Meet the Cast of Doubt on Monday Evening 2/18

Posted by Jessica

Monday night at 6:30 PM at Willow Lawn

Doubt is having an extremely successful opening, with performances selling quickly and good word of mouth. We'll end our first weekend with Meet the Stars. Don't miss this chance to come out an meet the excellent cast, including Duke Lafoon, Irene Ziegler, Maggie Roop and Katherine Louis. (NOTE: Bruce has pointed out in the comments that Duke will be unable to attend.)

At Barksdale at Willow Lawn
Cash Bar opens at 6:30 PM Panel from 7:00-8:00 PM Bar remains open after panel. Attendance is free and open to the public.

Coffee & Conversations on Tuesday Morning 2/12

Posted by Jessica Daugherty

Coffee & Conversations Tomorrow at 9:30 AM

Critically Speaking:
A Look Inside the Minds of Richmond's Theatre Critics

Panel:
Susan Haubenstock
Mary Burrus
Dave Timberline
Joan Tupponce

Moderator: Jill Bari Steinberg

Tuesday, February 12
9:30-10:30 AM at Willow Lawn
Open to the public. No RSVP required.
Suggested $3 Donation includes Rostov’s Coffee, Hot Tea and Pastries

Happy Half-Birthday to the Buzz

Posted by Bruce Miller

Tomorrow marks the sixth month anniversary of the Barksdale Blog--although I suspect you can't have an "anni" anything until you've reached at least a year. But as all parents know, up to the second birthday you always count by months.

So here we are. It will be six months ago tomorrow, on March 15, that we began this cyber adventure. You can click into our archives to revisit that first blog entry and almost every posting since.

I say “almost” because a few articles that found their way onto our blog for brief periods of time are no longer with us. For example, there was some blog editing (purging?) late at night on July 23, the “most read” day in our brief blog lifetime. During the course of that day we experienced a riot of anonymous comments, a few of which were fairly intense about our theatre or one or another of our respected colleague theatres.

As word of the riot spread around town—and wouldn’t you know I was the last to hear—a record 315 people logged on to view the carnage. When I discovered what was happening, I shut down the blog, temporarily, removed the posts that somehow prompted the blood bath and scrubbed them of all incendiary comments before reposting them the next day.

In another instance—I believe it was on August 6—I wrote what I considered to be an affectionate and respectful (but also satirical) post in homage to Robin Arthur. A few days before I had written some favorable comments about Henry IV, Part I at Richmond Shakespeare. Jacquie O’Connor, who was in IV/I, quite naturally wanted people to come see it. So she was encouraging friends to read my blog entry. Robin Arthur, it turns out, is blog averse, so she finally turned to Jacquie and said, “Jacquie, I wouldn’t read Bruce Miller’s blog if he wrote about my #&*@* !”

Now, I’ve learned my lesson and therefore substituted all those punctuation marks for the word Robin used, a word that is synonymous with “burro.” And "buttocks."

Robin told me this story herself so that I would get a good laugh out of her blog aversion, rather than hear the story through the grapevine and assume that she was intending to speak ill of me. I thought the story was a hoot. I also thought that the gauntlet had been thrown down.

I was determined to write a blog post about Robin’s … “burro.”

So I did. Just for fun. It was titled ROBIN ARTHUR’S ASS in big bold letters. And let me remind you all that “ass” is a perfectly acceptable word that I’ve read from the pulpit of my church. It’s a word that’s included in the script of Peter Pan, which Theatre IV will be producing this spring. It’s the moniker that Peter tells us Tinker Bell has assigned to Wendy. If you play the old Mary Martin tape from the Peter Pan TV special of the 1950s, you’ll hear it loud and clear ... with no one objecting.

But the language police are a lot pickier now than they were in the 50s, more’s the pity. So when my blog post told the tender story of Robin’s pet donkey, recounting it’s many adventures and including quite a few fun photos I found on line, the ladies in our Marketing Department, who are far more wise than I, reminded me that the Barksdale blog reaches out to all kinds of people who may be somewhat less “accepting” than we crazy theatre types. They suggested that perhaps I should disseminate my satire in a less public forum. They were of course right; the post went down.

But I saved it as a word document. So, if anyone really wants to read it and see the photos, just drop me a line and I’ll send it to you in a plain brown email.

