Hey all,

As a simplified way to convey all the info from the meeting last night at the church, I am simply reposting the email from Dana. It covers pretty much everything I was going to say. Thanks to everyone who participated. Also, if you know of anyone who is interested in the theater and has not been told about this blog, please feel free to forward this address to them!

BC
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Hi everyone

Just wanted to kind of recap the meeting last night for Tianta, Dee (and everyone else).

I think that the meeting was very productive. There were several things discussed, so I’ll try to just give an overview of each and where we hope to be able to go with it from here.

1. Communication is KEY! Everyone’s voice equally important. All communications need to be open. Set up a distribution list in your email, include the montanaactors@yahoo.com account, use it, and hit “reply all” when you respond. Check the montanaactors@yahoo.com account, password is art. I know there was some confusion as to the barrage of emails flying at the start and we tried to alleviate that with “a chain of command” but that has led to the miscommunication and cliques that CS had before. Right now, it is of utmost importance that everyone be involved to the point that they want to be and open communication will make that possible. Use of the subject line will allow people to decide on their own if the information pertains to or is important to them. Yes, there still is a chain of command. Each function has a committee, but those committees also need to include all those interested. Advisory council should also be open to the general membership, decisions should be made by the council or by the full board if need be, but input needs to come from everyone.
2. Attitudes. There must be a conscious effort on everyone’s part to change from the way things have always been done to making this a positive, productive environment.—and that is going to take effort!
3. The Building. MAT has an attorney working through the legalities of getting CS Corp reinstated and making sure that when all taxes and bills that are known of now are paid that a clean title will be able to be transferred to MAT. (It is my understanding that Drew, his father and Mike Davis are the “committee” that will reincorporate as CS Corp.) At the point the title is transferred, CS Corp will dissolve or involuntarily dissolve. The building is a priority to all of us and as soon as we are sure that there will not be any additional problems and that the title will be able to be transferred, bills will be paid and utilities turned back on. We are not doing so prior to that for two reasons. 1. If we try to operate MAT-GF in a building owned by CS, taxes on the building will have to be paid (as CS will no longer be using the building for non-profit purposes) 2. Depending on the time-line, we don’t want to pay utilities on a building we can’t use. – That’s not to say that we want to procrastinate. We know the building is going to take a lot of work and money to get it to the point where we want it and we know that will take some time in between turning utilities on and opening the doors and those are expenses we are willing to incur. _Drew, what was the downtown improvement assn called that your dad was talking about?
4. The name. I have mixed feelings on this as well… When we first approached CS, we said “we don’t want your building and we don’t want you to lose your name/logo” and I don’t want there to be any confusion as to our purpose and/or mixed feelings as to where we are going. That said, a vote was taken to decide on a name and Montana Actors’ Theatre - Great Falls was chosen.
5. Responsibilities. The success/failure of this depends on all of us. Brian has an uphill battle ahead of him as the leader of MAT-GF but it is not all his responsibility, we must all put forth our best efforts and attitudes to help him. Mistakes will be made, have been made and we must learn from them, not focus on blaming/criticizing and focus on solutions. Full job descriptions, productions timelines, production teams will alleviate some of the confusion we have seen and time will help us to develop consistency in our way of doing business. – In talking about “jobs”, one thing I would like to see is that everyone would know approximately where in the process things should be on every show/event we do and if there is question as to whether something has/has not been done then the person questioning can go to the appropriate person and say, “Hey, are the posters done for this show, have arrangements been made for this location, when are auditions, who is going to mc, etc” – and if not, what can I do to help get this done? Yes, certain people have certain responsibilities but we are all human, need help sometimes and don’t ask for it. Production teams and timelines should alleviate 99% of that and if there are issues beyond that, then they need to come to the full board for resolution.
Deb has been working on job descriptions for Missoula, Jay and I have been as well and it needs to be a priority as well as the development of a system of doing business for GF. We will work on these things with your help, send them out for review to all of you and then take them to the board for approval. Feel free to make suggestions or if you would like to create your own preliminary job description – please do and send them to us.
6. Fundraiser. We are going to postpone Death by Dessert. It needs to be in conjunction with the opening of the building and we just don’t know at this point when that will be. We will start the title search process as soon as we have word from our attorney to go ahead, which should be in the next 10 days or so. After that we should have a lot more information on how long things are going to take and can plan accordingly. We will keep everyone informed. We will meet as planned jan. 30th (ask Brian for details).
7. Shows. As we try to resolve the issues with the building, we will be doing off-site shows and fundraisers to get our name out there, to create an audience, to raise money along the way, and to DO THEATRE. K2 and Birth and After Birth are already scheduled – I’d like to see a production team and timeline on both of those immediately. – Absolutely, if we are talking about a Jan. 23rd date for an opening. We also talked about Michael (?) helping to bring in a big-name for a fundraiser when we are a little more stable.

I am excited to see new faces and increased enthusiasm each time we meet and I know we can overcome the frustrations. We have the ability, the resources, the talent to do this – let’s make it happen.

Can someone get contact information to me for those people that were there last night and that I have not emailed here today? I’d especially like to talk with Mr. Adams (?) wife about her ability to help us with searching for and/or writing grants.


Merry Christmas!!!
Dana

I’m sure I missed something, so feel free to add your thoughts.