It should come as no surprise to any of my readers that the first week of a new job at an arts organization doesn’t leave much time for actually writing blog entries. To say that I have spent my last three days writing up a calendar listing for local media makes me sound like a lazy bastard. In reality, I have been doing more than meeting new people and been becoming familiar with the details of my job.

In the pursuit of trying to write up calendar listings, I have essentially been developing my budget for the year. The budget had been set up to a certain point, but there have been additions and substitutions. To simply advertise a ticket price in a newspaper calendar, I have had to develop (read: make educated guesses) a fair part of the budget from incomplete information. And of course, since the info is incomplete, I spend most of my time asking a lot of questions that lead to answers which lead me to ask a lot of other questions about things not actually related to my original purpose for asking, but simply flesh out my knowledge of what the heck I am actually doing here.

I don’t have much new wisdom to impart today except to point people in the direction of some really exciting groups that I will be presenting over the coming year. Some are more familiar to me than others, but all seem pretty interesting.

First you have world renowned folks like The Flying Karamazov Brothers (http://www.fkb.com/) and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (http://www.mambazo.com/).

Really high energy international musicians — New Zealand’s Te Vaka (http://www.tevaka.com) who surround the traditional pate (log drums) with acoustic and electric guitar and toss in high energy and dance which makes it tough to sit still. I also think it will be hard to sit still during Les Yeux Noir’s (http://www.lesyeuxnoirs.net/) visit as well since their part gypsy, part klezmer, part swing jazz music is described as infusing the audience with their frenetic energy.

My theatre is known for the dance performances it puts on so we will be hosting the Dayton Contemporary Dance company (http://www.dcdc.org) and Rennie Harris Puremovement (http://www.rhpm.org/). All that time I lived near Philadelphia and I had to travel to Hawai`i to hear about them!

This isn’t everyone we are presenting–I will link to my website once I finish building it–but these are among those which look exciting enough to spread the word about.

Okay faithful readers, I am back at the keyboard after my move to Hawaii. I haven’t offically started my job yet, but thanks to the help and support of the theatre staff, I have been able to use the office to store my shipped stuff and call around for apartments. I am in an apartment and making the usual arrangements to get phone, cable and electric hooked up.

One interesting observation I have made already is that the theatre is organized under the Office of Continuing Education rather than fine or liberal arts. This shows the orientation and focus of the theatre right off. The building is a tool for community outreach first and then a place where performances occur. From talking informally with the director of continuing education (he actually put me up in his apartment for a week while I was searching for a place to live) I have found him to be incredibly supportive of the people in his department and eager to empower them to do interesting things. He absolutely wants financial accountability, but he also wants to provide his charges with a great experience and the freedom to do a little experimentation. A lot of administrators say that, but are really more conservative in practice. I honestly think I may end up being too reserved for his vision.

It will be interesting to see how things develop. I hope not to end up working so hard I can’t write at all. I do expect I won’t be able to write as extensively as I did while unemployed. Some of the research and writing I did involved 3-5 hours of my time. On the other hand, I will be able to offer advice from a more practical stand point now.

Okay, I feel fairly confident in announcing that I am actually employed now! I will be flying out on July 28 to find an apartment and a car in Hawaii where I will be running a theatre for the University of Hawaii at the Leeward Community College campus.

Monday, the old computer will be a guest of UPS and on its way to Hawaii in advance of me. The blog may not be updated for a little while depending on how long it takes me to find a place to live and get internet service.

Finally, I will be able to put my mad theories into practice and sythesize more–all of which I will be reporting to you here. The 2004-2005 season is already pretty much selected, however I will be attending the Western Arts Alliance Conference in Spokane, WA this September to start booking for 2005-06 so look for me there!