2/12/2012 Meeting Minutes

Special note of sympathy to Meryn Flynn who fell & broke her patella & is currently staying at the Greenville Rehab Center. Visitors welcome!

Paine School Update: More will be known by next week, but there is some small hope that we may be able to use it by May, even if students haven’t returned, yet. Discovered that many people wanted to know what was going on, even if not involved in current play/rehearsals or activities that were scheduled there. Discussed notification. Also, discussed options if school is not available. Currently Footloose rehearsals are happening at Woody Lowden on Tues. (free) & at the North Foster Baptist Church on Thurs. There is a fee charged at the church & cast members have been asked to contribute $1 each night to defray the cost. Other suggestions: Ponaganset Middle School charges $25-40/night for rehearsals & $200/performance for shows. They don’t have lights set-up & we would need to supply our own. Old Middle School in Coventry (across from Coventry Library) is not currently used as a school & could be used for rehearsals & shows. has apprx. 200 seats & a sound set-up, but not lights. $4-5000 for total retooling & maybe a school theater group or Academy Players also using it. Scituate Common House also charges $200/use. The 3rd floor of a business in Danielson was offered as rehearsal space.

Treasurers Report: Carol transferred money into the Internet checking account & between that account, our primary checking, savings & line of credit (LOC) minus the debt we carry to create a good credit rating, we have apprx. $30K available. $1000 from CAST is part of a Partnership (not donation). We have our Retail Sales permit, so we are now ready to sell items & would like to get the on-line store up & running. Would be interested in having someone take on the inventory as well as run the sales. Paid our Website Domain fee of $95 for 9 years. Paid Database/FileMaker 2 year renewal at $800+. Discount for 2 year renewal and nonprofit status. Production results: Dracula was about a $928 loss, Get Merry made about $392, the Murder Mystery was about $1875 profit with about 160 attendees in 2 days, Jeeves & Wooster made about $1640 profit. Last year’s Murder Mystery made about $1698 in one night.

Grant Writing: What do you do to benefit the Community? We are strong with Youth Involvement & because of its rural nature, Foster is considered an underserved population. We would like to get rent money to keep SMCT in town, or at least close by (anywhere from $12K to $100K could be used). Cassi will talk to someone (Chris) from Scituate & get back to Chris BJ who is writing a current proposal. Could possibly get another grant from RISCA & Bob will get a copy of the proposal written previously by Lisa Carpenter to Chris BJ. National Endowment for the Arts suggested & Dept. of Agriculture (they may be interested in providing a grant for the Building fund as they handle rural areas). RI’s Representatives rank amongst the best in supporting the Arts. Current battle as the Republicans are trying to zero fund programs. Need to get a team working on Grants to make our goals happen. Should try placing an article in local papers (Foster Home Journal/Valley Breeze) to ask for volunteers. MMS – Will accept offers & review them if this generates interest form persons or groups that take a percent of the money received from the grant as a payment for successfully generating grant money Ad will be placed on the Website as well. Question asked if this needs any special consideration as a non-profit, but consensus was that non-profits do this all the time.

Recently it was brought to the Board that a standard needs to be set & expressed at the start of each production, on maintaining appropriate boundaries as we have mixed casts of adults & children working together. This is now being done & was carried out at the first rehearsal of Footloose. The catch phrase, “I’m having trouble with this” has been suggested. Teens had expressed that they are mostly comfortable speaking up with peers, but thought having a phrase to use when it’s an adult would be helpful. Need to have a male & female representative for anyone to go to if they feel they need someone to speak to about feeling uncomfortable. Laurie Murphy is available as a youth representative & a male is needed. The Youth Group is scheduled to go see “The Lion King” on 2/13.

FOOTLOOSE:
Strong singing/music & movement make this look like a stellar production in the works! Bob found it incredibly hard to say no to 15 people who have been SMCT regulars, when the goal of SMCT is to build a sense of community & be as inclusive as possible. Reminder to everyone that all productions take many hands to come to fruition & there are always behind the scenes people needed to make what happens on stage run smoothly. Please consider other ways you would be willing to help & understand that it is not a reflection on how important you are to us as individuals who have helped created our theatre, even if you aren’t chosen for any specific stage role.

Publicity: Artie expects it will be another 2-3 weeks before the situation at Paine School is known & can’t do any advertising until we know where we will be performing. This may be true for all upcoming events/productions while Paine School is unavailable. Artie needs to be informed of any building use needs & should be the person making arrangements, so there is no duplication of efforts. The Eddy Building is a ‘hot’ property & gets a lot of use by a wide variety of groups. The Town Meeting House has to have prior approval by the Town Council for use & this can take time.
New dates for the Foster Follies Auditions are now Friday, March 4th from 5-8 PM & Sat., March 5th from 1-4 PM at the Eddy Building.

