September Meeting of SFCT Board--My First!

When I was in "Hairspray", one of the board members, Juli, asked me to join the Spanish Fork Community  Theater board. I was was flattered, but not remarkably surprised. I was also more than a little ambivalent about this.

• First, I love fundraising and felt this was a worthy cause, but shy away from the responsibility of doing this 'for real'.
• Second, my first love is acting onstage, and I didn't want anyone thinking I ever got any part because I was a board member (though I do notice that members of the board do get parts...)
• Third, if I don't get an actual part in the upcoming plays, I will be far less motivated to pitch in. I hate to say this, but I'm being honest in this blog.

 So I get to the meeting, not really knowing who all would be there. I was pleased to see that I knew almost everyone. Brock and Lawson, techies from "Hairspray", Adam, the resident director and someone who's become a dear friend, Juli and her mother Mareen, who is in charge of costumes, Carrie and her husband, who I knew were on the board, and a woman sitting right next to me that I didn't know and didn't introduce myself to, which was lame on my part. Also, Becca came. I'd recently met her because, by coincidence, I had taken her daughter horseback riding. Her daughter is a friend of my son's who plays the tuba in his concert band at school. My friend from "Hairspray" Heidi was there. I have a special bond with her as her daughter played my daughter in "Hairspray". Heidi has Afton, but I got Polly (a role created for her that was so awesome I can't believe it isn't in the show.)

I sat down and set my pen and reading glasses on the table. Slight chatting and banter amongst the folks at the table. Brock called me by the nickname from my childhood I stupidly told him at a cast party. I am listing it here but must ask my readers to never call me this. I am still cooking up some sort of revenge for Brock. Nickname: Jenny Ding Dong. I can thank my uncle Brownie for that one. Years of therapy later... Lawson called me by his own nickname, Hennifer, which is much cuter. I have no vengeful feelings for Lawson.

We were given an agenda and blah blahed through it. The real reason we were all gathered was to vote for next summer's show. I hadn't known that until that very day of the meeting, so I was darn tootin' going to go! I have a vote? Oh yeah. I'll be there. (This whole thing seemed so easy!)

Earlier, SFCT had sent out a survey about which show the community would like to do. "Sound of Music" won by a landslide. I understand the same people voted over and over and over--people who had parts picked out for themselves in the show. Because "Sound of Music" had just been done at Sundance Outdoor Theater and personally, if I hear the name Von Trapp one more time I may barf, I had voted in the survey 'anything BUT "Sound of Music". I did vote for "Once Upon a Mattress", "Camelot", and wrote in "Pajama Game". I also would have loved to produce "Anything Goes", but that too had been done this summer up north in Sandy.

Adam gave his pitch for the show he wanted: "The Scarlet Pimpernel". I had seen that at a local high school last year and, sorry, was slightly bored. I do realize this was a high school production, but the biggest issue I had with that show was all the non-use of foreign accents. Could hokey, backwoods Spanish Fork find enough men who could sing (a bigger issue here in my opinion than others believe) and who could speak well in either English or French accents? I sincerely doubted it.

During this pitch, Mareen, who is older than I and dissimilar from me in personality (a super nice, politic way of saying this), kept shushing me. I am still wondering what I should have done about this. Should I have glared at her? Told her to stop shushing me, since she isn't my mother? I ended up ignoring it, but vow to not sit next to her again. (Again, being honest here.)

Adam made a good case, and he and Brock voted for "Pimpernel" and soon left. I made a pitch for some kind of princess show, either "Cinderella", "Once Upon a Mattress", or ? This is an excellent marketing and fundraising tool because we can have a princess party for all the little darlings in the area. They will come to the show, their parents and grandparents and siblings and other relatives will come to the show. This will get butts in seats and get some cash in our meager budget coffers. (Slight digression here and a blatant sneer. The Spanish Fork Arts Council plunges lots of money into its youth drama program (which I will not comment on but could). We get nothing. This is not only lame but pretty unfair. More about the Arts Council with regards to "Hairspray" in an upcoming blog.)

The remaining board members voted. We all got two votes a piece. Into the mix "My Fair Lady" was thrown. Ah, now there's an idea. Not only has it not been produced recently, but we could have an English Garden Party for the little darlings, and there is nothing whatsoever that is controversial in this show, unlike "Hairspray", which I will also explain in an upcoming blog. When we voted our two votes, "Pimpernel" went out of the running. It was between princess play and "My  Fair Lady". The latter won, and I admit, I was thrilled. And to be fair (pun!) and props to me, I didn't even know at the time that there are several possible roles for someone like me, of a certain 'maturity'.

I knew Adam would be disappointed and worried and felt guilty about that. But I was pretty much elated at the choice. The hats! The costumes! The accents, which I knew how to do, both Cockney and Pro-puh British. Yeah, this will rock. I even gave my first horse Darby a show name of Darby's Gavotte after seeing "My Fair Lady" the first time, but my horse riding friends show that down, saying that nobody knew how to pronounce "Gavotte". The had a point and I changed his name to Country Preacher. But that's another story for another blog.

Since then, there has been almost total support of our choice. A few "Sound of Music" hopefuls are disgruntled. Ah well. I am now in the process of investigating ideas for the Garden Party, which I absolutely will not be calling a Tea Party and not because the residents of Spanish Fork, Utah don't drink tea!

Keep playing!