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Kaatscast: the Catskills Podcast is a biweekly series featuring Catskills culture, history, sustainability, local interviews, literature, and the arts. Shows are hosted by Brett Barry and produced by Silver Hollow Audio, in the heart of the Catskills. Subscribe and experience what reviewers have called “delightfully informative” storytelling with “great production quality.” Voted “Best Regional Podcast” three years in a row. Episode archives, transcripts, and a robust search engine at kaatscast.com. Enjoy!
[00:00:00] Faye Storms: There was basically men clamoring at the ticket counter to get tickets. This was kind of a risqué show in this area, and I just remember them pounding on the ticket booth. "Can't I get a ticket? Can't I get a ticket?" And I just thought, "Oh my God, that's amazing," but it was so much fun, and it was also about 100 degrees, and we had no air conditioning, so it was a good thing we were all kind of dressed very scantily.
[00:00:33] Brett Barry: Faye Storms landed in the Catskills just a few years after the Shandaken Theatrical Society was founded in 1976, and she's been part of its story ever since. Her memories trace the long arc of STS and its home at the Phoenicia Playhouse, a community stage with a history of its own in the 1800s, serving as a lodge for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Faye is one of several voices you'll hear today as the Shandaken Theatrical Society celebrates its 50th anniversary. When we visited, members of Woodstock Fringe were deep in rehearsal for "Songs Mostly of the Theatre: A Stroll Down a Dusty Musical Road," starring Wallace Norman.
[00:01:24] Wallace Norman: [SONG: "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"]
[00:01:24] Brett Barry: That's Wallace Norman singing with Hank Neimark directing. Hank's a retired television director who's found a lively second act in regional theater. I'm Brett Barry, and this is "Kaatscast: The Catskills Podcast."
[00:01:40] Hank Neimark: Well, you know, you don't ever really retire. I started this relationship with Performing Arts of Woodstock. That was just happenstance. Somebody needed a director to do a play. "Hey, how'd you like to do a play? Here's your cast and here's the play." It turned out the play was a big hit, and so now I'm directing up here in my advanced dotage, and there's talent up here like crazy. I mean, really wonderful actors. They're sitting next to me right now. His name is Wallace.
[00:02:10] Brett Barry: Wallace, did you come from a theatrical background career-wise, or is this something else?
[00:02:16] Wallace Norman: I started training, I guess, in my early 20s in New York City at HB Studios. I studied at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts. I was involved for several decades in the Off-Off-Broadway arena. I call myself a denizen of the Off-Off-Broadway scene.
[00:02:36] Brett Barry: As a denizen of Off-Off-Broadway, would you consider the Phoenicia Playhouse Off-Off? How many offs?
[00:02:44] Wallace Norman: If you bring a certain sensibility to your work, wherever you do it, when Off-Off-Broadway was in its heyday, it was taken very seriously in the intelligent life of the city.
[00:02:55] Brett Barry: To your point, Hank, there are a lot of very creative people here in the Catskills who find each other through theater and other creative arts. Can you talk a little bit about that and your experience?
[00:03:06] Hank Neimark: Well, when I first came up here in 1991, it was because there was a play going on, and somebody asked me if I wanted to be in it, and I said, "Yes." I came up here, and I stayed, but yeah, you know, when you go to the various community theaters in the Hudson Valley, we've got the Bridge Street Theater in Catskill. We've got Phoenicia Playhouse. Ellenville has that wonderful theater, Shadowlands. Yeah, really wonderful—it has two theaters, actually, when you consider the Black Box Theater. It's a drawing card for talent, and when you send out the word that we're doing that a show is being done, you know, it's amazing the people who come up. I just finished a show for Performing Arts in Woodstock, and for the auditions, so many people showed up. 97% of them were wrong for all the roles, but when you watched them and saw them read and saw them audition, you said, "My God, this is fantastic. This is wonderful talent," and it's not just ready to burst out. There's work here.
