Kristen Coury is Gulfshore Playhouse’s Founder and Producing Artistic Director. She will be blogging every Saturday throughout the 2014-2015 season

Well, I don’t know how it could get any more behind the scenes than this.  I was very aware of “my day” because I was lucky enough to have our fab Production Intern Audrey spend the day with me, and so I kept both of us busy, but because I had a buddy my “self-monitor” was on a little higher than usual.  I’ll try to be short but sweet and give you the day of a Producing Artistic Director.  (Did I tell you our Managing Director is starting on Monday?  And hopefully we’ll have a new Bookkeeper soon?  You’ll see shortly why I’m ecstatic and why I’m mentioning this here….)

9:15am – On my way to the office I made two deposits at two separate banks.  One with our weekly deposit, and the other with the payment for the actors payroll so they could get paid next week.

9:30am – Cody Nickell, Artistic Associate, and I had a wonderful conversation with Dr. Bradshaw, President of FGCU, who will be one of our esteemed panelists for The Mountaintop on October12th.

10am – Audrey arrived and together, she, Lois Taylor, and I built two storage shelves for our office supplies and re-arranged all the supplies.

11am – A quick meeting with one of our (three – long story) payroll companies to get us back online

12 noon – A quick meeting with Leah Shaeffer to hear how our first ThinkTheatre sessions went today.  I’m happy to report they went FANTASTICALLY well.  She was in a class of head start kids in a deserving school teaching them the differences in their emotions and how to express them using puppets.  Imagine teaching a 4 year old that every emotion isn’t MAD or SAD.  Life-changing stuff.

12:30pm– Audrey and I begin going through the “Authorize reports”.  Authorize is our online gateway that actually “takes” the money when we sell tickets and gives it to us in batches.  She went through all the reports and made sure we received them in the bank account while I did payroll for the (three – long story) payroll companies.  Remember my blog And Then There Were 21? Well, I think we’re up to 27 or 28 now as we prepare to pay the actors for Body Awareness, which starts rehearsing next week!

1:15pm– I take Audrey and Grace, one of our other crack interns, with me to Food and Thought to grab lunch to go, at which time it starts pouring so our field trip to the Norris Center to watch them test a production element in the show left us SOAKING wet.  2pm – we watch the production element and discuss whether we should keep it, talk to the designer, amend it or scrap it.   Ask me after the show what my opinion was and how it ended up.

2:30pm– Back in the office.  I’m checking email while Audrey is finishing the Authorize reports.

3pm – Oh yeah!  Lois Taylor and I have a meeting on the phone with Bob Harden about our Golf Tournament and fundraising in general.  GO!

3:30pm – Audrey and I take all the reports that she had gotten through and get them into Quickbooks.

4:30pm-Jenn Murray arrives and she and I have a quick pow-wow about production.

5pm– I decide we should finish organizing the office supplies and meanwhile organize the payroll folders. So now I am working at a clip, and Audrey is helping and I’m trying to get all the payroll transactions into quickbooks since the start of the Fiscal year on July 1.  And then Grace comes in and says Playwright Bianca Sams is on the phone, weren’t we supposed to have a Post Mortem for the New Works Festival??  OH MY GOD I FORGOT!

6:05pm (five minutes late)- Call into the conference line.  Now I’m on mute and Audrey is helping me finish the payroll stuff before she goes and whew, we finish and we keep asking the guest Playwrights, Director and Stage Manager over and over what we could do better and I was happy that we did hear one thing – be sure to have the playwrights approve the show blurbs before we post them.  Otherwise, the whole group was ecstatic.  And I loved most what Lou Tyrrell our guest director said, which was just that the atmosphere was one which reminded him of what he’d signed up for all those years ago…doing great work, serving our art, and each other.  How beautiful!

7:05pm – Catch up with Cody Nickell to see how the day’s rehearsal went.  Conversation ensues.

8pm – Still finishing up payroll stuff because I decided to get it ALL done.

8:30pm– Clean up the office and desk.  Did I mention our Managing Director is starting on Monday?  Big smiles!

9pm – I’m ready to go.  OH RIGHT!  Maura said I needed to write a blog before I left.

And that, my friends, is a day in the life of a Producing Artistic Director.  I’ll see you soon, I’m off to the theatre to see how they’re progressing in building the set since we have our Company Run of The Mountaintop tomorrow!