As I walked up to New World Brewery last night after the show, I was a little pissed to see Crash sitting at the door collecting money. It was a Sunday night after all, bands don’t usually play there Sunday night.
I was annoyed at the people inside the bar, which was simply too crowded for me. All I wanted was a quiet pint or three with my pals.
I ordered bad-for-me takeout on the way home, then managed to pick a fight with my DVR over a botched attempt to record Sopranos and Entourage, which I had to wait around for the re-airing of. (“F*** YOU, DISK WRITE ERROR!!!”)
Today, I feel bloated from the crap food I ate and my eyes burn from a combination of the bar and staying up too late. I’ll drink a lot of water, eat a lot of veggies and get to bed early tonight.
At the heart of all of this though is the fact that Kitefliers has closed. Again.
I’ll likely mope for a few more days as I transition back into the director’s chair for Woman in Mind. It’ll be fine, seriously, it’ll just take a few days.
This is certainly one of those shows I could have done over and over again, and I know that my life expectancy of playing Jack is limited. I’m not going to be one of those people who forces myself into a part well past the time that’s believable. There will be no 45-year old Jenkins trying to spike up whatever hair I have left for my first scene in the second act, or vain attempts to squeeze a Yoda puppet over an arthritic mitt.
So I’m quite possibly letting go of Jack for good. Who knows, anything can happen I suppose, but for now that’s what I’m thinking. And that’s a little sad.
Positives: in the end over 2,000 people were touched by this play as an audience member. Kitefliers now ranks in the Jobsite elite in regards to ticket sales and attendance – in the company of plays like Shakespeare (abridged), A Girl’s Guide to Chaos, Dracula and The Pillowman.
We got a proclamation from Mayor Iorio. My mom saw her first Jobsite show and loved it. We had a few producers see it, and a few other bigwigs here that are now up in NYC for the next week and hopefully talking the show up while they are there. There’s in-state touring possibilities. We again had swarms of people who said they’d never been to a play here locally, or who’d never liked a play here locally until they saw Kitefliers. Some of those folks are ready to become season ticket holders. There’s still film possibilities.
In short, we’ve got a lot of lines in the water and now we’re just waiting on a bite.
I really want to thank you all for every bit of your help. Those of you who came out to see the show for the first time ever or who came back to see the differences. Those of you who blogged the show for us or who otherwise got the word out to your networks. Those of you who sponsor us or donate to us. Those of you who worked on it who are so freaking underpaid it isn’t even funny.
We went out strong, and it was worth every drop of sweat bringing this show back to life. As can sometimes happen we struggled a bit during the second weekend but had a killer third weekend, where we had person after person ask us if we were running for one more week because they wanted to come after hearing about the show – even strangers at New World last night.
A few side notes: we’re going to smoke our records again this year for attendance and annual grosses. I mean, like a cheap cigar. We’re currently $8k over last year’s mainstage final gross with two plays left to produce, and $4k behind our best-ever earnings which not only had our mainstage factored in – but a year of extensive touring to cities across the state. And we’ll do it in our mainstage alone. We’ll also likely break that record of total patrons served.
This year will also likely move us up a step on the radar or granting bodies, making it a lot easier for us to get those very important but incredibly elusive grants (which are getting cut year to year). To this point, we’ve been stuck in this in-between place of too big for the emerging grants but too small for institutional grants. We should finally be over that hump come the end of this season. It’s taken us a while, but I don’t see us going back – we haven’t gone backwards in years.
Grants, corporate and private sponsors – those are the things that are going to really help cement Jobsite and give us some permanency. Those are the things that are going to allow some of us to go on salary and pay our artists their worth without charging you all through the nose for a ticket (Can you help us out?).
While I’m talking money – we have 25 Kitefliers shirts left in sizes S-XL. One is a ladies-cut M. They shirts are heather grey with a red ringer on the collar and sleeves (the ladies M is black, not red) and have the groovy ovular color show logo with the nifty kite on the center of the chest with a small Jobsite logo on the center back.
They are swank, swank t-shirts and only will run you a $15 donation. The money is going to a good cause, so I hope you consider picking one up for yourself, or possibly that friend of yours who won’t stop talking about the show. Email me for details, but you can either send us a check or give online and we can either mail the shirt or leave it for pickup at TBPAC.
Finally, I read a few articles over the weekend on a new business buzz-word being thrown around – radical transparency (also referred to as corporate transparency) – and I think that’s something I’ve been doing all along without even knowing that’s what I was doing. I’ve always said it’s one of the best parts of having the blog – being able to give folks a real, candid, inside look at things. When things are going well I’m not ashamed, and when we need help I’ll put that out there, too.
There are still so many people that try to hide any real need, or look for the ways to effectively trick people into doing what they want. We’ve never wanted that, because we know it means more to build meaningful relationships based out of honesty than to just try to be everything to everyone all the time. I plan on staying honest, staying humble. I hope you keep reading.
-dj