[00:04:13] Brett Barry: What's the relationship of Woodstock Fringe to this theater or to the Shandaken Theatrical Society?
[00:04:17] Wallace Norman: Well, we've been collaborating now for years. Back in 2016, I directed a production of "Proof" here, a series of play readings, and then, two years ago, we did my play called "Brother's Keeper," and that was a co-production, and this is a co-production. They take really good care of us, and we take good care of them, so it's been a very happy collaboration.
[00:04:43] Brett Barry: And I saw "Brother's Keeper," and it was heartbreaking and wonderful. Did you write that?
[00:04:48] Wallace Norman: Yes, I did. Thank you. It only took eight years. It started out as a conventional play with eight actors, and over a long development period it morphed into a one-person play with 13 characters, all played by me.
[00:05:05] Brett Barry: Tell me a little bit about the collaboration. What makes it so good working here in this theater?
[00:05:10] Wallace Norman: Well, they're just such great hosts. They take care of everything, and they're smart, able, and...
[00:05:18] Hank Neimark: The venue's just perfect. It's, you know, got this old, rickety old theater feel, but it also feels very homey. It's very open, very welcoming, very—what do you need? You know, it's not a matter of—well, I don't know, we can't do that. We'll have to get lights. We have to do this. We'll have to get more people. We've got to get union people to move pianos in. You know, none of that. It's very open, very welcoming, and very easy to work here.
[00:05:45] Wallace Norman: The current board and the staff have become ambitious artistically.
[00:05:52] Geneva Turner: Hi, I'm Geneva Turner, the manager of the Phoenicia Playhouse.
[00:05:56] Brett Barry: And you have a history here.
[00:05:57] Geneva Turner: Yeah, I've performed here many times over the past, what, 15 years? This place really feels like home to me, like to so many other artists who come and work here, and it's really a huge privilege to start working here during the 50th season.
[00:06:13] Brett Barry: I think I was in one play here, and it was with you.
[00:06:15] Geneva Turner: Yes, yeah, you were the Foley artist for "World War II Radio Christmas."
[00:06:20] Brett Barry: That's right.
[00:06:20] Geneva Turner: Yeah, that was such a good show.
[00:06:22] Brett Barry: Tell me what that transition was like. What is it like to be the director of this playhouse, and is it for the Phoenicia Playhouse or the Shandaken Theatrical Society, and how are those two related?
[00:06:32] Geneva Turner: So the Shandaken Theatrical Society is the organization that started back in 1976, and the Phoenicia Playhouse is the venue, so as the manager of the playhouse, I report to the board, and I'm a liaison between the board and everyone who works here. I take care of a lot of administrative tasks, promotional stuff like social media, posters...
[00:06:58] Brett Barry: Tell me a little bit about the day-to-day. What does "theater director" mean?
[00:07:02] Geneva Turner: I'm still kind of learning that. It changes depending on what show we're doing, right? So a day when we're doing film, there's not a lot of loading in or setting up. It's pretty easy. You lower the screen, you queue up the film. Other times, you're doing a more involved production where you have maybe a cast of between, I don't know, two and thirty people, depending on what the show is. I don't have to be here for every event, but I actually consider it a privilege to be able to, so, you know, I just love being present and being available for whoever is doing art here.
[00:07:37] Brett Barry: Production has really ramped up, I feel, as someone who's been coming to this playhouse for a long time. You seem to have a lot on the schedule. Can you give me a sense of the breadth of the programming and your seasons or whatever comprises that?