Are all such blog purges the equivalent of censorship and therefore inherently evil? Yes. Do we do it anyway? Yes. Hey, business is business.

Basically, we’re learning the blog business as we go along. We're making some mistakes, and we're certainly not pleasing everybody. I know I still tend to be too long winded and formal (BORING is the word one commenter chose to put in all caps). Others on our blog tend to write far more whimsically and/or shorter. Hopefully we find a balance.

I know we sometimes post content too frequently for some (my pal Mr. Timberline comes to mind), too sparingly for others. Some want our blog to be more "educational," some want a good deal less of that. We appreciate all opinions and points of view. The business studies we're reading suggest that daily postings and multiple perspectives increase blog readership. Readership is what we're after.

Our prodigal Heifetz ("giving in abundance") has brilliantly suggested some 15-second video blog posts that we're going to be trying soon to promote our various productions.

And here’s where you come in. Now that we’ve established critical mass (138 blog posts; 719 people, shows, companies and places etc. indexed in our labels), we want to invite any and all of you to submit blog posts to us. Just write whatever you want to put out there, and email it to j.daugherty@barksdalerichmond.org with the word BLOG in the subject line. If the posts you submit contain content related to professional theatre in Metro Richmond or beyond, and/or if we think your post will be of interest to the Richmond theatre community, we’ll likely publish it. The exceptions will be blog posts that we consider to be mean spirited about our theatre, our artists, or any of our respected colleagues, be they individuals or organizations.

We cordially invite you to join us in the merry mayhem of blog land. Tell us your stories about theatres and productions of days gone by. Tell us what your life is like after moving from Richmond into a larger or smaller market. Tell us how you’re doing in college, or what it felt like to perform with that company in Idaho. Or Poughkeepsie. Tell us your opinion of what we could or should be doing better. We’re open to any and all voices; we welcome your input.

Six months from now, when we hit our One Year Anniversary, we hope you’ll consider the Barksdale Buzz to be YOUR blog too, not just ours.

--Bruce Miller

PS - Should you venture into the archives and discover that many of the pictures are still down, be assured that we know this and will be working, over time, on their restoration. Thanks.

3's a Charm

Posted by Jessica Daugherty

In the Marketing Dept. we are always looking for ways to show you something new and exciting while at the same time crafting a certain look, something that when you see it immediately says Barksdale. It's a trick to do both at once, but we have been spoiled rotten by the terrific artwork of freelance illustrator Robert Meganck for the past two seasons. He gets to know our season, talks with us, reads scripts, and then manages to distill it all down to one evocative image per show that gives you a real sense of what you'll see at the theatre.

Our newly announced 2007 - 2008 Signature Season is no exception. He's brought our titles to life for a third time, and in the capable hands of our excellent graphic designer, Kate Carpenter, our new brochure has become a thing of beauty. But don't take my word for it; see for yourself - Download the full brochure in pdf format. (It'll open in a new window). Or if you'd rather, you can have us mail it out to you the old fashioned way.

More about the illustrator:

Robert Meganck is a freelance illustrator, president of Communication Design, Inc., and a professor of illustration, graphic design and digital imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Robert has received numerous professional awards and been recognized for excellence by such organizations as The Society of Illustrators (N.Y.), The Society of Illustrators Los Angeles, The Art Directors Club of New York, The Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, The American Institute of Graphic Artist, and The Illustrators Club of Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia. His work has been included in a variety of national reviews including Communication Arts Magazine’s Illustration Annuals, American Illustration Annuals, Print Magazine’s Region Design Annuals, and The Society of Illustrators Annuals.

In the past 10 years, Robert’s work has been in a state of transition, moving from graphic design to illustration, from traditional media to digital media. His illustrations appear regularly in the Washington Post, The Washington City Paper, and a variety of magazines.

Born and educated in Detroit, Michigan, he has taught at California State University in Fullerton, at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and now resides with his family in Richmond, Virginia.

• Illustrator: Robert Meganck's website.
• Graphic Designer: Kate Carpenter's website.
• Us: More about our new Signature Season
• Ready to jump in? Get a Passport Subscription! You can also call 804.282.2620 to subscribe.

Jessica Daugherty
Internet Services Mgr.
Marketing Department

Where did that photo go?

Posted by Jessica Daugherty

Tonight and for the next few weeks you will notice photographs on our blog temporarily disappearing as we move some content to the blogger server.

