NCTC Spring 2019 Newsletter

YOUR H OM E FO R AR T WO R LD & US PR EM IER E UTHAWARE QUEER & ALL BEHIND-THE-SCENES MMUNIT Y DRAMA CREAT S P R I N G 2 0 1 9 MUSICALS THEATRE N UCATION CLASSES & CAM ISTS INNOVATION COM

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newsflash!

• Give OUT Day is almost here! Join NCTC on the only national day of giving for the LGBTQ+ community by scheduling your donation here. For more info, see pg. 10.

• In February, the Conservatory’s Family Matinee Series performed Snow Queen, a genderbent twist on the classic Hans Christian Anderson story. Click here to view a slideshow of photos from the show.

• Are you:

a) Coming to Opening Night of The View UpStairs

b) Interested in spending more time with Ed Decker?

c) Looking for a dinner reservation for May 18th?

d) All of the above?

Join us for our new special event, Opening Night Dinners!

More info on pg. 9.

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• We are pleased to announce 3 new members of our Future Stages program, who have generously stated their intention to support NCTC over the longer term with multi-year gifts. A heartfelt thank you to:

Bill Gregory

Al Baum & Robert Holgate

Dr. Allan P. Gold & Mr. Alan Ferrara

These gifts allow NCTC to build a robust and sustainable forward-thinking budget, ensuring the year-to-year funding necessary to commission and produce world premieres and to grow our youth programs. For more information on multi-year giving with Future Stages, please contact Director of Individual Giving Andrea Partridge at andreap@nctcsf.org or 415.694.6158.

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• The 2019-2020 Season has just been announced!

With 7 exceptional stories that speak to our collective humanity, there is something for everyone at NCTC. One big change this year: we won’t be producing Avenue Q this holiday season. Instead, we will be mounting a production of Head Over Heels, a new musical fresh off its Broadway run featuring the music of The Go Gos! Please see pg. 6-8 for details on how this effects subscriptions, and highlights from our Season Announcement Party.

• Feel like you haven’t heard from NCTC in a while? You may not be subscribed to our mailing list. This is how we invite you to special events like our Season Announcement Party, send you updates on our subscriptions (like the news about Head Over Heels), and more!

You can sign up to receive emails from us here.

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• YouthAware’s OUTSPOKEN began its tour this week! If you’d like to see what OUTSPOKEN & YouthAware is all about, join us for a special evening performance in NCTC’s Walker Theatre on Tuesday, April 23rd at 7:00pm. Email YouthAware Program Manager Nicole Meñez at nicolem@nctcsf. org to reserve seats! For more details, check out pg.

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Save the date! Our own Russian countess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy will be performing with a TBA speSave the ownmonthly Russian countess Smirncial date! guestOur in her show, “KatyaKatya Presents…” off-Skyy be performing TBA special guestatin at will Martuni’s Piano Barwith on a Sunday, June 16th her monthly show,6:30).

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Welcome to the 2019-20 Season!

Thanks to your continued support, we are embarking on a new decade of growth with work that is daring, innovative, and timely. This season explores an array of moments in our community’s collective past and present, in the hope of drawing that thread of shared humanity onwards into the future. Your investment in the ongoing sustainability of NCTC’s programs is the lifeline that keeps us afloat. Thank you!

You may notice something a little different in this season’s lineup: no Avenue Q! Avenue Q will be embarking on a national Broadway tour and is no longer available for productions by regional theatre companies. In its place we’ll be producing Head Over Heels! Fresh off its own Broadway run, Head Over Heels features the iconic music of 80s girl group The Go Go’s and a fairytale story with a uniquely NCTC twist. For more info, visit our website here.

We hope you’ll be joining us for this fabulous musical, however, the announcement came after printing our brochure and renewal forms. We’ll be sending out updated materials to you shortly, and we recommend that our 6-show subscribers upgrade to a 7-show package to lock in their seats for this hit musical at the best prices. If you have any questions about this, please contact the Box Office at 415.861.8972 or boxoffice@nctcsf.org.

Your stories. Our stage.This Season.

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Season Announcement Party 2019

We hosted our annual Season Announcement Party on Tuesday, March 26 to unveil the 2019-20 season to the NCTC family of donors, subscribers, and artists. Please enjoy these photo from the event, and we hope to see you at the next one!

Your friendly NCTC redheads, Barbara & Andrea

Ed Decker with playwright Jewelle Gomez

The cast of The View UpStairs performs

Season Producers Lowell Kimble & Ted Tucker

Board members J. Conrad Frank & Dana Zook

Conservatory students dance from Snow Queen

Didn’t get the invitation to NCTC’s Season Announcement Party? You may have unsubscribed to our email list. You can resubscribe here.

Opening Night Dinner

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NCTC invites you to join Founder & Artistic Director, and the Director of The View UpStairs, Ed Decker for a special preshow benefit dinner on Opening Night, Saturday, May 18th.