[00:07:49] Geneva Turner: Sure, yeah, when I first started here, I think they did maybe one or two, maybe three productions a year that sort of continued for many years. COVID, you know, we hit the brakes. We did a lot of stuff online. I think the first live show we did post-COVID was "Our Town" out on the porch, the new porch that we built, so the breadth of what we do, my gosh. We have Flying Cat Music. They've been going for many years before us, but for the past two years, we've been providing a venue for them, and they've essentially merged with us, so they book international and national artists who come here, you know, award-winning, acclaimed people who are really talented, and so we give them a chance to connect to the Hudson Valley audiences. We do community events like open mic. We're trying to do a community screening of a dog wedding that occurred in Phoenicia many years ago, and then we do a holiday show every year, which involves people, you know, kids and families from all around who want to participate. We also have kids programming in the summer. We have two programs that we've done for a couple of years now: Make-A-Play, which is about devised theater, and then Music & Songwriting, which is all about giving kids a chance to write music, and then we also have a new program this year, which is musical theater camp, which is a one-week camp, and it just gives kids a chance to get a sense of how it feels to be in a full production of a musical. Even if it's just 30 minutes, it gives them that sense and that experience.
[00:09:28] Brett Barry: So you have a pretty extensive performance background. Are you still performing, and what do you take from that into this new role?
[00:09:36] Geneva Turner: Yeah, what I bring from that background is an understanding of what these artists go through, you know, the challenges of putting on a production. I've also directed and taught kids' summer camps before. You know, all of that experience helps me to be able to put myself in their shoes, anticipate their needs, you know, and be thinking about not just sort of the business side of it, which is important, but also about the experience that everyone here is having because that's super important too. If people have fun here and if they feel welcome here and comfortable working here, that's, you know, a huge goal of mine.
[00:10:16] Brett Barry: How many people are employed here? Is it just you, or is it mostly volunteer?
[00:10:20] Geneva Turner: It's just me at the moment. We're working on bringing on a technical director as well, and everything else is pretty much volunteer, or, you know, we offer stipends for certain positions like directing or stage managing, things that require a lot of work. Occasionally, you know, there are opportunities to offer an actor a stipend depending on what show it is, but for the most part, this place runs on the involvement and passion and support of a great group of people. We have people who have been volunteering for Flying Cat for a long time now who are also starting to work on the other shows that we're doing at the playhouse. Folks who run our concessions counter or greet people at the door, you know, help them out of their cars up to the door, and everyone who is helping to run the show backstage, which includes crew, dressers, and wardrobe. We have Marsha Panza, who is, like, the wizard of costuming everywhere in the Hudson Valley. I don't know how she does it. She just does costumes for every show, and what she provides is really incredible too, and then we have people who put out our posters and stuff, so we have all different kinds of opportunities to volunteer.
[00:11:30] Brett Barry: Geneva's role as playhouse manager isn't volunteer, but it is part-time. To fill in the gaps, they pursue work in two unusual avenues of performance.
[00:11:42] Geneva Turner: So I'm also a standardized patient, which means that I pretend to have an illness or injury and practice with medical students, so, you know, it gives them a chance to ask health history questions or diagnostic questions or practice performing noninvasive physical exams, so that's really rewarding work. I do that at several medical colleges. I kind of travel around a little bit for that, and then I also am an intimacy coordinator or intimacy director, depending on if I'm working in film or theater, so that means that I'll work with actors who are doing scenes that involve any kind of intimate contact. It could be romantic or sexual, or it could be, you know, families hugging each other, or it could be a caregiver giving a bath to somebody who can't bathe themselves, so there's lots of different contexts in which an intimacy coordinator or intimacy director can help support actors in the process of blocking very sensitive material.
[00:12:42] Brett Barry: Yeah, it used to be anything goes, right? But, like, we always had stunt coordinators, but intimacy coordinators have come onto the scene a little bit more recently.
[00:12:49] Geneva Turner: Exactly, yeah, and thinking about that, that's a good comparison because with stunt coordinators, they're brought on because there's the risk of somebody getting harmed, and that's certainly not the case with every scene involving intimacy, but it's just helpful to have somebody there so that everyone knows that if something is feeling uncomfortable, somebody is there who can help them navigate that, but mostly, I just sort of work as a support in terms of choreography. Maybe there's something that the director wants to convey that isn't coming across, or the actors aren't feeling it or something, where it feels a little bit awkward and they don't know how to fix it, and so that's where an intimacy director can come in and say, "Well, you know, what if we just slightly change the position or, like, change how you're sharing weight or something like that? It can make a huge difference."