<----Feel free to skip over the details. It's boring.---->

Our blog has been so popular that keeping the content hosted on the Barksdale site is using up too much of our allotted bandwidth. Although the blog will continue on as usual, we moved the blog pages over to blogger last week (you may have noticed that the blog links now take you to http://thebarksdalebuzz.blogger.com instead of a page on our own site). Now the bandwidth-hogging graphics have to move over as well. While the photos are being deleted from our server and added to the blogger server, you could see some broken photo icons and/or some blank spaces where photos used to be.

Also, as I republish all these posts, those of you who subscribe to our blog may see our past posts appear in your feed as new. All should be back to normal by Wednesday or Thursday [ok - I lied - still a work in progress as of 8/17] although some of our oldest posts may end up with fewer photos in the end.

<----Start reading again here.---->

Thanks, and sorry for any inconvenience.


Jessica Daugherty
Internet Services Manager

Barksdale and Friends

Barksdale recently joined Facebook to promote free programs on offer for students and to get their feedback. Maintaining the page is giving me an education in the ease of the latest social networking applications.

I’m a Generation Xer, born in 1970. I remember downloading short movie clips at 24kb and getting excited the next morning when one was finally on my Apple2e, and I could watch a minute of grainy mush. But these days, if there’s something the younger Gen Y can’t Google in a sec, Wikipedia will at least tell them what it is. Social networking sites like Facebook allow them (and anyone else who’s game) to create a page where friends can write and add photos, video, music and more, and where their content updates so fast that a blog with one post a day looks achingly slow by comparison.

150,000 members a day are joining Facebook, and hours after Barksdale joined, we were loaded with friends who've been associated with us through the Greater Richmond High School All-Star Musicals. I added a large album of Disney’s High School Musical photos for the cast, crew, parents and fans. I started to add an event listing for HSM at The Steward School, but the cast had already done it, and they had hundreds of confirmed RSVPs responding to an exponentially increasing number of invites; word of mouth spreads quickly.

But it’s not just High School Musical information on offer at our new Facebook home. Our blog posts are imported automatically, and more importantly I get a chance to promote Barksdale Theatre Workshop events. BTW is a community-wide initiative designed to establish new connections between Barksdale and high school theatre lovers. It began in 2005 when Bruce Miller and Chase Kniffen met with a group of area high school drama teachers to find out what they thought would be of use to them and to their students.

Current high school students can join BTW for free (by emailing Chase at c.kniffen@barksdalerichmond.org) and as members, they can purchase $10 tickets to special Saturday matinee performances. Members are also invited to attend Play On!, a discussion series featuring our leading professional theatre artists - and pizza - free of charge. Both the discounted matinees and Play On! Discussions were recommendations from area educators.

Facebook gives us an extra chance to introduce this program to students, and it’s also a great place to promote local high school productions (another teacher suggestion) like Chicago, opening at Godwin tonight! The students already created the event; all I had to do was click, and it posted itself on the Barksdale Facebook page… Things are so easy these days.

Barksdale’s Facebook page (a shortened page will be visible to those who are not yet friends)

Jessica Daugherty
Internet Services

Barksdale's New Zealand Office

Barksdale’s gone global! I’ve been single handedly manning our kiwi office for a year now. It’s a bit lonely at my staff meetings, but I get to eat all the donuts. That’s me in the picture helping to market Mame (from our 06-07 Signature Season at Willow Lawn) where I live on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand… not sure how many people flew to the states to see it, but I did my part!

In the early nineties I was a touring actor with Theatre IV – something you can’t do from a distance - but for several years now I’ve been handling the websites and incoming emails for both Theatre IV and Barksdale Theatre. I’m second generation - my dad, Donny Printz, was Theatre IV’s master carpenter in the early eighties; my mom, B.J., started working for Bruce Miller and Phil Whiteway when I was in grade school, and stayed on for over twenty years. So I was thrilled that the internet and a phone with an 804 area code that rings in NZ allowed me to continue work as usual when my husband and I moved to the southern hemisphere and settled down under.

Occasionally a theatre goer is confused as to why someone at Barksdale is emailing them back at 1 in the morning… but it’s just part of our prompt and friendly global service. The kiwi office still has the lights on after the Richmond stage lights have dimmed for the night!

Jessica Daugherty
Internet Services Manager
Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV