Plans are taking shape for our new Youth Program. Funded by a grant from the McElroy Foundation, the program will offer new opportunities for the youth of Benton County, including their own theatre season and year round theatre classes for all ages. The program, which as yet has not been officially named, has been planned by the Education Committee (Margie Ortgeissen, chair along with Steve Arnold and Denise Shares) and the Youth Board, consisting of Kevin Bookmeier, Jessica Coulter, Maggie Karr, Megan Williams, and Josh Deutsch. Currently, seventeen classes are planned aimed at a variety of interest areas, age, and ability areas. Classes are planned for Saturday mornings and generally run for 5 one hour sessions. Classes include:

         Introduction to Theatre for grades K - 2 (2 sections, not more than 5 students each)

         Introduction to Theatre for grades 3 - 5 (2 sections, not more than 7 students each)

        Basic Acting (2 sections - not more than 7 students each)

        Advanced Acting (3 sections - not more than 7 students each)

        An Overview of Technical Theatre (2 sections, 6th grade and above - 7 students each)

        Directing (1 section, high school and adult, not more than 5 students)

        Pantomime (1 section, not more than 7 students)

        Puppetry (1 section, not more than 7 students, 6th grade and above)

        Accents (1 section)

        Preparing for an Audition (1 session, held twice before auditions each McElroy show)

Consider Yourself One of Us!  Now that our new season is under way, it’s time to think about memberships and subscriptions! We decided to include in our bylaws a membership fee, which has been set by the board at $X.00 per person or $X.00 per family. Members participate in meetings and vote to elect board members. In addition, a participation requirement asks that members participate in at least one show per year, but participation includes attending, so it’s easy to be a member of ACT I of Benton County!

    It’s also time to take care of your subscription to the new season of Grease Paint, our newsletter. We’re making several changes in Grease Paint for the coming year. We will now be issuing our newsletter on a monthly basis, and patrons will now have two options on how they want to receive it! We will continue to send Grease Paint by snail mail for those who wish to receive it that way. This year, however, we will begin offering Grease Paint ONLINE! Each month, online subscribers will receive an e-mail message telling you that you can now download the next issue. Just click the address, and you’re there! Our online version will also be somewhat expanded, and will include color photographs and other goodies that can’t be included in the print version. So you now have two ways to stay in touch!

As we look forward to the opening of the Palace Theatre, we look back fondly (or not so fondly) on the various performance venues we have used over the years. Even as we prepare to move into the Palace, we give yet another venue a try as we present "Bye, Bye Birdie" in the Riverside Park Band shell. Below are listed seven past productions from ACT I. For each, list where it was performed. (Hint - be as specific as you can, in case a particular location has (or had) more than one stage!) Also, there are no repeat answers!

    1. Twigs

    2. Said the Spider to the Spy

    3. The Boardwalk Murder Melody Hour

    4. Sleuth

    5. The Girls in 509

    6.  Klondike Kalamity

    7. The Odd Couple

    This column is something of an obituary. At the end of June we said good-bye to the Old Creamery Theatre building. Having seen its final days as a theatre, all that was left was for an auction to dispatch the remnants of the old building’s distinguished life as Iowa’s only Equity facility. But this building has special meaning for ACT I as well. It was this building and the Old Creamery Company that gave birth to ACT I nearly twenty years ago and the Creamery building that brought so many of our shows to life. Watching part of the auction was a sad experience. Seeing furniture, properties and equipment that had been used for ACT I shows, lined up under such shabby circumstances for the scavengers to examine was disheartening and depressing. ACT I has had some great times here, and the physical remnants of our hard work is turning to dust. Fighting the urge to take something home, the desire for escape won out. Escape so as not to watch this lifeless old friend be picked apart and carried away.  Theatre, after all, is a living art form. You can’t hold on to your work the way you would a book or a painting. It exists in a plain of time, and can’t be persevered beyond the milliseconds in which it happens. So the Old Creamery is relegated to our memories. But oh, what memories. Because every show, no matter how good or bad, leaves something of itself behind in everyone who worked on it or witnessed it. And the Old Creamery Theatre leaves with us cherished memories of rich experiences, and traditions for ACT I. For whatever the Creamery lacked (and it lacked plenty, including such fundamentals as warmth and dryness) it was a building with a soul.

    It is valuable to stay in touch with the past and to keep traditions, but even as we look back on the wonderful times we spend at home at the Old Creamery, we can also look forward. Soon, ACT I will have a permanent home in a beautiful new facility that will be as up to date as our limited financial resources can make it. But whatever the Palace Theatre will be physically, in terms of memories and traditions, it will be a blank slate. Everyone who worked at the Creamery, or any of the other local venues where ACT I has performed, will have special memories. The Palace will hold none of that. (Yes, many Vinton old timers have memories of the Palace’s past days, but the metamorphosis it is undergoing will make it a new building, starting its life over as a Performing Arts Center.) As we perform our first show there (whatever that show may be of the six in this year’s lineup) it will open in a building without memories, without traditions.