A New Year, A New Tour

Hello, all!

We've kicked off our 2009-2010 ArtReach tour season! It's been a great start, and we're already busy hitting the road! We are currently touring Anne Frank, written by Mary Tensing and directed by  ArtReach business manager Jen Scott, along with Henny Penny, written and directed by ArtReach artistic director Kelly Germain and choreographed by Jen Scott. 

Meet the ArtReach 2009-2010 cast!

Carly Crawford, the new primary author of this blog, is originally from Memphis, TN, and graduated from UNC-Asheville (Asheville, NC) with degrees in Theatre and English.

Taryn Bryant, from Hunstville, AL, graduated from Shorter College (Rome, GA) with a degree in Musical Theatre and an MBA from Everest University.

Stevyn Carmona, from Trinidad and Tobago, graduated from Frostburg State (Frostburg, MD) with a degree in Theatre.

Kevin McDaniel, from Cincinnati, OH, graduated from Ball State (Muncie, IN) with a degree in Musical Theatre.

We're currently in the second week of the tour, and we just checked into our hotel in Greenville, OH. We'll be here for a couple of days doing Anne Frank before heading back to Cincy. For the past few days, we've been in Portsmouth, OH, where we hit five schools with productions of Anne Frank. All of these shows were brought to Portsmouth by the Portsmouth Area Arts Council. Becky Lovins, the president, was our contact there. She was absolutely a delight to have around. She definitely loves theatre and she and her children are active in area community theatres. She was very helpful this morning when we ended up with some incorrect directions to our school and got ourselves very lost. Luckily, we've started to get the setup ofAnne Frank down to a science and were able to get the show ready very quickly! 

Luckily, we'll kick next week off with a couple runs of Henny Penny. Anne Frank is a great show, but I think there's a reason they send us out with two at a time: all WWII all the time can get kind of depressing! The kids have asked us some great questions so far, both predictable and unpredictable. Almost all the kids who've seen Anne Frank have asked how old Carly is in real life - most of them are convinced she really is 13! Henny Penny questions have been simpler thus far, but that doesn't mean they're any easier to answer! Sometimes answering questions about Hitler can be easier than answering a kindergartner's "Why were you running around?"

That's all for now. We're all looking forward to a great rest of this tour before we stop to rehearse The Fantastic Toy Shoppe in mid-November!