[00:13:43] Brett Barry: I wish I knew you in high school.
[00:13:45] Geneva Turner: Me too.
[00:13:48] Brett Barry: Well, enough about that. Let's head upstairs to costumes and prop storage, where I spoke with Faye Storms, a playhouse board member and a longtime player with the Shandaken Theatrical Society.
[00:14:01] Faye Storms: Hi, I'm Faye Storms. I live here full time. I've been here since 1979 [originally from the city]. My husband was a photographer, and we had studios in LA and in New York, and we commuted between the cities and here, and then location as well, so we didn't spend a lot of time up here the first 10 years or so, and then we spent more time, and then we decided that we really, really loved it.
[00:14:28] Brett Barry: So you came up here three years after Shandaken Theatrical Society began, I think.
[00:14:33] Faye Storms: Yeah, it actually started in 1976, and they were a troupe of wonderful actors, local people, but very talented, and it was—it's kind of like a social thing, you know, first, and then they created wonderful shows, which I wasn't a part of because that was before I started going into the shows. They then ended up purchasing the building in 1998. In 1980, it was about ready to be torn down because it was in such disrepair, and every year that I have been involved in this theater, whether it was acting or singing or being behind the stage or now on the board, there was always some repair that had to be done.
[00:15:21] Brett Barry: And now, you're a board member for how long?
[00:15:24] Faye Storms: I'm a board member. I think it's about three years now, but I was a board member before also, so I've been in and out of it because I've been on many different boards too, and so I have to divide my time purposely, you know, for wherever I'm focused at the moment. I've been an associate broker, a real estate person, for 20 years now, and I started with my husband [an antique store in 1979], which, believe it or not, I think that's about 47 years now. I can't even say that because it seems like I'm so old, and my son, the reason I started doing the shows, was because he was young, and he liked doing the shows, and I did them with him, and it was a way to do a family thing.
[00:16:09] Brett Barry: Do you remember what your first show was?
[00:16:11] Faye Storms: I think it was "Once Upon a Mattress." I do remember the most intense show, the most unbelievable show, was "Cabaret." It was sold out after, like, the second night, and there was basically men clamoring at the ticket counter to get tickets because this was kind of a risqué show in this area. All the girls were good-looking, and they were in lingerie, and I just remember them pounding on the ticket booth. "Can't I get a ticket? Can't I get a ticket?" And I just thought, "Oh my God, that's amazing," but it was so much fun, and it was also about 100 degrees, and we had no air conditioning, so it was a good thing we were all kind of dressed very scantily, but Dennis Metnick, who was an attorney in Margaretville, was our director, and he pushed us and pushed us, but, you know, that show—so many people said, "We enjoyed that just as much as if we were on Broadway. It was so good."
[00:17:17] Brett Barry: Did you have any acting experience when you started acting here?
[00:17:20] Faye Storms: I did acting in the city, but just very casually. You know, I did modeling for faces for magazine covers: True Confessions, True Romance, all those, so I kind of knew how to express myself and be. I'm more of a past-show person because my life has gotten so busy that it's too hard for me to devote the time you have to devote to really do a good show and the rehearsal schedule. I feel comfortable now just being on the board and enjoying what the theater's doing and what we're trying to do for it.
[00:17:54] Brett Barry: Well, so many of the performers have other careers and lives, and so this is just a part of what they do in the community. I think I got the biggest sense of that on one of the last plays I saw when one of the lead actors ran into the dressing room after the play ended and got into his police uniform because he was about to start his shift.
[00:18:17] Faye Storms: That's typical. That's totally typical. We're all local community members, and we're all just doing something that we love to do, and if you can put the time in to do it, it's golden for you, and so, yeah, everyone's just local and a community member. That's what community theater is all about.
