A word from our Director...Michael Cochran

By the time you read this, Rounding Third will have finished its run. It was a great performance by Al Knudsen and Steve Schwetman, along with the work by crew members Chris Burnett and Caleb Buford. We are opening Steel Magnolias April 8 and are in rehearsals for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, our June musical. It feels like things are beginning to return to some normalcy with the show schedule even though we are still at significantly reduced capacity. In this newsletter, the summer camps and classes are all presented and that too is another sign of some return to regular programming. We don’t know what else the world will throw at us, but it feels like a step forward.

In a normal year we would have already announced our season of plays for next year. However, we are taking a little bit longer to look at some original scripts for the next season. Market House Theatre was selected as one of six theaters across the country to produce a winner from the AACT NEW PLAY FEST competition. In conjunction with five other theaters, we read the 12 finalist plays and selected our top three choices. We will announce which play we will produce as soon as the AACT organization gives us the go ahead. This year we also opened up a playwriting competition among Kentucky writers to present work in either a fully-staged production or a staged reading of the work. We’ve had some great plays submitted through that competition, as well. Many of the plays that we select each year are unknown to audiences, but all of them are based on really great writing; that will also hold true for our next season. We anticipate that the fall of 2021 will still have some restrictions on capacity for shows and classes so we are again looking at smaller cast sizes for the fall and, hopefully, by spring of 2022 we can move back to some larger cast shows.

What Summer Holds

Work is already under way to bring back our outdoor courtyard theatre again this summer for some classes and plays. We invested over $30,000 last summer to get a portable stage and artificial grass for the back lot. This year, we are investing in a stage covering to help us when rain is forecast so we don’t have to take everything down or cover our lights in trash bags to try to keep things dry. Each project is a learning opportunity and we learned a lot last year about putting on shows outdoors! Hopefully, this summer will be even better. We are also in negotiations with the city to bring back Shakespeare in the Park at the Noble Park Amphitheatre. We are waiting on permits and permission from the city, but this year we are looking to open up the cast for both adults and youth in the roles. While our indoor audiences are still limited, our outdoor opportunities this summer will allow us to have more people involved and I'm really looking forward to that.

The Next Stage

Our Next Stage Project continues to slowly move along. We are currently waiting for engineering drawings and approvals to put a roof back over the section of the building that was removed. That will be the next step in our drive to create a new space for dance and music recitals next to the dance and music classroom spaces.

Board of Directors Nominations

As we end our 57th season we have several board members who will be retiring from the board service. MHT board members are term limited for two, three-year terms and then must take at least three years off before they can be re-appointed. Our current board members have been an amazing group as we have faced the challenges presented over the past year. Each spring, we conduct meetings with new, prospective board members to give them information about what board service entails. This is always an exciting time for me as we bring in new people and new ideas to our board each year. Our nomination process is open to people in the community to put forward names for the board nomination committee to meet with. We generally select about 5 - 6 new board members each year to serve on our board of about 18 - 20 people. To put forward an individual’s name, please email me at michael@mhtplay.org and I will pass the name on to our nomination committee.