Website- Chris sent around a link for a banner to a group that offers services that may be helpful. Seemed to have a strong connection to the UK, so more research needed to see if it can be targeted to local community or not. Eric will add it to the Website if it seems worthwhile. Generally, Eric is looking for more content to add to the Website. Can usually get things posted within 24 hours, between Eric & Andy, & it would be a good idea to get people to use it for current info. Articles or info. should be written up as completely as possible & sent to all people involved with communication. 1) Artie for publication. 2) Eric or Andy for the Website. 3) Cassi for Facebook. 4) Kaila for email.
Russell got the posts set for the banner on the corner of Rte 6 & 94. The banner looked great for about 3 hours, until the wind ripped the banner off. MMS- To get a new banner. Voted & approved. Dennis & Russ will work on getting it back up & reinforced. Along with this, SMCT needs a new phone number to use for Box Office calls as there are more than Carol can comfortably handle along with her home calls. Need to find a way to allow more than one person to receive & respond to calls. May need a cell phone that can be physically handed off. Dennis will look into Apps that would allow separate voicemail & automated messages, plus retrieval from remote locations. Most will probably include some minimum per month charge.

Steve & Bob attended an auction at the Black Rep Theater & spent about $300 on tech stuff. Couldn’t afford most of the big ticket items that would have been nice to get. Ended up with cables (estimated value $1400) & various lighting parts (gel holder, gobo frames, etc) worth maybe $600.
Tech needs include 2 new wireless belt packs as they have broken ($200 each). Costs $500 for the set. The connectors pull out when they are used to pull the packs out of pockets or get tangled in clothes, etc. They are not cost effective to try & repair. Need Lighting Trees, depending on where we go & should buy 2 lights. Steve has been looking at ETC Source 4 which has a larger diameter than the Jr’s we currently use. Need a new audio board, better mic’s for singing. Rent vs. swap out if we buy our own. Would need to rent the whole system as it isn’t compatible with what we have. Mic’s should be dedicated to one person for this show, not swapped from person to person. Steve needs info about Footloose orchestra & singers.
Need a dedicated PC or Mac for sound effects, etc. Ebay may have some good prices. MAC program that has been used has been fairly easy to work with according to those who have used it.
Need to Inventory & Store equipment. Possible insurance rider needed at this point.

Upcoming Productions:
Footloose (Spring 2011)
Mr. Toad (Summer 2011)
Dr. Horrible (Dinner Theater, Fall 2011)
Christmas Story {or Romeo & Juliet?} – Artie should know by March 21st about rights to Christmas Story – (Fall 2011)
Get Merry (Winter 2011)
Hello Dolly (Spring 2012) – Cassi is working on getting the script.
Murder Mystery (Spring 2012)

Community Productions:
Middle School Program on Bullying (Laurie Murphy is heading this). Checking into what is already out there, such as the ‘BULLY’ program through Kaleidoscope Theater.
Clayville after school program for 3rd, 4th & 5th graders. Starts in March. Bob is heading this.
Water Shed Council – Forestry Project in May during the day. Darlene C. can help with this.

Special Meetings:
1) Organizational Structure – scheduled for 2/19 @ 10:30 AM at the Trinity Church in Scituate. All are welcome & encouraged to attend.
2) Tour of the nursing home as possible building site. Will include Russ D., Bob H., Steve C., & Chris BJ. Russ will send around email.
3) Seasonal / Yearly Playbill Committee – Would like to get this started for upcoming year. One Playbill with regular advertisements & inserts for each production. Need a team to get ads. Carol & Dennis will work on formatting. Others interested?
4) Database Training – Anyone interested, but would like to have all Board members there at the Chretien’s home on 2/28 (Monday) starting at 7 PM. Plan to show how to use info to send out emails.

Workshops: Frank Perrin has offered to teach Fight Training & lack of a location is currently an issue. Steve Carter has been asked to do a Tech Training on an evening or Saturday. Auditions workshop may also be offered, eventually.
Need people currently to get Playbill ads for Footloose.
Any donations for the Calendar Raffle, contact Mary Jo or Carol.
Need sponsors for Golf Tournament/Raffle: At least 18 tee sponsors. Groups of 4 at $110/person to participate. $30 for just the Steak Fry at the end of the day.
Zach is working on another Karaoke night for March 18th at Foster Country Club.
Old Home Days – raffle this year may be an iPad (have done iPods previously). A new one is due out this year & the first year we did an iPod we made $400. Last year was rainy & attendance was down. Need a meeting to discuss ideas for the booth & idol competition.

Next Meeting is a Board Meeting on March 5th from 10 AM to noon. May be at the Eddy building or at the Chretien’s.