[00:18:35] Brett Barry: So tell me a little bit more about the history of this place as far as, you know, you've been up here for a while, but the building goes back much, much further, so what can you tell us?
[00:18:42] Faye Storms: It was built in 1887, and it was built for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
[00:18:49] Brett Barry: A sign on the front gable of the Phoenicia Playhouse attests to that history. It reads "IOOF 1887" and displays a three-link chain, a symbol for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. This fraternal organization was established in 1819 with a core mission of friendship, love, truth, and practical charitable assistance. It was the first US fraternity to admit both men and women. They're called "Rebekahs" and counts among its members Ulysses S. Grant, FDR, and Charlie Chaplin. The organization is still alive and well with more than 3,000 lodges, just not in Phoenicia.
[00:19:32] Faye Storms: Then it was an auction house, and it was a movie theater as well.
[00:19:38] Brett Barry: Recently, I talked to Wade Baker about that theater. His family moved up in 1973, and he recounts how his parents would drop off the kids for a show and a slice of pizza.
[00:19:49] Wade Baker: So one of the things that my parents would do back then is, like, they'd just drop us off at the theater. The Phoenicia Movie Theater is what they called it then, and we'd go see a movie. I think that's where I saw "Jaws" and other old classic movies there, and then they would drop us off, and they'd say, "When the movie's over, go to Brio's, use the payphone, give us a call, and we'll pick you up," and we'd have a slice of pizza over there, so I don't know. It was, like, sometime last year at the Phoenicia Playhouse. They were playing an old movie, "The Witches of Eastwick," and I had my kids come up. I, you know, said, "Let's go see a movie on this big screen," an old movie because they liked that one growing up, and then after the movie, we went over to Brio's to get a slice of pizza, so it was like I was reliving my childhood, but I also had my kids with me, you know, who are grown adults now, and I was like, "This is what I was doing when I was, you know, 10 years old."
[00:20:46] Faye Storms: And then it just slowly went into decline, you know, and then in the 1980s, they were talking about demolishing it because it was just becoming an eyesore, and so that's when people started to really feel that it was a very important thing to keep in the community for us, so people started to get involved in trying to do something, and now this group of people, this board, is very proactive about doing something, and we have really been spending serious time, serious meetings, in figuring out how we're going to make this a better theater, how we're going to improve the building, how are we going to get the money to do it, you know, community outreach, et cetera, et cetera. So, right now, we're pushing to do just an outreach to the community in a way that we just want them to know what we're doing. We want them to feel good about the theater. We want them to come to the theater and understand how good the quality is of every single production. It's excellent quality, and for the price of the ticket, it's ridiculous. You know, it's just ridiculous how inexpensive it is, and then we're probably going to push to do some kind of fundraiser too, but I think the main thing is we're just pushing to let people understand that we have amazing productions here.
[00:22:06] Brett Barry: How have you seen this theater change since you've been involved?
[00:22:09] Faye Storms: I kind of got involved in the 1990s, early '90s, and kind of what's interesting to me is I've watched little kids grow up to adults, just like you were speaking to Geneva the first time on the stage. You know, this is fantastic, and then they get so into it, they want to be in every production, so I've seen that happen over and over. Also, I've seen very shy, awkward people. They don't even have to be children. They can be adults. They come into the theater, and they get a little tiny part, and all of a sudden, the next show they do is bigger, and then, before you know it, they're growing into being a real actor or a real singer, and you can see they're opening up completely, and the theater does that for people. It gives them confidence that they didn't have before.
[00:22:58] Brett Barry: As a longtime realtor in this town, is this one of the highlights on your tour, one of the selling points for this town?
[00:23:05] Faye Storms: Well, I like to include it because I say, "You know, we have live theater here." What small little town of less than 3,000 people has live theater, you know? That, along with a live police force and an ambulance service in a little town, that's kind of amazing.
