2015 - 2016: A Season Recap & Some Upcoming Changes

A season in review
It was an exciting and busy season at The Merc! We began last October with Diabolical Elixir, a live, gothic radio melodrama, and from there we finished 2015 with Winter Wonder II, Holidays in The Methow. We started 2016 with The Last Salmon—a musical inspired, written, and produced  from the ground up, in The Methow Valley, which then toured to Seattle in June. Our Children’s Theater production of The Wind in the Willows brought us to spring, and the adult comedy Venus in Fur closed our season to delighted audiences. These fully-produced selections featured all-local casts, TWO world premieres of original work (Elixir and Salmon), and were joined by five professional guest artists: Casey James (Grammy Award-winning composer), Harmony Arnold (costume designer), Lily McLeod (lighting designer), Rod Molzahn (children’s theater director), and Dominic Cody Kramers (sound designer).

In between all of those productions, we presented readings of Snapshots and two one-act scripts: Rain and Red Coat. Plus, Seattle U brought us Women of Troy for which we reached out to Liberty Bell High School students and teachers with classroom materials and free tickets—about 30 students took advantage of those to see the show!

If that didn’t fill the calendar...
We were fortunate to have scheduled two full camps in July and August, both focusing on a variety of theater skills and reaching out to broad ages—including adults! We enjoyed pre-school dance throughout the season when the stage wasn’t in use, and Ki taught an enriching theater workshop on a winter Sunday afternoon.

And there was even more!
We also hosted numerous rental events for community organizations like the Methow Conservancy, Liberty Bell Drama Club, Cascadia, Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, and many more.  We socialized in our re-decorated office salon with Friends of the Merc, held two open rehearsals, and celebrated with cast parties on Opening Nights.  We invited two new visual artists to display work in our space and we even left room in the calendar for a theater upgrade that includes a stage right exit, which you should come check out as soon as you can!

The Important News: 
​We’re Changing our Season Schedule

Our donors have routinely provided us with very specific feedback: “We get too many donation requests in the fall.”  We have listened! We’ve created a solution that will unfold in the coming months. Starting in 2017, you will receive our donor request in the first quarter of the year, which means this—our 2016 request is the final request for donations that you will receive in the fourth quarter!  Instead, you will now be getting a single request for yearly donations in February.
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To supplement this change, we will now match our production season to our fiscal year and begin our new season in January to run through December of 2017. Our next mailing will announce that very exciting season. Don’t worry, we still have productions planned through the end of the year to wrap up 2016.  Stay tuned and look for the mailing early in 2017 to find out what we have in store for the 2017 season of live theater.

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2015-2016 In Numbers

​​And if you’re really interested in our numbers:

Since 2013, we have had a grand total of 10,975 seats filled for live theater productions.
In those three years, we have produced 148 performances, 52 of which were opportunities for children to perform onstage.  Donors have supported over a dozen scholarships for our children’s programs, allowing more students to participate in the performing arts.

We couldn’t do any of this without our generous donors—thank you for all of your support!