It’s the last week of 2009, so it’s inevitable: The 2009 Review!
What were your favorite CATCO moments of 2009?
Here are some of mine:
–Experimenting with the tiny reflective glass beads they paint onto highway signs to see if we could make the projections on the Almost, Maine set brighter (it didn’t work, but was cool & fun)
–Sitting in on prop discussions for Almost, Maine. Some sample snippets:
-”So how big are these Bags of Love?”
-”What does a broken-heart-in-a-bag sound like?”
Christina Ritter and Malcolm Callan in "Almost, Maine." Photo by David Alkire
–CATCO’s return to the Studio Two theatre. It’s cozy, intimate, and a great place to see theatre, up close and personal!
–Realizing how much more Geoff Nelson and Jon Putnam know about casting than I do:
-Kerry Shanklin as an old, exotic Argentinean?!? Really? She’s a great actress, but…… Well, if you saw The Clean House, you know how GREAT she was in that role!
–Being absolutely mesmerized and gripped by Blackbird: a play that I loathed when I first read it! The cast had me so tightly in the palm of their hands that I physically gasped several times during the performance!
–Rolling out CATCO’s new logo! A fresh new look, designed by CAPA graphic Artist Scott Fitzpatrick, with a great “tag line” by Terence Womble (also a part of the CAPA-CATCO marketing team). “CATCO is Theatre” tells us what we need to know!
The new CATCO logo and tag line, modeled by Stacy Siak and Delora Gilzow
It also introduced “CATCO Orange.” Some love it, some hate it, but you can’t help but notice it! I was wearing a new CATCO T-shirt in a parking lot one day, and a student driver tried to practice parallel parking around me…..
But seriously….thanks also go to the Branding & Marketing Committee of our Board of Directors who worked very closely with us on the logo and website (see more on that below).
–Telling the “…darn near killed ‘em!” joke backstage one day to someone who had actually NEVER heard it before!
–Rolling out the new CATCOistheatre.org website. Matt Dopkiss and his team at DynamIT hit a home run with the design for our site, and the CAPA-CATCO team really came together to develop the content. It is so great to be able to direct people to the CATCO web site without having to apologize for it! If you haven’t explored beyond this blog, check out the wealth of resources and multimedia now available at your fingertips!
A Screenshot of www.catcoistheatre.org Web Design by DynamIT
–Having an increase in subscribership for our 09-10 Season, even in the face of a deep recession. Thank you to all of our supporters!
–CATCO’s debut at ComFest! Special thanks go out to Jon Putnam, Whitney Thiessen, and honorary hippy Peter Hersha for making our first appearance at ComFest such a success!
–The success of Murderers: This play was VERY popular with our play reading groups, and proved to be a crowd-pleaser as well!
–Columbus proves it has a discerning audience, as demonstrated by the success of The Seafarer. For our main-stage holiday offering CATCO mounts a challenging Irish comedy-drama about the devil playing cards for a man’s soul on Christmas Eve, and Columbus flocks to see it. It’s thrilling to see quality writing, directing, acting, and production rewarded by a savvy audience. Thank you to the great team that created it, and to the audience for supporting great theatre!
Mark Mann and Geoffrey Nelson in CATCO's "The Seafarer." Photo by David Alkire
– Hearing my son say on Christmas morning: “After two years of misery, I finally got the Boulder Mountain set!” O.K. technically that isn’t a CATCO moment, but hey….this is my blog entry this week and I thought it was pretty darn cute!
These are a few of my favorite moments of 2009.
Comment on this post and let us know some of yours!
T.J. Gerckens
Managing Director
CATCO
Re: the Natty Light — Oh the sacrifices we have had to make for our art……
Kerry was absolutely amazing in “The Clean House”. She was wonderful about letting us “grow her hair” for the role. She also had a great sense of costume dealing with the endlessly long train of the sheer kimono/hospital gown. Kate, Anne, Eleni and Chuck rocked the performances as well!
what’s a girl got to do to get one of them cool orange tee shirts? congrats to everyone on the great work in 2009, btw! can’t wait to see y’all again.
p.s. “…darn near killed ‘em” ha!!
“Needed them as props?” That’s what they all say…..
How about the pristine, white set we needed for Clean House that caused us lots of trepidation and turned out absolutely beautiful? (And stayed that way even though we trashed it every performance!)
One of my favorites has to be drinking Natty Light at midnight in the theatre with the CATCO staff after a 10-hour day of tech for Almost, Maine:) (We needed the empty cans for props)