Icebox Radio: Best Week Ever?!

This isn’t the usual time for a blog update, but there is so much happening all at once I felt like passing it along.

First, The Scoop Sisters: New School Blues went off without a hitch (well, I missed a cue or two) last night at the bandshell. We avoided bad weather, our engineer Stephen (Boy Genus) Anderson overcame several technical difficulties before, and during the show, and the cast (Vicki, Karen, Aela, Rachel, Justin, Piran and Veryan) were stellar.

And the cast had some extra distractions to deal with, too. A cameraman and reporter from Fox-21 News in Duluth were their doing a story on the theater, and this show. The cameraman was moving right in close, shooting over our shoulders, etc. The story is scheduled to air on Monday night, at 9pm as part of the news’ ‘Small Towns’ segment.

Next, one of our plays, ‘The Thing on the Ice’ is featured this week on another podcast called ‘Decoder Ring Theatre’. Decoder Ring is probably the most popular audio theater podcast going with many thousands of downloads a month. Decoder Ring does two of their own series (The Red Panda Adventures and Black Jack Justice) from Fall to Spring, then fills in with other programs during the Summer. We were lucky enough to be one of those programs this month, and that exposure is helping us break all kinds of podcast download records, and gaining new audience. Thanks Decoder Ring!

And finally, the theater got the news this morning, that the Marshall N. Knudson Family Community Fund, a local foundation, has awarded us a $2,000 grant for the coming podcast season. This grant will go toward setting up a studio space for the year, and (ready for this) paying the actors. There’s still a lot of work to do, but the coming year is looking better than ever!

How’s that for a week, huh?

As I write this, many, many things for the Valentine’s Show wait to be done. I am, in a word, procrastinating. But there is a lot of news and you, the readers of the blog, deserve an update much more often than you have.

The big news, of course, is ‘A Radio Valentine’ goes on the boards in a little under twelve hours. This show has been a real pleasure to work on, and I hope it shows for the audience. We have several new actors, and plenty of familiar ones, plus more than a few kids. Really, this show has been great. We all meet for pizza at 5:30 with the curtain going up at 7:00. Wish us broken legs.

The other big news is that the IBRT has found a home. Rainy River Community College has generously offered us theater space, and office space for the pleasure of our company. The college’s theater program is down to one show every five years, and I think college administration is hoping our presence will spur some more activity. At any rate, we’re happy to be there and hope we can honor them by our presence.

Our efforts to write our first grant are bearing fruit. A preliminary meeting with the Arrowhead Arts Coalition (our part of Minnesota is referred to as ‘The Arrowhead’. Look at a map an you’ll see why) was very positive. The powers that be were impressed with our first draft and with some polish, we should be able to fund our trip to Minneapolis this summer.

All for now. Drop us a line sometime and Keep Listening!

-Jeff