HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2010

March, 2011

Dear Ones,

It’s already spring – and I haven’t gotten to my annual family letter for 2010!
Needless to say, it was a very busy year for the Dewsberry/Green household – and here are some of the highlights:

Stephen has felt the crunch of the current economic situation – with fewer calls from orchestras, and fewer students – but he still continues to be pretty busy. He managed to fit in a trip to Toronto last April to meet his brand new grand-niece – Alexa Meles (born to Anthony and Cathy).  And more recently – he helped to create a new online store for ANMT  – check it out at www.anmtstore.com!

Rebecca continues to adjust to life outside of college. She began the year, having re-located to San Francisco (sharing a room with her friend Julie), doing an internship for the California Labor Federation in Oakland. She followed that up with a job as a driver at a company called Silver Ride that provides chauffeur service to senior citizens. She really enjoyed the opportunity to be helpful to that community – but eventually found that the uncertain schedule was very difficult to maintain (she was “on-call” nearly around the clock). Rebecca then leapt at the chance to intern with Greenpeace – an organization that really speaks to her – and she spent several months in their San Francisco office organizing recent volunteers around the country. When this internship was over, she managed to snag a second internship as the manager of Greenpeace’s San Francisco warehouse. In fact, she is now living in that warehouse (in a trailer) and is in charge of maintaining all of the equipment used for Greenpeace’s social activism. Somewhere during this past year, Rebecca also met her beau Jason – who is studying English and working as a bartender – and they recently celebrated their one-year anniversary. A very special treat happened during the spring, when I took a trip to visit Rebecca. I contacted a writer I had been working with for a while – Ann McNamee – who lives just outside of San Francisco, to see if we could get together for lunch so she could meet Rebecca. Ann – a very lovely and generous woman – proceeded to turn my visit into a fantasy by lending me a car and a driver for the day so that Rebecca and I could drive up to Sausalito and Muir Woods – and then she met us for a lovely dinner that evening at the very yummy Green Restaurant in downtown San Francisco. Ann is a co-writer on the new musical LOVE BYTES (a futuristic musical comedy about love between humans and robots!) – and you should all listen for that name because I have a lot of faith that that show is going to make it to the big time!

My year was as busy as ever – with even more personal performing opportunities than usual. I was in our Dark Night Series reading of the new musical NOW AND THEN A HERO – which compares “ordinary” heroes from the recent past to today (using true stories); I got a chance to sing operetta again in our concert reading of the 2010 Search for New Musicals winner GILBERT & SULLIVAN ON WALL STREET – which used Sullivan’s music with new lyrics and a “modern” plot; I had an encore performance as the amazing Mab in QUEEN MAB’S ALARMINGLY MANDATORY BRIDAL SHOWER (written specifically for me by my multi-talented colleague Scott Guy) as a fundraiser for ANMT during our summer programming; I got to take part in a 4-person choral presentation of a “collage” about horses called STREAK OF WIND (also written by Scott!) which we presented at a fundraiser for the Humane Society; and I got to originate a brand new role that got added to the futuristic musical LOVE BYTES.

At ANMT, I was officially named Artistic Director in January, and filled the year running the Core, Full Length, and General Curriculum programs and co-ordinating (with Scott) our ambitious 38 DAYS OF NEW MUSICALS over the summer when we inhabited the NoHo Arts Center for six weeks and filled it with programming including the official premiere of the new musical 40 IS THE NEW 15, and our four BIZ OF THE MUSICAL THEATRE BIZ CONFERENCE. We continue to partner with many different producers – and our partnership with the Drama Department at UC/Irvine resulted in the full production of the musical AGING OUT (about foster kids aging out of the foster care system) – and that show is currently in negotiations for a possible feature film version!  I also attended the annual NAMT Conference in New York – and got to meet up with some of my friends from my college days. We continued our collaboration with the writers of LOVE BYTES with an in-house reading at ANMT in February; and then a staged reading at the NoHo Arts Center in the summer that included some fun choreography by Joshua Finkel; and then a table reading at the home of Ann McNamee at her lovely home in Woodside (just outside of San Francisco). We, in fact, just completed a second Woodside table reading this week – and for both of these Woodside trips I was able to spend time with Rebecca. And in my spare time, I created a new networking group called the SoCal New Musicals Network which includes about 100 professional musical theatre writers and producers living in southern California.   I was also an Ovation Voter again and managed to see over 65 shows!

The last part of the year also brought some fun socializing opportunities with family and friends: Tanya (Stephen’s mom) visited us during the Thanksgiving season and we were able to host a post-Thanksgiving brunch for local family and friends and take a trip to the beautiful Huntington Gardens.  Then Stephen and Tanya and I took a wonderful side trip to the Grand Canyon! We hosted our annual Gourmet Club dinner (Hungarian cuisine this time!). And I made a short but lovely trip home to see my folks (June and Art) for New Year’s.

The new year is already well under-way and as busy as ever – so I better get this posted right away!

We hope all of you are well and happy – and we wish you a fabulous time for what’s left of 2011!  Much love,

Elise, Stephen, and Rebecca