Comment

Comment by Scott Bloom on February 6, 2013 at 2:15am

Thanks Jacob - I'll see you there. And thank you, Mark. I am the current Vice President for Membership of AACT. I'd be willing to bet I could find a few people at the Winter meetings who would love to talk to you about making an avenue of communication with the National Jr. Theatre Festival.

As an organization AACT has been in the past somewhat limited by the size of its staff and budget. We simply didn't have enough hours in a day to reach out to the many other National organizations that support the theatre arts. And often it would be our effort to reach out and find the right contacts in these groups, because we weren't as well known or as visible as we need to be. But that is changing.

We are growing, expanding our staff, consolidating and improving our Internet presence, and starting new and exciting projects that will help us reach a much broader audience, including youth theatre. We are always looking for people inside these groups who would be willing to talk about sharing our efforts and resources, and believe me AACT has a tremendous storehouse of knowledge and resources, if we can learn to use it.

So, Jacob, be sure you bring a copy of this thread with you. Mark, I will certainly be passing your name to the right people.

Comment by Mark Lawrence Morgan on February 4, 2013 at 7:23am

I'm surprised that AACT is not involved at all with the national Jr. Theater Festival that is held in Atlanta, GA every January over MLK, Jr. Weekend.  We took our community theater (Moorestown Theater Company) to participate this year, and we were one of 82 community theaters and / or schools that participated (almost 4,000 performers and family members attended).  This was the most amazing theatrical experience of my 30-plus-year community theater career (and all of my 24 performers echoed this sentiment!).  Not only the chance to perform in front of, and be adjudicated by, Broadway professionals, but a private concert by Alan Menken, performances by three cast members from "Newsies", workshops, award ceremonies, preview of upcoming shows that are being readied for performances, etc., were just some of the highlights of this spectacular weekend.  I would think that AACT would want to be a sponsor of this event and have your name in front of all of these youth performers (the next generation of community theater performers!).  I can certainly get you in touch with the right people for next year as I know all of the 'powers that be' that run the event.  Let me know!