[00:23:25] Brett Barry: Do you see yourself continuing to be involved with this theater as you get older and into retirement years and all of that, and I guess what are your hopes and dreams for this place?
[00:23:37] Faye Storms: Well, I think it's going to grow, you know, into a beautiful building with time and effort. We've certainly got a fantastic board that's very on board with the whole thing, so, yeah, I see me always, as long as I live in the area, being a part of it because I love theater. I mean, I'd love to perform. I just don't have the time right now, and the quality of the actors that come in is so good that, you know, I don't feel like I have to at all try to jump in there and kind of make it better because I don't need to. I'll probably make it worse.
[00:24:13] Brett Barry: On my way out of the theater, I found George Muller on the wraparound porch taking a break from tech rehearsal. He's the technical director and, in many ways, the backbone of this theater and a bit of an odd fellow in his own right in the best possible way. Alright, George. Could you please introduce yourself for our listening audience?
[00:24:34] George Muller: Well, hello, my name is George Muller, and I'm the technical director for the Phoenicia Playhouse here in lovely downtown Phoenicia.
[00:24:45] Brett Barry: And have been for some time.
[00:24:47] George Muller: Yeah, for a long time. I've been in this business for a very long time, and I have all the T-shirts.
[00:24:56] Brett Barry: What was your career, and how did it lead you here ultimately?
[00:25:00] George Muller: Well, strangely enough, I started in experimental urban theater in the '70s at a place called Theater Center in Philadelphia. We were junior Marxists, all of us. You were considered to be ideologically suspect if you used any color but black and white or put any kind of gel into a lighting instrument, and it was fun. I went from there to working for Electric Factory. I was a rock and roll stagehand and did that through the '80s. I did Live Aid. We strung six miles of 4/0 feeder cable at that show. I guess towards the end of the '80s, I dropped out of that and started as a production stage manager for touring bus and truck Broadway shows and then retired from the road in the mid-'90s and came back to Philadelphia. Somebody spotted an ad and recommended that I apply for it, and it was like, you know, the Philadelphia Orchestra was looking for an operations person, and it's like, "I'm a rock and roll guy. They're not... never going to hire me." Well, I went in, and it turns out, I mean, logistics are logistics. You know, you're getting what you need where you need it at a certain time, and it's the same whether you're doing, you know, Norwegian death metal or the Philadelphia Orchestra, and then when they had their title J bankruptcy, I stayed with the pops instead of the orchestra and became a vice president of Encore Series, Inc., and senior director of, you know, the typical nonprofit. They're short on pay and very, very long on titles and retired from that. Finally in 2016, I came up here in, I guess, 2018 was the—2017-2018 is when I started working here, and I've been here ever since.
[00:27:04] Brett Barry: Is it a volunteer position?
[00:27:06] George Muller: Oh, yeah, yeah, as a matter of fact, it's, like, beyond volunteering. You actually wind up like, you know, we are a giving board, so I'm on the board, so I contribute and donate to the theater, so it's—I'm actually in a negative income stream.
[00:27:23] Brett Barry: So, well, it's an obvious question, but maybe not. Why do you do it?
[00:27:28] George Muller: I think a lot of it is paying back. I mean, I was very, very lucky, so back in the '60s, nobody ever told you you could make a living doing technical theater. I had to find that out for myself, and theater is interesting in the fact that it accepts you for what you can do and what you are doing today. It's like the next day, you're back to zero, but, you know, it's what you can do and how well you can do it. Now, I'd like to think that, you know, I'm retired and all that. I'm sort of like putting it back, giving back, and trying to explain the basics of sound and light and rigging and that to young people and also trying to provide a venue, a stage, for artists that may have no idea of how the lights and sound and everything else work, but they have a concept that they want to bring out, and we definitely very seriously here take the idea of we are the community stage. If you have something that you want to get done, talk to us. We're very easy to deal with, usually.
