So thankful. A visit from the ghost of theatre present.

I hope your holiday weekend was pleasant and stress free and that you were able to celebrate and commemorate the story that means the most to you. Asheville had a white Christmas, which was actually really pleasant and relaxing, considering the busy fall we’ve had at NC Stage!

How busy, you ask?

We started out with the news that we had been voted readers favorite theatre company in the Mountain Xpress readers poll right before we dove into the Bard-a-thon back in September and about 200 participants read 12 Shakespeare plays over a 48 hour period. And yes, it was fun! But it also raised around $9,000 toward our programming and it was a great kick off to an exciting season.

Immediately after that wound down, and I mean immediately, we started rehearsals for Angels in America. Angie directed that so I was hanging with our kids while she tackled that behemoth of a play. Nearly 2,000 people attended Angels. It’s a play we’ve wanted to produce for quite awhile and we feel very fortunate that we got to do it and that we received such a positive response from the audience.

Then, while that was going on, we started rehearsals for three, count ‘em, THREE productions of Live From WVL Radio Theatre: It’s A Wonderful Life. This adaptation of the movie is something we’ve been doing with our partners Immediate Theatre Project (or the ITPeeps as we like to call them) since 2006.

Production #1 was a partnership with Flat Rock Playhouse, with performances at the Historic Henderson County Courthouse. On December 4th that cast moved to Charlotte where we partnered with the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center for a 2 week run in the Booth Theatre, while a replacement cast rehearsed and opened at the Courthouse in Hendersonville (Production #2) . I directed those productions so I had 2 trips to Charlotte in as many days! Meanwhile, our tour version – Production #3, produced by Immediate Theatre Project, was rehearsing and then went out on a multi-state tour that wound up on December 23rd in Newton-Conover, NC after visiting Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. All told, more than 5,000 people attended these three productions and experienced the message that “one person’s life touches so many others”.

Then MEANWHILE, Angie was directing scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Asheville Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer at the Thomas Wolf Auditorium in mid November. It was a fantastic blending of actors, instruments, and voices.

We’re pooped. But it’s a good kind of pooped, and we are really enjoying the quiet of the snow before the storm of the second half of our season. More on that in the third email you will be visited by soon.

So as I reflect on the first part of the season with its great partnerships and collaborations and think to the next part, I’m reminded of something I read earlier today. (ok, I was perusing Twitter and came across this tweet); “Do NOT use this week to plan for 2011. Devote this week to thanking folks for support in the past year.”

If I don’t say it enough, let me say it now. Thank you. To all of the people who value theatre and NC Stage, to the hard working professionals that it’s my privilege to work with every day, to the board of directors, to everyone of you who’ve attended a play or convinced one of your friends to come see a play, and to every one of you who’ve contributed time, resources and money to NC Stage. Your support counts more than we can ever express and we are indeed lucky to be in such a beautiful, supportive place with people like you.


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