New Artistic Director for BOM

Posted by Heidi on August 21, 2008 at 01:32 PM
General Company Members

I am extremely pleased to announce that we have hired Luke Hatton as our new Artistic Director.

As you can see, he’s pretty serious about the job.

As many of our most devoted friends know, a little over a year ago BOM co-founder and Artistic Director Halena Kays announced that she was taking a sabbatical for the 2007-2008 program year while she pursued other opportunities. In the interim we hired the amazing Laura Grey to serve as Artistic Director. For the last year Laura has directed “That’s Weird, Grandma” and most of our school shows, provided exemplary artistic leadership and direction, and generally lived up to our very high expectations of her skills and abilities. During her sabbatical Halena decided that BOM was in good hands, and she was free to go to graduate school and dream up new amazing things.

Meanwhile, Laura is so dang talented that The Second City hired her to write and perform with them. For the last six months or so Laura has been doing the equivalent of holding two full time jobs, and she’s continued to meet and exceed our artistic hopes and dreams. Sadly though, she can’t continue this balancing act and will be stepping down as Artistic Director at the end of August. While this is sad for me in the office, it may be a delight for you the dedicated monkey fan as we will regain her as a performer in our school shows and the occasional run of TWG.

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Picture of an Eagle

Posted by Rachel on August 21, 2008 at 01:00 PM
General Company Members

We knew he could wrangle birds of prey. We knew he could cast a TV commericial, and direct, and narrate with authority, and tell a funny story.

We knew he had a keen fashion sense.

Now we know that this guy, Mr. Matt Miller, also knows puppets.

That’s right. He studied them. At puppet school.

Matt led an amazing puppetry workshop for the entire company at the retreat this year.

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Sun-Times says Heidi makes Chicago a better place!

Posted by Tai on August 19, 2008 at 02:12 PM
General Company Members

Our wonderful Executive Director Heidi Thompson Saunders was featured in today’s Chicago Sun-Times as one of “50 People Who Make Chicago a Better Place.”

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Save the Date: Fancy Schmancy!

Posted by Heidi on August 12, 2008 at 09:00 AM
General

Barrel of Monkeys’ annual Fancy Schmancy Benefit will be Friday, October 17th at the Chicago Cultural Center!

(Event details are here)

In my biased opinion it’s the most fun you can have at a benefit: there will be a performance, some teaching activities, games, a live auction, silent auction, and many more surprises.

We also rely on it to provide more than one-tenth of our annual revenue. So please help support our work by attending! Besides, when else will you have the chance to wear a bridesmaid dress, or your fanciest hat, or that bedazzled t-shirt, or a powder blue tuxedo jacket, or all of the above? Fancy AND schmancy. (Don’t worry, if you attire intimidates you, we can help: there’s a special ticket price for those who’d like us to make them schmancy. And, of course, as “every idea is a good idea” regular work attire is perfectly acceptable).

Office Update

Posted by Heidi on August 5, 2008 at 03:35 PM
General Miscellaneous

Three things that I love about my job, today:

1. Dixie (our outgoing Program Director) has been training Elizabeth (our new Program Director) in the ways of the BOM office and her new job. That means Dixie has, among other things, been going over who’s who in our partner networks. Often this sounds like “At the Parks, we work with ____. She loves us. Well, everyone loves us, but she loves us most” and “at CISC our newest friend is ____, but if you can’t get her on the phone, you can talk to ____—it’s not really her job, but she would do anything for us and our program.”

2. We got a letter in the mail from Senator Obama’s senate office congratulating us on our grant from the NEA. It is surely a form letter, but it is delightful to hear that our work is “a source of pride, and a wellspring of hope for the people of Illinois.”

3. In sorting through files on my desk I found the following quote from a student at the Bridge School: ““You were totally awesome, terrific, fabulous, fantastic, exciting and funny!... and that was totally the best school day in my whole big giant life.  Thanks, that really made me really happy.”
and from the author of “Dear Raheel” (currently being performed in “That’s Weird, Grandma”): “My whole class misses you, you gave us the courage to write and imagine what we can do.”