[00:28:43] Brett Barry: What have been some of your favorite productions?
[00:28:46] George Muller: Here I would say, "Well, I love the Flying Cat musical series that we're doing." There's some great acts there. I like the fact that we're branching out into some, like, socially conscious stuff, like "Fun Home." I really like the open stages when we do open mic nights because it's, you know, absolute anarchy. No one knows what's going to happen next. It's like—and I keep advising people, it's like, "Just stay cool and get ready to change on a dime," you know, and the bottom line is if you hear something go wrong, you're probably the only person in the room that caught it. They all think it's supposed to do that.
[00:29:28] Brett Barry: What can you say about the mix of talent that come through these doors?
[00:29:33] George Muller: Well, that is an interesting point, I think, that because we have some incredibly talented directors and actors, and then we have some people that are just starting out, and I think the beauty of this place is there's something for everybody. I've seen kids that came to us in our theater camps coming back and starting out as, like, you know, flying monkeys in "The Wizard of Oz," you know, and that's their start. I mean, they started their whole experience to theater on that stage. Now, they're doing their first actual role on that stage, and hopefully they'll come back when they've made a name for themselves and help us raise money on that stage.
[00:30:17] Brett Barry: How often are you here? It seems like all the time. Every time I come here, you're here.
[00:30:23] George Muller: My question to myself is like, "Why the hell am I paying taxes? I could just swing a hammock in the back of the theater and I'll be fine," but, yeah, I'm well, once again, as we progress and as we replace systems and as we educate and work with people on how to operate those systems, I can move closer and closer to my goal of becoming the gray eminence that hardly ever gets off his fat duff. Haven't reached that point yet, but, you know, it's good to have a goal.
[00:30:56] Brett Barry: Anything you want to say about the 50th anniversary as a board member and someone who's been here for quite a few of those years by this point?
[00:31:04] George Muller: Well, we've always sort of had a special relationship with the community, and Phoenicia is a very, very community-oriented town. I mean, the library is a hub of services for children and adults and aging adults, and there's food banks here, and it's a very involved community, and I'm glad that we're a part of that, and 50 years ago, we did "The Sound of Music," and this year we're thinking of doing "The Sound of Music" as a sing-along movie to sort of, like, you know, celebrate that, but we've come a long way. We've definitely evolved into a much more diverse... It used to be we did pretty much musicals, and that was it. Now, we do musicals. We're doing three of them this season, which is actually a little masochistic, but we're doing musicals, we're doing comedies, we're doing drama, we're doing open mics, and we're doing a singer-songwriter concert series of nine shows with Flying Cat. We're doing a couple of ones that are just the Phoenicia Playhouse presenting musical acts, and we're doing movies more frequently now, and so it's really branching out. There's a little something for everybody here, and if nothing else, if you want to see what it's like to do theater, come on down sometime. We have volunteers. We are always looking for volunteers, and, you know, sometimes it's just greeting people and selling cookies and popcorn. Other times it's like painting sets, painting decks. We do a lot of painting things black because we're a theater, and that's what theaters do, so, you know, everyone's invited. You're all welcome here. We'll find something messy for you to do. Someone once said, "It's like you can sell a man a theater ticket, and he'll be poor for one day, but you can teach him to do theater, and he'll be poor forever."
[00:33:12] Brett Barry: Find out more at phoeniciaplayhouse.org. "Kaatscast" is a production of Silver Hollow Audio, always free every two weeks with a weekly radio encore on WJFF Radio Catskill, Saturdays at 11:00 AM. Transcription by Jerome Kazlauskas. Episodes and transcripts are tagged and fully searchable at kaatscast.com, and a quick follow or rating on your podcast app makes a real difference in helping the show reach new ears. If you'd like to join us as a member listener, you can sign up at kaatscast.com/support, and if you'd like to partner with us at an organizational level, you can reach me directly through the contact form on our website. I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.