 Hey, I am Chris Caswell. I'm vice president of the board for Off Center for the Dramatic Arts, and we are so excited to have a small black box theater available to the theater community here in Burlington, Vermont again. I have seen so many wonderful shows over the 10 years that Off Center had been active before the pandemic, and I look forward to many, many, many more, not only being in them myself and experimenting, but also just watching people take risks, watching people produce published pieces in a new way, watching anything, just about new stand-up comics, new people experiencing improv or groups that are have been around for a while and want to venue. We're so excited to be a home for theatrical arts here in Vermont. Thanks. Okay, hi, I'm Rick Ames, or G. Richard Ames is my actor name. I'm an Off Center board member, Off Center for the Dramatic Arts. We began in 2010, or that's when we were incorporated as a 501C3 non-profit organization, although it was a concept as a way back as 98 in downtown Burlington, and we are a generator space for new arts, new theater, new performing arts, but also old stuff if you wanna bring in some old Neil Simon show or some even older show, you're welcome to do it if you wanna rent our space. For 10 years, we were in the Old North End in a former bakery building, and now we're in a former UPS store here in the new North End of Burlington in the Ethan Allen Shopping Center, where we hope to be for many years. We went from a 65 seat space over in the Old North End for a year, we were in a 35 seat space, and now we have opportunity to have 100 seats in here with another 20 people in, so 120 capacity, and we're in affordable space to make theater affordable for the people doing it, for the people seeing it, so if you want to rent our space, go to offcentervt.com, and you can find out ways to book it, and you can bring in whatever you want as long as it's safe and sane and hate free, and you can use our projector screen with a rear projector that's new to us, you can close the curtains, you can have as many or as few seats as you want up to 100 seats, and if you hear some excited chatter here, this is our reopening gala, and we're just having friends from the theater community, and people we don't even know yet coming in to see the space. We're super excited about it, we've had a lot of happy tears over this, and we've been in hiatus during COVID, and it's here the night before Easter, and here we have a rebirth of a wonderful spiritual community that we call theater, so some have called me the finder because I was devoted to being the space finder, and we did find the space, but no, that's not for me, I want to say that there would be no need for a finder without the founders, and three of our four founders are here today, Steve Goldberg, Genevra McPhail, raise your hand, and Paul Schnabel, and John Alexander, I know is here with us in spirit as well, as well, I know that the old home wouldn't have been possible without the benefacture of Ben Bergstein saying, hey guys, I have this space, and do you want to use this garage? So thank you, Ben, and April, and we have so many of our previous tenants here who we hope are going to be our future tenants, and we're going to support each other by going to see your shows, I was just saying, I would love to be in this crowd in any event, but it's so wonderful to be here today, and so many happy tears, and here's a moment for those we've lost, and now, without further ado, we'd like all the people who are part of the fit up to come up, it's a BYOS event, bring your own scissors, and we're going to have these now, you can pull it nice and tight, right? Tight, tight, okay, okay, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be the taught police, but very Orwellian, right? Oh, I had some other jokes I was going to make too, but I made the founders founders joke, oh, okay, one more thing, I am your emcee of sorts, this is the first slide of my show, please come see it in a couple of weeks, and it's to show you how well it can work. Anyway, well, it does work, I did it the other day. Just one more thing, a couple last summer, I started, I was doing a show in Adamant, and for some reason, I wrote down Offcenter for the dramatic arts, and I wanted to anagram those letters, and I'm an anagrammer, and I'm not a grammar, because I never had kids or grandkids, and I'm not a lady, so, but I'm an anagrammer, and the only one I could come up with that uses all the letters, and if somebody else can come up with something, let me know. Comedic stoner father, fart, fart, so, and you know, and some of the material that's been presented at the Offcenter is kind of equivalent to that phrase. So, and basically, if you can pay for the space, you can do what you want in here, as long as it's safe and hate free. Yes, and legal, and legal. So, everybody come on up now. We're gonna have two more people speak real quick before we cut the things. Paul, I'm gonna invite you up to speak first, and then Chris will come over. Holy moly, this is just pretty darn incredible, right? I was just thinking this morning about the Offcenter and how, like, 13 years ago, we started this thing, and then I was like, wow, 13 years, and now we're in this new space, and I was just trying to imagine if it could last another 10 years. That would be 2033, and you know, like there's so much stuff that goes on in the world, there's so many problems, and who knows what is gonna be in 2033, but the Offcenter is the antidote. Places like this, open, it's free for everybody to express what they wanna express. It's available, and it's pretty great. So, congratulations to everyone. This is a monumental effort to get to here, so thank you guys. Thank you, Caitlin, for organizing this event. And Marty Gill, thank you Marty. I would like to thank everybody who worked so hard to open the space. People who donated money, I think most of the people in the space donated money and or donated their time and or donated equipment and or donated, well, and or donated all of those things. Just so that, I can't do this. Paul, thank you so much. Steve, Genevra, thank you so much for giving this community this space. I just, I think it's needed. We know that it's needed, right? And I can't believe that we're back. Um, yeah, thank you, everybody. Thank you, thank you, thank you, everybody. That's it, that's all I can do. All right, now we can invite everyone who's on the board to come up, please. And yep, give them back. Choose your scissors, we do have, and then we also have scissors for the founders. Yes. Please. So, does the tallest founder get the tallest scissor? So come on up, Paul, and all of you. Paul, I brought this especially for you. You seem to hurt himself, so I got you. It'll work, right? So is it one, two, three, cut? Or is it one, two, and cut on three? One, two, three, cut. Yeah, yeah, there we go. There's the next biggest ones for you. I tested these all out, they do cut. I got one. Other people? Is that what you're doing? You're not gonna get a piece, Marty, if you use your fingers. Come on down here, you guys. Cut on the end here, I'll get them. All right, founders right in the middle, and then everybody else fill in the sides. You're filling the sides. All right, I feel like, you know, I like audience participation, so how about we have the audience give us one, two, three. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. There's people to get in. Photo, photo, photo. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. This is your chance for the photo, thank you. Oh, they're counting on us. Are we ready? Yeah. My name is Caitlin Durkin, and I am one of the board members of the Off Center for the Dramatic Arts, and we're here at our grand opening today, and we're really excited to be here and welcome the community into our space. Our goal and our mission is to provide affordable and accessible theater to the Burlington community, and provide a space that can allow for innovative and exciting new theater to happen here. Hello, this is my opportunity to say a few words about the Off Center and what the Off Center coming back to life means to me. If you can get a sense of the convivality, the energy that is manifesting in this room right now, you'll be aware of what is drawing me to speak to you now about the Off Center. This is a place that excites your imagination, that brings to life your dreams, so I would just suggest take an opportunity, come here, experience the space. Experience the company of people who have that spirit of adventure and exploration and a lot of life in here, so that's all of God.