This is a fabulous opportunity to spend extra time with Ed before the show, enjoy a fine meal, and offer even greater support to NCTC, all while taking in an evening of great food & art. To complement the musical’s setting, you’ll enjoy a New Orleans inspired family-style menu paired with fine wines from 6:30-7:30. Then, we’ll take a short walk back to the theatre and enjoy the show.

WHEN: Opening Night of The View UpStairs, Saturday May 18, 6:30-7:30pm

WHERE: Pause Wine Bar, 1666 Market Street

(a 5-minute walk to NCTC!)

Tickets for the dinner are $65 each and all proceeds support NCTC’s programs and mission.

HOW: Select “Ticket + Opening Night Dinner” when pur-

chasing your seat for Opening Night for an all-inclusive ticket to both events!

If you’d like to purchase the pre-show dinner only, click here.

If you’d like to move your current tickets to this night and purchase the dinner, please contact our Box Office Manager Alessandro McLaughlin at boxoffice@nctcsf.org or 415.861.8972.

QUESTIONS

Please contact Director of Individual Giving Andrea Partridge at andreap@nctcsf.org or 415.694.6158.

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Dear Supporters of NCTC, As we approach Give OUT Day 2019, a national day of giving for the entire LGBTQ+ community, I’ve been thinking about the things that unify us within that ever-growing circle, both in numbers and diversity, and what threads remain common to us at NCTC. We all have a dedication to seeing our stories on the stage, told with humanity, compassion, & quality, and, we all have the capacity to give, at least a small amount, towards realizing those goals. There’s no better time to do so than right now, where your contribution towards our overall number of donors for Give OUT Day could mean an extra prize for NCTC. What is Give OUT Day? Give OUT Day is a nationwide 24-hour online fundraising event for LGBTQ+ nonprofits on Thursday, April 18th, but it starts right now: you can schedule your donation today at https://www.giveoutday.org/c/GO/a/nctcsf Last year’s Give OUT Day brought us an unprecedented level of success: we raised over $15,000 from 77 dedicated donors and won an extra $2,000 prize from Horizons Foundation for having the most donors in our category.

This level of support was truly beyond our dreams, and it’s all because of you, our community of patrons, coming together to show your commitment to NCTC on a national scale.

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You can’t imagine the joy we all felt on the morning of Give OUT Day 2018, when we woke up to scheduled donations of nearly $10,000 that gave us a tremendous head start towards both our overall fundraising goal and winning the prize. You all see the final products of your contributions on our stages each season, but day to day, our staff knows intimately what each new gift can become: a Conservatory scholarship for another student in need of access to the gift of theatre, the ability to raise salaries for all our artists on our stages, or even the funding necessary to foster the commission of a brand new play, from the spark of inspiration to the curtain on Opening Night.

This year, we want to offer something back to everyone who pledges their support for NCTC on Give OUT Day. If you scheduled your donation of $10 or more before 4.18, you will be entered into a drawing to win 2 tickets to any NCTC show, plus a $100 gift certificate to the chic PLĂ„J Restaurant. Help us win a prize and win one of your own too!

If you have any questions about Give OUT Day or making your contribution, I would be delighted to help. You can reach me any time at andreap@nctcsf.org or at 415.694.6158.

Thank you, as always, for being a part of our giving family.

All the best,

Andrea Partridge

Director of Individual Giving P.S. Sometimes the best support costs nothing - give @NCTCSF a shout out on Facebook or Instagram with this link and spread the love: https://www.giveoutday.org/c/GO/a/nctcsf/

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NCTC invites you to join us for YouthAware’s Community Night on Tuesday, April 23 at 7:00pm in the Walker Theatre for a special performance of “OUTSPOKEN” by Prince Gomolvias.

YouthAware is a cornerstone program of NCTC, and since 1986, our educational productions have played to over 500,000 kids & teens throughout the Bay Area. We offer a year-round lineup of age-appropriate plays that grapple with a variety of sensitive topics, from HIV/AIDS education to substance abuse, dating violence, homophobia, & stereotyping. Designed for early teen audiences, “OUTSPOKEN” shows a series of vignettes that deal with a number of those issues, in particular sexuality & gender identity/expression, which is explored in some way in nearly every scene.

We hope you will join us in the chance to celebrate this program and learn more about the essential work NCTC does in San Francisco’s schools. Wine and light snacks will be served from 6:30-7:00pm, and the 35-minute play will be followed by a post-show conversation, similar to the guided discussions that conclude in-school performances.

To reserve seats, please email NCTC’s YouthAware Program Manager & Casting Associate Nicole Meñez at nicolem@nctcsf.org.

For more context on YouthAware and background on the remarkable theatre artist running the program, we’ve included an excerpt from an interview with Nicole Meñez, conducted by Bay School SF senior Ava Litchfield for her capstone project “ACT UP! Theatre as a Platform for Social Change”. Enjoy!

What drew you to a career in theatre?

I was in undergrad at UC Santa Cruz majoring in Environmental Studies and got a Theatre minor because I couldn’t stay away from the Theatre Department. I had always known that whatever I ended up doing with my future, I wouldn’t be able to hide from my artistic side. When I started daydreaming about putting on plays and performances about the environmental concepts in my lectures, I realized that using my art as a platform for the change I wanted to make in the world was entirely possible.

