Coffee & Conversations - Fun, Free, Starts Friday

Posted by Bruce Miller
Today I'm excited to announce our 2011-12 Season of Rostov's Coffee & Conversations. If you've never been to one of these free, fun and informative events, you don't know what you're missing. We hope you'll mark your calendars now and plan to join us. It's a great way to start your day and connect with your theatre.

To kick off the series, we're having a Special Event this Friday, Sept. 30, 9:30 a.m. in the Barksdale Willow Lawn lobby. Melissa Johnston Price, star of Becky's New Car, will join in a panel with Charlie and Benita Staadecker, the amazing couple who originally commissioned this vibrant new play by Steven Dietz. They are visiting us this weekend from Seattle. I will moderate the discussion, and our director, Billy Christopher Maupin, will be on hand to offer additional insight. It's free. No reservations required. Please join us.

Now--back to the rest of our Coffee & Conversations season. Each program will focus on a fresh and lively panel discussion, providing a fun behind-the-scenes look into the shows and operations of Barksdale/Theatre IV--Central Virginia's nonprofit, resident professional theatre.

Following our Special Event this Friday, the Rostov's Coffee & Conversations series will take place on the second Tuesday of each month, October through July (excluding June). There will be no programs in August and September.

Rostov's coffee, tea and pastries will be provided free-of-charge at each event, with the continental buffet opening at 9:15 a.m. Moderated panel discussions will begin promptly at 9:30 a.m. and last one hour, with lots of opportunity for audience Q & A.

Events are normally held in the lobby of Barksdale Willow Lawn. If attendance approaches 70 or more, the program may be moved into our comfortable 204-seat theatre. Average attendance has been around 35, but we're hoping to grow the program this year. Please note that the July event will be held on the set of Spring Awakening at the historic Empire Theatre, located at 114 W Broad Street, downtown.

All Rostov's Coffee & Conversations programs are free and open to everyone. A $3 free-will donation is gratefully accepted from those who have the means. Donations are welcomed in the glass urn that sits on the pastry buffet table.

No reservations are required.

The 2011-12 Season is as follows. Panelists and moderators will be announced on this blog and elsewhere on our website about two weeks prior to each program.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Behind the Scenes of Lend Me a Tenor
Moderator - Jill Bari Steinberg
Panelists - Cast members Nick Ciavarella, Frank Creasy, Susan Sanford

Tuesday, November 14, 2011
Working Out - Our Theatre Gym Partnership with Cadence Theatre Company

Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Behind the Scenes of My Fair Lady

Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Build It and They Will Come - Barksdale's Set Construction Team

Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Behind the Scenes of God of Carnage

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Public Funding for the Arts - Where Do Greater Richmond and Virginia Stand?

Tuesday, April 10, 2012
All in the Planning - The Future of Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV

Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Behind the Scenes of our World Premiere Production of Scorched Earth

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 ***This program will be held in the historic Empire Theatre
Behind the Scenes of Spring Awakening

For more information, or more timely information, please visit www.BarksdaleRichmond.org. We hope you'll join us for each of these fun and informative programs.

--Bruce Miller

Coffee & Conversations - Guys & Dolls

Posted by Janine Serresseque
Rostov’s Coffee & Conversations, Barksdale Theatre’s free and fun series of behind-the-scenes panel discussions, will take place tomorrow morning (Tuesday, July 8, 9:30 a.m.) as originally scheduled. Please join us!

The topic will be “Behind the Scenes of Guys and Dolls,” and the guest panelists will be Rachel Abrams (Adelaide), Jodi Ashworth (Sky) and Scott Wichmann (Nathan), with artistic director Bruce Miller moderating. Doors will open at 9 a.m. with free coffee and Danish to accompany the delicious backstage banter, which will begin at 9:30 a.m.

But which doors will be opening? Isn’t Barksdale’s and Theatre IV’s Stage Explorers Summer Camp in full swing this week?

Indeed it is. Forty-five elementary students grades 1 – 6 will be racing up the stairs at 9:30 a.m. all too eager to tackle the days curricula and each other. So what is the more demure Coffee & Conversations crowd to do?

Not to worry. Thanks to the generosity of our Willow Lawn landlords, Coffee & Conversations has been moved, for this one day only, to the spacious, comfortable Willow Lawn Community Room. The Community Room is located inside the Mall. Just walk toward the mall past the Barksdale entrance, enter the Mall adjacent to Victoria’s Secret, turn right and pass the Food Court on your left, almost immediately go through the glass doors on your left into the South Tower (all right, it’s only two stories, but a Tower is what they call it), rise up to the second floor on either the elevator or stairs, then follow the arrows to Room 500.

A fun and informative time is guaranteed for all, so please join us for the final C & C of the season.

See you there!

--Janine Serresseque

Summertime Thoughts on the Fourth of July

Posted by Bruce Miller
It's a DAY OFF!! As I enjoy it, I'm reminded of why the summertime has become so crazy at B'dale and TIV.

A unique and important characteristic of our two nonprofit companies—one that is seldom noticed, at least publicly—is that we employ our core team of 40 professional theatre artists year round. In this way we’re different from our peer organizations, the Richmond Symphony and the Richmond Ballet, and our predecessor theatre, TheatreVirginia. Our core artists do not take the summer off. They earn vacations, to be sure (two to three weeks, depending on the number of years they’ve been employed). But they also earn paychecks – 52 weeks a year.

We do this for one simple reason. We believe theatre professionals deserve the security of year-round employment just like everyone else. We don’t send our core team on hiatus in the summer because we want to enable them to continue to work at Barksdale and Theatre IV year after year. All management studies suggest that seasonal employment encourages turnover, whereas year-round employment encourages stability.

Our employment records at Barksdale and Theatre IV seem to prove these findings. For years our companies have benefitted from the longest employee longevity and the lowest turnover of any major arts organization in the Commonwealth.

In order to make this year-round employment possible, we engage in year-round programming. In fact, the sun-drenched days of summer are now among our busiest.

Throughout July, we will be continuing the run of our hit musical Into the Woods at Barksdale Willow Lawn (featuring Audra Honaker and Russell Rowland as Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, pictured to the left). And we'll be keeping the laughs coming with our hit comedy The Odd Couple at Barksdale Hanover Tavern (featuring Jen Meharg and Jennifer Frank as the Pigeon Sisters, pictured below and to the right).

In partnership with Steward School, we will be opening the Greater Richmond High School All-Star Musical, which this year happens to be Disney’s High School Musical, involving nearly 50 students from 20 area schools in a fully produced three-week run at the magnificent Cramer Center in Richmond’s West End.

We have enrolled 100 elementary school students in our hugely popular Stage Explorers day camp, this year operating out of both our Willow Lawn and Hanover Tavern facilities. We have extended our Coffee & Conversations program, sponsored by Rostov’s Coffee & Tea, into July, and continued our essential Bifocals Theatre Project for senior artists and audiences into the month of June.

This Friday, a terrific vocal ensemble from the cast of Disney's High School Musical will even be singing the national anthem at the Diamond.

And this Sunday, an All Star Jam will conclude the 06-07 season of our terrific live music series, Stretchin' at Barksdale, produced by Richmond's most charming impresario, B. J. Kocen. Brad Tucker, Craig Evans, Harry Gore, Chris Fuller, Jackie Frost, Stephen Leckey and the Beej himself will be making organic music all evening long for a meager $10 cover charge--the best live music deal in town.

So, “Why is the summer so busy!?” Because we're working our hardest, every day, to increase the professionalism of our company, with one goal in mind—living up to the responsibilities of being Virginia’s leading professional theatre.

--Bruce Miller