Festival 2009

Dear EMACT Member:

It is with much regret that I have to inform all of you that we have cancelled our plans for the Annual Drama Festival that was scheduled to be held at the Groton School in June this year. This is something that hasn’t happened before in the history of EMACT. Following the great success and variety of entries that we had at last year’s Festival, we were confident that we would have enough groups register to participate by the deadline this year; but that did not happen. Even after a few email reminders and inquiries, there were only two applicants, which is not enough. Some of the feedback we have received is that due to the current economic situation the resources of our member groups are strained and they cannot justify bringing a piece to Festival this year. Without a minimum number of groups committed to participate EMACT cannot hold a Festival. It just wouldn’t be fair to all the people who would volunteer to work on it or to those who would participate in it.

I do want to assure you that EMACT will hold a Festival next year in order to qualify a group for entry into the next regional festival. We would ask anyone who hoped to help us with a festival this year to please plan to help us next year the weekend of June 12-14, 2010. We also want to thank the members of groups that did apply to participate this year. We appreciate their effort and are sorry that we can’t provide them the opportunity this June. It is also interesting to note that most other AACT Regions hold festivals every other year as a regular course of business.

We are interested in finding out more about why groups did not apply to participate this year and to make sure we are prepared for next year, we will be reaching out to our member groups and contacts to find out how we can get you to participate in a successful festival next year. If you have any urgent questions or comments about the cancelled festival, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you for your understanding and "break a leg".

Click here to download the Festival Questionnaire (.pdf document).

Thank you,

Robert Hallisey
EMACT President
President@EMACT.org
781-729-1409