Joseph Closes Strong

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat closed last night to a well deserved standing ovation, after 22 record setting performances! What a run! Eighteen of the 22 performances were sell-outs, and the other four were above average.

I am personally suffering from morning-after-closing-night decompression. And all I did was introduce the opening acts, ask for donations, and do the intermission stuff. The bitter-sweetness that always acompianies a closing night is still fresh with me. It is always sad to see the end come because we all move on to other projects and the comraderie (and adrenelin rush) of the show leaves our lives, but at the same time we know we can't sustain the energy levels indefinitely. We all need to take a break.

I will probably talk more about Joseph in future posts, but for now I'd like to mention some of the outside of the show highlights for me.

• The opening night presentation of $500 donation from Zion's Bank. And of course the $2,000 donation from the anonymous donor.


• The new lighting control system. We had actually borrowed the control board and some of the "instruments" from Ballet West to do the show. (The light show at the end of the first act wouldn't have been possible without the Ballet West board.) We had agreed to pay Ballet West $100/month until we could get grant funds. Part way into the run we received word of a $2,500 grant from Rocky Mountain Power Foundation, and we were able to pay off the equipment.


• The night Wade "seeded" the donation basket and started a chain reaction of donations. That was one of two nights where we received more than $50 in the donation baskets.


• Putting the new Internet ticketing system on line. We're still working the bugs out, but this new system has taken quite a load off of Joline and the box office ladies.


• Making the farewell presentation to Doug Butts last night. I don't know why, but I was quite emotional as I presented the signed picture of the Empress Theatre to him. Even if he did have the "amazing technicolor fingernails."


• Meeting Allene Ware, Leo's wife, and her two daughters and several of her grandchildren following the last Saturday performance. It was so wonderful to hear their stories about Leo and his dream. I also met Kim Ware following last nights performance.


• Finding the secretary from my days at Webster Elementary School in the audience, and then being able to remember all of my elementary school teachers names.


• Meeting visitors to the Empress from far away. Jenni's dad flew in from California to surprise her. My old school-mate Ohleen Hansen visited us from Texas. And some friends of mine from Holladay brought a visitor from India.


• Presenting Linda Lyon with her "Diamond Sponsor" certificate and letter recognizing her donation of the costume shop, and all the hard work she's done for us as a costumer.

So now its your turn: leave your comments on what you want to remember most about Joseph. Cat's curlers? Nate's "wardrobe malfunction?" The "fruit hat?" the "country song performed by a goateed kid in a Neil Diamond shirt, bullrider hat, and extensive armband tattoo."

Lighting Upgrade - volunteers needed

The Empress Theatre has received a $2500 grant from the Rocky Mountain Power Foundation to upgrade our lighting system. The money will be used to purchase about 50 lighting instruments that we've been borrowing from Ballet West, three cabinets of dimmers (a total of 90) and an ETC Expressions control system. We've also been borrowing the control board from Ballet West for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

This is an incredibly good deal; it would cost us about $30,000 to purchase all of this equipment new.

The next phase of the upgrade is to transport the dimmer racks from the Ballet West warehouse to the Empress and install them. In order to complete the installation, we will need to upgrade the Empress's wiring capacity to handle the increased load. We need electricians to help with this, and we need to acquire the wire to run from the meter to the dimmer location(s). And we'll probably need some stong bodies to help move the gear. If you can help with this, please contact me at twimmer@empresstheatre.com or call me at 987-3361.

For anyone interested in such things, the upgrade will:

• Add 90 6.8 kW dimmers. Each dimmer will allow us to bring as many as four of our stage lights to full power where our current dimmers are limited to one instrument at 80% power. Our total dimmer inventory will consist of the 90 new dimmers, 80 600 W distributed dimmers and 16 300 W distributed dimmers. The increased number of dimmers will allow us to overcome some of the lighthing challenges we've faced in past productions, especially in some of the secondary performance areas.
• Increase our inventory of Ellipsoidal Spot Lights (the main lights we use to light the stage) to about 100 instruments. More importantly, this increases our inventory of lenses of varying focal lengths, providing much more flexibility in lighting the stage and other areas.
• Replace the software based "Stage Console" software we've been beta testing with some very sophisticated control equipment. The Stage Console software is not reliable and had several "bugs" that we had to work around, and didn't have all of the capabilities of the new control board.