The Editor:
We know many residents of SE Saskatchewan support Souris Valley Theatre and believe in the importance of live, professional theatre. We know many of you are delighted that our little theatre in Woodlawn Park is operational again.
We ask you to manifest that support by buying tickets to our main stage show, I love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, which opens on Friday, July 5 and runs to July 28. There are six shows each week beginning on Wednesdays with a Saturday matinee.
After a long and difficult winter, it has been a battle to get the theatre up and running. We've had to slay many dragons.
Because of the accommodation situation in our community, we needed to plan to house our cast and crew on site. Getting our new modular home installed by the end of May was our first dragon.
We have huge startup costs and our payout from PDAP was negligible. Thank goodness for financial support from the City and Woodlawn Park. Without it we would not have a full-time manager, seats in Frehlick Hall or a concession. Thank goodness for donations of equipment and labour.
We are proud of our artistic director David Leyshon who took on the task of putting shows on our stage.
We are proud of our manager Jocelyn Anderson. She is relatively new to Estevan and had no idea how Souris Valley Theatre functioned in the past. But last September she agreed to take on all our dragons payables, receivable, contracts, advertising, site concerns, and theatre ticket sales.
Some of you believe we should continue to sell tickets at Henders. I hope you understand our desire to deal with our patrons directly. Henders did a great job for us, but we had no way of tracking who was coming to the shows and how to best spend our advertising dollars. With a virtual box office, we have created a patron database. We can do ticket exchanges and notify patrons of schedule updates. This is invaluable to us.
We anticipated many would want to deal with ticket sales personally, so we applied for a phone line to be installed at our concession/box office at Woodlawn. This way Jocelyn is there throughout the day during the season. We are waiting on the phone line. In the interim, she attends the Farmers' Market every Saturday morning. Normally, she sells no more than a handful in four hours. It was never our intention to turn our present box office donated to us, into a physical box office.
We are proud of our summer students, Taylor Fornwald and Adrienne Dechief who provided free drama workshops in nine schools in May and June. They spent countless hours cleaning and prepping our site at Woodlawn. They are eager to teach four weeks of theatre camp this summer.
We are proud of the business partnerships we have begun to develop within our community. We would like to continue to develop these partnerships. We still need a dozen performance sponsors for I Love You. It will cost your business $200.
We are proud of our board of individuals with a variety of talents and backgrounds. We couldn't have pulled off this season without the dedication of Dennis Moore who has given his time to get our site ready. That said, we could use at least another five board members and a handful of volunteers.
We are proud of Frehlick Hall, which David and technical director Bill Hales regard as a gem. SV Theatre went from a virtual standstill May 1 to a fully functioning performing arts facility on opening night of A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline June 13.
However, our attendance figures for Patsy were lower than we anticipated. If Spectra CU hadn't bought the show for one night, we would be in serious trouble.
We want to be financially independent and self-sufficient. We want to make the best use of the hall. We are looking into licensing classic movies a few nights in August. We would also like to run Improv and Last Comic Standing nights. We have a community talent show planned for Aug. 16. We are working with Estevan Minor Football on an outdoor cabaret, Party in the Park for Aug. 24.
We've been told advertising for Patsy was poor. We've done our best to get the word out, and there were all those dragons. We have an ad budget and our local media has been very supportive and flexible about working within it.
Misinformation about performance nights for this we apologize. We intend to reinstate our old phone number and use it as an updated show information line.
The world has changed since Marguerite Gallaway started down the road of producing live, professional theatre in Estevan nearly 25 years ago.
David has picked shows for our season to appeal to a variety of age groups and tastes. We felt Patsy was a perfect show for post-flood opening. Devra Straker and Sheldon Bergstrom have acted as historians for our present cast and crew, regaling them with stories of life under the tent.
We know you are busy. We know you have jobs, kids, volunteering and holidays planned. We know you wish us the best.
Please listen to what board member Christine Branyik-Thornton says. "We ask you to give up one night this summer so we can entertain you. We ask you to drive five minutes south of Estevan to spend the same or less, for an evening of almost any other type of entertainment. We ask you to say, 'Yes, Estevan and area does recognize the hard work of volunteers and local, seasonal businesses. Yes, we deserve the same diverse cultural opportunities. Yes, we have what it takes to step up and grow into a fine, flourishing city, so much more than a pit stop on a map. Yes, Estevan is a destination.' The SV Theatre board and staff have been preparing for a long time. We are ready to help make this happen and you can help too. Buying tickets will give you one or two evenings of top-notch professional entertainment, but it will give so much more to your city."
If you bypass our main stage show, there won't be a next one. If you believe in live musical theatre a few minutes from your doorstep, you will trust us when we tell you, I Love You, is really funny and a great night's entertainment. You will tell your friends. It's a bargain for $25.
If you have never been to a live, professional theatre production at Frehlick Hall, we ask you to find out.
We ask you to play the role we can't.
Don't be our last dragon.
Be our audience.
Sincerely,
Maureen Ulrich
Board member, Souris Valley Theatre.
