Rolling out roles

I'm excited.
Ok so there may be a very few people who believe that is my ground state of being, but it isn't true. Most who know me think that my usual expression is to frown as if either deep in thought or cross with someone. Maybe I should invest in some Botox and quickly?
Anyway I am excited at the moment and the reason for this isn't that our website for online bookings will be going live soon. It isn't that the artwork for the posters and publicity materials has almost just about and practically been agreed by everyone on the committee. And it isn't that I am going to be going on holiday really soon. No none of these things (although taking all of those into account you could expect me to be excited). I am excited because the casting of Annie Get your gun has been sorted out.
For a company like ours it seems like a good show to involve everyone with a specific role and part. As well as the leading lady and leading man - you know you're going to be hearing more from those later - there are so many smaller roles as Cowboys and Indians that I am already trying to work out what the programme will look like for the who's who in our show pages!
I've got the part of Charlie so you will have to come along and listen in for my Deep South drawl - I can't seem to get past a Forrest Gump sound. But then there's Buffalo Bill being taken by Ian, Mac the Prop by Mark, Indians galore by Pete, Pete, Mike and Steve - oh and our ladies are also going to be dressing up in feathers and chaps. What fun.
It's always nice to find out who has gained which part in a show and to start to see it all come together in the mind of the director and the cast. Our first step on the road to an amazing show has been taken. Let's get on with the show!

What do you know - or want to know!

One of the challenges that we face - in common with most people with a web page I guess - is managing the tricky balance between what we want to say and what our users want to know. It might seem like a strange thing to think until you reflect on how many times you've given up on a website because it tells you all about the company, when it was set up, reviews from customers etc but you can't find the one bit of information that you were looking for in the first place.
And when you are trying to use your own website to share information about a third party who has changed what they told you originally then it really does get even harder!
Why am I worrying about this at the moment? Well for the first time we at Belper Musical Theatre are going to be launching an online booking service for our performances and so we want to get it right.
It starts with little things like what to call it - in the end we decided that Box Office would probably make sense for most people.
Then we had to get a seating plan of the theatre itself - and since the seat ordering didn't work as we'd expected we now have to rebuild the seating plan!
There is then the challenge of making it as easy to use as possible - and trying to find someone who doesn't charge an arm and a leg to process the booking. And finally, since we still have many people who may prefer to phone for their tickets, or order them by paper, we need to find a way to make all of our tickets look a little bit similar at least.
Will it be worth it? Well we hope so. As soon as we press the button, people will be able to start booking their seats. People will have full choice of what seats they want for the shows and the process should be smooth and slick.
We hope that it will reduce the pressure on our volunteer ticket secretary who devotes much time to seating charts, opening post and responding to answer phone messages.
And we hope that people will decide on the spur of the moment to log on the site and just book a ticket!
The facility will be available from our main website at www.belpermusicaltheatre.co.uk although I hope that I will be able to link straight to the box office from this website.
In the meantime I would be really pleased if you shared your thoughts on what you want from a website. Have you got questions that we haven't answered on here, our main page or our facebook pages? Please ask them and we can at least try to find an answer.

The NODA review of Sing!

As members of NODA we are always delighted to welcome our local representatives to our concerts and shows and it's great to see their reviews.

This link will take you to the NODA review for Sing!

http://www.noda.org.uk/events/reports/sing

It's good to see that they liked it too - but to be honest I prefer my review.....