Today is our Annual Meeting for the Theeder Co. Where the public is invited and last year two people decided to stand up and tell us everything we had done wrong to them and how we were all horrible people - and that other board members felt the same way but they were afraid to speak out for fear of being treated the same way.
I knew exactly who they were talking about - that ONE board member cast the wife in a role in her show this year and brought in the husband to "fix" the sound and save her show.
Hopefully they will keep their big mouths shut today. As I told President Shelly - the best response is no response - especially since that same board member is of course breathlessly reported everything said or done in our meetings to them.....
Back in 1975, I was assigned to Naples, Italy, in my capacity as a Navy Journalist in the Public Affairs Office of Naval Support Activity.
Naples had a llttle theater (Naples Little Theater, to be precise), and I joined it enthusiastically. My first part was as brother of Thoreau in "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail". Shortly afterward, the theater group was to have elections for the next year. One man was considered a shoo-in for president and he was running unopposed. A teacher who had been responsbile for the group's origins several years earlier was no longer involved with the group because he became leader of the union that governed the teaching staff for Department of Defense civilian teachers.
That's the prelude. What happened was this: The civilian who was a shoo-in had been offered a job elsewhere and withdrew. I was elected president. I do not know why, to this day. But it happened.
We had a few hundred dollars in our treasury, but the new slate of officers was fired up to do a really great new year of plays. The norm was three. We did five.
At the end of the year, we had more than $5,000 in our treasury.
Most of our officers were not eligible to run again as we were mostly military and our tours were going to end in coming months. Who steps up? The teacher who had started the group.
But his campaign was to slander the rest of us for taking the little theater backwards. He despised our excellent (fully sold out) production of "That Championship Season". He excoriated us for doing a "free" production of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown", which we performed in a variety of venues, always free, and happily received. He thought we had ruined the fine reputation he had set.
Most of us were dumbfounded at his pitch, but even moreso when he won.
I learned a year later that the theater had folded. Mismanagement and some truly awful productions sealed the deal.
So...whaddaygonnado???
