Arthur Miller Super Study
or, is a director that follows Arthur Miller’s first hit, All My Sons, with Arthur Miller’s biggest hit, Death of a Salesman, just a fan? Will he follow with The Crucible? The director of this theater program mentions A View from the Bridge, as well. I’ve never read nor seen that one. I hope he chooses that next.
This school did All My Sons last year, too. Arthur Miller has 18 more plays…that is the kind of challenge I like. Can I read them all and see if there is a play in there that a small theater or a school might want to do? The better strategy is to find the directors for small theaters and schools that are Arthur Miller super-fans and just ask them.
I happened upon this maybe-Miller-super-fan when I went looking for which theaters were producing Death of a Salesman in the near future. There was only this one:
That is the ”Wheeler Theater Foundation”. Foundation tells us this is a well-organized, well-supported and/or well-financed High School theater. Right? Foundation means a specific, separate entity from the school that can get donations.
When I saw Wheeler Theater Foundation on the Concord Theatricals website, I put exactly that into the search bar. The first entry was not anything about the theater or the high school…Google gave me the tax records. I do feel odd posting these bits of publicly available financials; but, I am sure that we should all have insights into how beautiful things get made — and this school does a truly great job of running a top notch theater program. Call this girl gauche if you need to, you will not be the first.
$22,346 for 2 musicals and a showcase. The other $15,000 is to send everyone to ThesCon! the big theater conference/competition in Georgia. The straight plays, like All My Sons aren’t listed in those expenses? Death of a Salesman is not even listed on the theater’s website for this year. Maybe these are all student run productions and not part of the typical season. I bet these shows have those super minimal budgets…like $50?
How much do you think was spent on the All My Sons set from last year?
This high school set is better that the set a local professional company put together for a similar single-location family drama set in the 1940’s. That other set was less than wonderful because they cobbled it together from whatever was available in stock. I think this school did the same — they just have a better stock. And, this school has “free” labor in the form of volunteers, salaried staff and students. Small professional companies have to “pay” for most of their labor; hence, the wobbly doors and overworked fee-based set designers.
Cobb County has a separate foundation for all of the schools that seems to take in $500,000 in donations every year and has another $500,000 in investments, disseminating about $800,000 in scholarships, “family stabilization” grants and individual gifts to schools. They don’t have any theater listed in their itemized expenses…but yes, to art supplies…perhaps scene paint. I put this STEAM foundation up because I think it really does pay for the balance of the STEAM kids’ college tuition for students under the median income for the district. Wow. The theater foundation looks new. The “staff” works for free and the only staff seems to be the theater director at the school. $30,000 in ticket sales and $25,000 in donations?!?! That sounds very good to me…
Sometimes, you luck out and love the left-over paint color hanging out on a shelf next to prop storage. But, maybe this set didn’t even get a new coat of paint. Fresh paint looks like fresh paint…and even though Arthur Miller asks it, “upstage is filled with the back of the house and it’s open, unroofed porch…It would have cost perhaps fifteen-thousand in the twenties when it was built. Now it is nicely painted, looks tight and comfortable...” …I would still ere on the side of light wear. Fresh paint on a real house makes it look fake. As-is stock is often great.
I personally, would have gone to see this production 3 times — seated on each of the extremes and once in the middle. You would get 3 different views of faces during all of the big scenes. Directors get a little nervous about that variability, but I like it. Tech gets tedious if you can’t change your vantage point.
The All My Sons was last year’s show. They had 4 performances. This above is for Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat next month, another 4 performances; 750 is typical per night for the musical in the school’s bigger theater.
Last time I suggested six unpaid performances, and one pay-what-works performance for a school with an incredibly slim theater program. It looks like selling tickets to a non-musical is not an easy feat, even for an established theater department with a capable fundraising wing. 80 seats is a great size for a theater performance — it forces actors to drop into their heads. The distractions are only a few feet away, and there are not enough lights to blind you. Black boxes are boot camp. Maybe you can only fill one house for a Death of a Salesman. This student show has only one date listed.
But all of that work for one performance! I’m shaking my head no, big time. Black boxes are boot camp, and we all get better with a few runs under our belts. Mom and the cousins can all come twice, sit on opposite sides, get a different show both times.
Who wants to see Death of a Salesman in Marietta, GA? The TheaterGoing Habit would like to foot the bill for the tickets. Bring everyone you know so we can fill that 80 seat theater and force them to do a second show.
You can canoe there from Atlanta. I think it would be worth the effort. This is the first high school that has student artwork on its homepage as the main image. Evidently they are also state basketball champions for the 11th year in a row…but this beautiful view of Marietta’s dock into that river is the real front page news. Heartening.
