Annual EMACT Drama Festival
Annual DASH Gala
Festival 2008
SURVEY RESULTS - EMACT Annual Drama Festival 2008
Dear Community Theater Friends,
First, let me thank you for participating in our survey and providing for us with valuable comments, suggestions, and concerns relative to the Festival Planning Process and Festival weekend. I also want to thank Mark Baumhardt, who worked diligently to put the survey together and to consolidate all the data in a presentable format.
As you will see from the feedback, the 2008 EMACT Festival was on the whole very successful. There is, however, a challenge that we still face as a community theatre family. It requires more effort from each participating group that loves and values the Festival Community, and that is to create for your members and audiences a desire to attend the festival. EMACT understands and continues to take ownership for providing a Festival for its member groups each year, but the reality is that the Festival is a very costly event, and we have subsequently lost money on the Festival in both 2007 and 2008. We have never approached our hosting or leadership responsibility for the festival with the thought that this would be a mechanism or an activity that would raise funds. We do hope each year that we will at least break even. In 2007 EMACT lost $9,500, and in 2008 EMACT lost $2,300. At least, we are trending better in the loss column.
Many of you felt that our PR efforts could have been better. I can tell you that we gave each group an opportunity to receive program inserts, we published and sent articles to EVERY participating group’s town, and we further publicized the Festival in Groton and its surrounding communities.
If we want strong adjudication, then we need to expend the dollars to bring that quality to Massachusetts, which also means an increase in travel expenses and per diem expenses for our adjudicators. We try very hard to acquire local talent as adjudicators, but those individuals who have provided adjudication services to us in the past (Rick Lombardo, Lynn Kramer, Kevin Gardiner, and others) are in very high demand, working on their own projects in the summer or adjudicating local and regional festivals in other parts of the country, and because of this they cannot participate in our festival.
We have applied for grants, pounded the pavement for sponsors and advertisers, and in many cases we have been successful. In others, we have not. But we are not unlike our community theatre family, which faces the challenges of economics in their own productions. We are constantly looking for ways to sustain a quality festival while watching our costs.
This year's event had 13 participants. We hope that your participation in the festival provides good memories, a spirit of community theatre, and a wish to return. Obviously, the more groups we have participating, the larger our audiences. We look forward to your continued support.
If anyone would like to be a member of the 2009 Festival Committee, or work behind the scenes supporting any aspect of the Festival, please let myself or Marlene Mandel, EMACT's new VP of Festivals, know that you are willing to help in some way. If you have a fantastic fundraising idea, we'd like to hear from you.
We also hope you will be in attendance at the New England Regional Festival, which will also be held in Groton, on the weekend of March 13, 14, and 15, 2009, to help support and cheer on both the Harvard Community Theatre and the Arlington Friends of the Drama, in their quest for proceeding on to the National Festival in Tacoma, Washington next June. Your support and attendance will help to show the other states in New England how supportive we are of each other, and more importantly, how much we support the spirit of community theatre.
Thank you again,
Celia Couture
Festival Chair
Marlene Mandel
VP of Festivals
Participants
Concord Players - Dorothy Parker Revived
Theater To Go - Waiting in the Wings
Arlington Friends of the Drama - How I Learned to Drive
Walpole Footlighters - Dinner for Several
Hovey Players - The House of Yes
Camelot Players - Anatomically Correct
Harvard Community Theater - The Mistress Cycle
Lexington Players - A Lesson Before Dying
Needham Community Theatre - Work in Progress
Washington Street Players - When Shakespeare's Ladies Meet
Wellesley Players - Varicose Vanities
Burlington Players - Godspell
Acme Theater Productions - Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Nominees and Winners
The Groton School
The Campbell Performing Arts Center
Designed by architect Graham Gund, the performing arts center on the campus of Groton School provides stunning, comfortable, and intimate spaces for student, amateur and professional performances. The facility boasts state of the art equipment in two theaters, and ample opportunities for performers, technicians, directors, and playwrights to make full use of the facilities. The Asen Theatre, a proscenium space that seats 466 includes a trap and orchestra pit level, a full 65 foot fly loft. The McBaine Studio Theater, a black box space accommodates 120. Additionally, The Marion D. Campbell Performing Arts Center includes a fully equipped scene shop, a costume shop, Equity level dressing rooms and a computerized box office. The entire space is air-conditioned and climate controlled.
Adjudicator Biographies
Annette G. Procunier
Annette has adjudicated more than 80 festivals around the world in the last 22 years. Highlights have included the American Association of Community Theatres National festival twice, The World Festival in Halifax Nova Scotia and the Liverpool International festival 5 times. She has adjudicated in Germany, Ireland, Japan and all across Canada and the United States and was the only North American to ever adjudicate the IATA world festival in Monaco.
She is equally adept at public adjudication and in depth private sessions focusing on all aspects of production and the role of theatrics and dramaturgy in achieving a complete production. For the third time she was the instructor for the AACT adjudicator workshop in Charlotte N.C. which for the first time included all other adjudication organizations in the United States. Future engagements include adjudicating across Europe for the US Army, the International Acting Irish Festival in Rochester and directing for the thirtieth anniversary of the Stephenville Theatre Festival in Newfoundland.
John E. Sullivan
John E. Sullivan holds a BA in English from Briar Cliff University and began his theatre interests earnestly two decades ago. He is retired but certainly not retiring as he has held major positions with community theatre organizations from president of the Sioux City Community Theatre, to president of Iowa's state community organization. In 1994 he became very active with AACT becoming a festival commissioner, and moving on to become its Festival VP. In 2000 he came the national organizations Executive Vice President and President in 2002. John has traveled extensively for AACT; 29 states, plus Canada and six countries in Europe. This is his sixth trip to Massachusetts, the most times he has been to any state festival.
Ruth Legg
Ruth Legg has a B.A. in English and Theatre from Morris Harvey College (Charleston, WVA) and an M. A. in Theatre from Penn State. She is Professor Emeritus at Finger Lakes Community College (Canandaigua, NY) where she developed and chaired the Theatre Program until her retirement in 1996. She has served on the Boards of Bristol Valley Theatre (Naples, NY), the Smith Opera House (Geneva, NY) and the Geneva Theatre Guild. She is one of the founders of the Ontario County Arts Council and the Theatre Association of New York State (TANYS). She is past president of TANYS and chaired the 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 New York State Theatre Festivals and the 2006 ESTA Festival. Ruth has been a TANYS Roving Adjudicator since 1993 and completed the AACT Adjudication Workshop in Charlotte last year. She adjudicated the 2007 Pennsylvania Association of Community Theatres Festival and will adjudicate the 2008 ESTA/Original Works Festival in May. She is an award winning director and set designer and currently Vice President of the Eastern States Theatre Association. In her spare time she plays golf and writes fiction.