What does your job entail? What does your day look like?

It really depends on the time of year.

Sometimes I’m in the office all day working on developing scripts and educational resources that pertain to the shows that YouthAware produces for students. Other times, I’m out on tour with the team of actors and the stage manager we’ve hired going from school to school or setting up our theatre to host school field trips to see our plays. Most of the time I’m directing the shows we do, but more often than not I’m teaching and co-facilitating the post-show conversations that the actors lead with the student audiences.

What has been your favorite production to work on?

At my job at NCTC? The K-3 play “Let’s Get Galactic” - it’s a 25 minute hip hop musical for the little ones about empathy, respecting differences, and immune system health.

I’ve directed and choreographed it the past two years in a row and it’s so wonderful to see what we try to model in this show enacted by the younger kids in our audiences.

How do you define theatre for social change?

My definition, which is always growing and changing with me and my work, would currently be “theatre that sparks critical thought and conversation about the inner workings of humanity and how that moment shifts the way we view ourselves and one another”. The way I define this for myself changes all the time in

what I learn from the work I do13 and the conversations I have with peers.

What advice do you have for working on/creating pieces of theatre related to social justice?

Have a clear focal point and intent, something specific that you want to unpack. It’s so easy for a creative process to grow and change the structure and conversations around a piece of theatre, particularly when there are so many intersections connecting different social justice topics. As long as you have a clear vision around what the piece is dedicated to, then you can keep going back to that nugget of an idea whenever you get lost or stuck.

Also, having collaborators that you trust. Not necessarily people who have the same ideologies as you, but people that you know you can have tricky conversations with and share - really give and take - any differing points of view.

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Development department changes: welcome vanessa & hilda!

As one of our most dedicated supporters, we want to keep you apprised of the recent changes in our Development Department. Late last year, Executive staff and the Board of Directors made the decision to restructure the department and in doing so, created a few new positions to better serve the fundraising needs of the organization. Andrea Partridge, with whom you are already likely familiar, has been promoted to the position of Director of Individual Giving, and is spearheading efforts to expand NCTC’s fundraising capacity through increased and multi-year gifts in our new strategic giving program Future Stages. She is thrilled to continue to her work with her NCTC family of colleagues, artists, and supporters in this new role.

VANESSA RAMOS joins NCTC in a full-time position as the new Director of Institutional Giving.

She had previously worked at NCTC stage managing for several shows both mainstage as well as education. She first applied to NCTC in her last year as an undergrad and got lucky when offered Birds of a Feather, the first of many professional shows she stage-managed throughout the Bay Area. After Birds of a Feather, she came back for Cock, and YouthAware’s Real Talk. She is excited to return “home” to support the growth and ambition of the company.

Born in Puerto Rico, Vanessa grew up surrounded by live performances and regularly participated in festivals and community events. The arts, in all forms of expression, have always been an important part of her life.

This upbringing nurtured in her a great passion for music, theater, and dance. She has spent much of her adult life advocating for the arts and the power that these have to improve lives, to effect social change and to build community.

Over the last few years she has become familiar with many companies across the Bay Area and has worked with them in different capacities. Some recent credits include American Conservatory Theater, Ballet San Jose, Central Works Theater, Indra’s Net Theater, Anton’s Well

Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Those Women Productions, Performing Arts Academy of Marin and Diablo Valley Ballet.

Vanessa also has enjoyed teaching music, movement & storytelling to children in the Bay Area for just over a decade. She had the opportunity to teach at public school as well as private institutions. Eventually, she developed her own curriculum bringing about ‘Treble Tales’, a program that encourages children to create simple, theatrical performances while playing and learning a variety of skills including basic music composition and choreography.

She is a graduate of UC Berkeley where she studied Music and Theater and Performance Studies. She received her Orff Training at The San Francisco School, and is a member of NCAOSA, the Northern California American Orff-Schulwerk Association.

She is currently a graduate student at Drexel University studying Arts Administration. She intends for her thesis to be centered around the shifting financial needs of arts nonprofits in the 21st century, post-Trump era.

In order to support our elevated fundraising efforts, NCTC has also hired a new Development Assistant, HILDA LI. Growing up immersed in the arts culture in the Bay Area, Hilda found her love for the arts as a pre-college student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Hilda, a recent graduate of The

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Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, is proud to join the NCTC Development department. At Peabody, Hilda was a leader and member of the newly formed Peabody String Sinfonia, a group of students with a mission to bring healing and beauty to people who are in challenging situations. After moving east to continue her studies in music, Hilda returned to the Bay Area to more seriously pursue work in non-profit art organizations.

Hilda first joined NCTC in November as a Development Intern. Many of you may have met her already, either in the Donor Lounge or at one of our special events. In addition to her work at NCTC, Hilda is also a violin instructor and performs around the Bay Area. She is looking forward to getting to know all of our wonderful supporters better.

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