and play a couple of games while she talked with Mom and Dad. He sat there playing as we spoke, and Dr. Pawar had a good view of what he was doing on the screen, but we didn’t. After she’d eased our minds, she left the room for a minute. When she did, I checked on Max, and he had gotten bored with Disney.com, and had switched to a website his cousins had shown him: miniclips.com.

While we were talking with the doctor, he had been playing an online version of Presidential Street Fight! When I checked to see what he was doing, he was playing Barack Obama, and was in the process of getting his ass kicked by a computer animated Hillary Clinton!

?!?!?!?!

I had to work hard not to laugh my butt off as we had a brief refresher course on what was appropriate and what was NOT!! *laughing* Favorite Max quote from the exchange: Man, that old lady was killing me!! *facepalm*

So – a good day, full of relief and laughs. And thanks, once again, to everyone who posted comments and sent emails, text messages or positive energy during Max’s emergency room visit – it was truly, truly appreciated!

Williamston Theatre’s production of Hate Mail has gotten a big ol’ rave type of review from Don Calamia of Encore Michigan and Between The Lines!

It’s very favorable, and includes a couple of great quotes:

the thoroughly delightful night of theater guarantees accolades

and

The result, then, are two very believable performances and nary a dull moment, thanks to Caselli’s insightful direction.

and

…laugh-out-load social satire…

and

But it is the delicious character development by Gribble and Bard that’s the true star of the show…their teamwork is superb.

I’m glad Don liked the show, and I’m also very appreciative that he singled out the actors for their great work – they’ve done a wonderful job. I’m also hoping that, with a little luck, this and other reviews like it will keep the ticket sales going and fill some seats! 🙂

You can check out the whole review here at Encore Michigan.

Edited: something weird happened, and this got deleted when I posted the entry on the 18th. Odd! Anyway, I’m reposting it! 🙂

So, as predicted, a busy week.

We open Hate Mail tonight. Very happy with the way it’s gone. The challenges with it were fun, and I’m very happy with the way we’ve overcome them. The cast is great, and audiences have throoughly enjoyed the previews. You never know what the critics will say, but I’m not worried about it – I’m very happy with it, audiences are very happy with it! Now it’s on to the next couple of projects.

In fact, concerning other projects, we had a couple of workshops this week for Maidens, Mothers and Crones, our upcoming production. It was really, really exciting for me to put together this team of people and say “Okay, here’s the kind of show I want to put together – what do you think?” and see them come together and really do some wonderful work. It’s a thrilling thing, bringing together the right team of people and seeing something incredible come together out of nothing but a few ideas and some hard work! Here’s a shot of the director, writers and most of the cast at a table workshopping some material:

In other news, Max is feeling better after his ER scare a couple of weeks ago, but when we took him in for his follow up appointment, his platelet count was still really low. We have an appointment with the specialists next week. Trying to not worry, but there are a few things that are very worry-inducing about this. Having faith that he’s going to be fine. Good vibes from anybody reading this are very welcome!

Speaking of Max – I had a stop-me-in-my-tracks moment yesterday when I took him to school:
I walked him in, and as we were at his locker, one of his young friends said “Hi Max! Hey, is that your Grandpa?!”

?!?!?!?

Max said “NO! My Grandpa’s in FLORIDA!”

Now, she was only in 2nd grade, and I know when I was that age I thought anyone over 18 was ancient, so I’m trying to laugh it off and not take it personally.

I am, however, buying a red sportscar, piercing my eyebrow and getting a mohawk, some leather pants and some liposuction.

This is a fun article about Indiana Jones – geez, I can’t WAIT for this movie! 🙂 I really need to rewatch the first 3 soon.

15 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT INDIANA JONES (or maybe you did know, but here they are again!)

Previews for Hate Mail have been going well. Audiences this weekend have been laughing a lot, and there’ve been quite a few “OOOooooh!” or “Uh-oh!!” outbursts from the audience during the show, which is a lot of fun to hear – it’s a very exciting thing to hear folks get pulled into a performance like that! The talkbacks have been very good – folks really enjoying the production and the unique style of the piece, as well as a handful of very useful observations for the actors and I to play with! A couple more rehearsals next week, and one more preview, and we open officially and hope to fill the seats! 🙂

A busy week – we’ve got a two-day workshop for our World Premiere of Voices From The Midwest: Maidens, Mothers and Crones, we’re participating in Joint Auditions with several other theatres, Opening Night of Hate Mail is Friday, the next-to-last meeting of our current Acting For Young People class is Monday night, we’re working to finalize our 2008/2009 Season, and we’ve got scene shop renovations and re-roofing projects that should be wrapping up this week. *Phew!*

Looking forward to getting this show open so I can get back out there and see some more of the current shows being done in the area. I’ve already missed, unfortunately, several that I was hoping to catch… but that’s the way the schedule crumbles. (Yeah – I tried to come up with a clever way of working “Cookie” into that…but I gave up. They can’t all be gems, it’s late and it’s been a long week!)

Tonight we’ll see how our first preview audience responds to the interesting style of Hate Mail!

It’s been a busy week, but a very productive one.

As we’ve been doing our final dress rehearsals, there has also been a bunch of renovation going on in the building: The Scene Shop is getting torn apart, rebuilt and made into a much more useful space. Yay! Also, the roof over the back half of the building (the part housing the scene shop and art gallery) has been completely re-roofed: What a mess! The building is old, and for a while now we’ve had some leaks back there giving us trouble. We were awarded a nice grant for projects just like that, and it’s been wonderful getting it taken care of!

So, lots of exciting stuff going on – hoping we can fill the seats during our preview week and get good word of mouth on this very fun, engaging show!