Thoughts and feelings on summer and new beginnings

There are lots of reasons for why I haven't made a blog entry lately. The reasons are too numerous to go into point by point in a blog but suffice it say there has been a lot going on and a lot on my mind. Those of you who read this blog, and you are a small but well formed group, will remember that I said I was going to Prague this summer and later, in August, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Then I was going to direct a couple of musicals but I decided that I had so much else going on in my life and so much else on my mind, it would be a good idea to bow out of that. So here I am, getting the house in order bit by bit, working in the pottery studio a lot and thinking about the fall.

The big news is that we have some forward motion where Front Line Productions is concerned. We sent in our paperwork to Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts and they are filing our application for nonprofit status. As soon as that comes through, we can open a bank account, solicit donations toward our first production and basically do all the things a fledgling theater company does to get it's head above water.

One of the big questions I keep asking myself is what do James and I want this company to be? We joke that our slogan will be "Front Line Productions: Shows That Don't Suck" but I don't think the folks that give out grants would go for that.

I know this: on the whole we want to produce smaller, chamber style musicals, plays with music and shows that bridge the gap between what we think of as musical theater and opera. We want to present a concert series/cabaret series in alternative venues. for myself, I want to start an off-shoot from the main company to present an art song series not unlike the New York Festival of Song which does not draw a line between classical art song and popular song. James loves teaching and would like to present song interpretation workshops/audition workshops and sponsor masterclasses.

We also want this to be a company where actors, creatives are treated fairly, allowed to be creative, allowed to take chances, and where we assume our audiences are intelligent, intuitive and open to our mission.

Most importantly we want it to be fun. As a local director once said, we should be embarrassed to take a paycheck for what we do. That's what I want this to be. I want our company to be a place where we play, communicate and enlighten. I want the shows we produce to be events that move our audiences. Is that too much to ask?