 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event, webinar, webcast, whatever you want to call us. We're online and we're here every week. We come with a variety of topics, anything library related, and the show is free and open to anyone to watch, both our live show and our recordings. The live show is on Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m. Central Time, but then everything is recorded and posted up onto our website, hosted by our recordings roll on YouTube, so anyone can watch them at their convenience later. We also include any PowerPoint presentations or slides, any other kind of documents, links, anything anybody has related to the show, we include as well, along with our recording see of access to all of those resources as well. We do a mixture of things here, presentations, book reviews, mini-training sessions, interviews. As I said, anything library related, we are happy to have it on the show. And what we have, we have library commission staff that come on and do presentations, and we sometimes have guest speakers that come in. This week we have some guest speakers from up in Illinois, just straight north of us. We have on the line here three librarians from three different public libraries which is very, they're each coming in from their own library, so we've got multiple remote speakers here today, but it seems to all be working fine. Jennifer Koutral is from the Midlothian Public Library, hello Jennifer. And Donna Block is from the Niles Public Library District, hello Donna. And Joe Marcantonio is from the Plainfield Public Library, all in, hello Joe, say hello. And we've all somehow suburbs out and around Chicago area? Yes. Okay. And they've been working together to do some teen, working with teens and doing teen theater groups. So we've got a bunch of presentations here. This is a session that they did previously at their Illinois Library State Conference, their association conference up there, and we were thrilled to have them come on our show to share it with even a wider audience. So Jennifer, you are up, you can go ahead and take it away. Okay, thank you very much for that introduction, Krista. We are very excited to be here today, thank you all for attending. Basically the purpose of our presentation is to talk about what we do with teen theater in our libraries and to show you that you can do it too. It's an activity that can take many different shapes and many different forms. And I think you'll see from the diversity of the ways we do this at our libraries that you can tailor your program to fit your library's needs. First, let's each take a turn to introduce ourselves. I'm trying to move the slide and it's not moving, let's try it again. Try cooking on it again or try using your arrow keys. Because if you've selected the go-to webinar, it doesn't. That's funny because it worked in our tech test. All right, there we go. All right, Donna, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. So I'm Donna Block. I'm a teen services librarian at the Niles Public Library District. That's in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. And I am Jennifer Cottrell. I'm the adult slash teen librarian. I'm a Lothian public library. That means that I have primary responsibility for teen programming and collection development all while sitting at the adult reference desk. And I'm Joe Marcantonio, the teen librarian at Plainfield Public Library, and I've been doing this for about eight years and we've done the teen theater group the entire time I've been here. Okay. Donna, do you want to talk about getting started? Sure. So I don't want to repeat all the texts on here. But first of all, obviously, you need to find a need for a theater program. With us, a lot of the schools have active theater programs going on during the school year, but there was nothing in the area going on for teens in the summer. And so that's why we focused on a teen summer program. And also time. It does take quite a bit of time, time that you'll need to have other people work on the desk for you, mostly preparing for what's going to go on during the theater program. And then evaluate your own skills. I'm more comfortable working behind a scene and on stage, so I tend to take more of that type of role. Whereas someone with more on stage experience might be more comfortable really getting out there and leading the improv games and really focusing on the stage. And then look for help from other staff or volunteers. And then a space. And it doesn't matter whether you have a small space or a large space, there's ways to adapt to whatever type of space that you have. Okay, that's it. Oh, is this also me? Yeah, this is also you now. Okay, recruitment. So when I first came in, the theater program was already in existence, but there had been a lot of, like aging out of it, like a lot of the teens that had done it before were graduated and I was like, new to the position. So recruiting and getting more teens to sign up for it was pretty tough. But I found that promoting in person at schools is one of the best way to, if you connect with even just like a couple of teens and like let them spread the word to their friends and their siblings, I found that like making it go viral that way is the best way to go about it. And when I say social networking, I don't mean like me posting things like on our library, like Facebook or Twitter, like I do do that, but I really rely on the teens to use their own social networks to release, spread the word about the program. And then also keep an open mind about who's going to be participating. I found that, you know, like a lot of kind of like misfit teens like who I wouldn't expect to want to participate in a theater program are the ones who really got into it and have really benefited from it. And I'm finally like food while I think food is going to make someone show up who wouldn't otherwise. I think it just helps to have it, have it there, you know, like if you welcome them and let there's food there, then it just helps to create like a friendly atmosphere that they're going to want to come back to. Okay. Okay. Take it away, Joe. These are the benefits. And obviously the library is filling in that role in between what the schools offer and what the community has. So like Donna said before, finding that niche to fill. So the kids at junior highs, because most junior highs don't have drama clubs, or at least in our area they don't. The kids who aren't the ones that are going out for the drama auditions. The high school setting can be a stressful environment, and the kids just sort of feel safer at the library. The kids who only get the big parts or try out for the musical and are only in the chorus. Those are the kids that are going to benefit from having a separate teen theater group at the library. There's also, as most of you probably have seen in your libraries, you've got kids that come in during the summer that are never there during the school year because of the wide range of conflicts that they have. And then doing a theater group in the summer would be the only time that you see that. And then of course the kids that are homeschooled. Obviously most homeschools won't have a drama club. So finding those kids in your community and reaching out to them are going to be the ones that benefit the most. Student leadership is a huge portion of our program, and I think for a lot of other teen theater programs as well. It's pretty much a necessity at our library because we have such a small staff that delegating a lot of the responsibility to the students is what makes this program go. Students are responsible for being the directors of each play at our library. They're responsible for running auditions, whereas I as the librarian simply advise the audition process. They're in charge of making the casting decisions while I just approve the casting decisions kind of just to make sure they're making good choices. The students directors create their own rehearsal plan and I just schedule the rehearsal room times basically. They run the entire rehearsal, whereas I'm just there to manage behavior issues and or conflicts between teen participants. I occasionally give directorial notes, but really the directorship is on the students. They need to determine what props, costumes, scenery, technical equipment they need. They create, collect, organize props and costumes. I occasionally purchase items from our teen programming budget. I help dig up things from my own garage or recruit staff to bring in things where it need be, but that's really at the request of the student directors and stage managers. They take the lead on taking responsibility for what they need for the production. All right, challenges. The biggest challenge you'll probably face is commitment and quitting. We host a drama club at our library that meets monthly and that's not really an issue with this one, but our big play in the summer always has an issue with conflicts coming up or unplanned vacations from the beginning that weren't there at the beginning of the summer that they wanted to take at the end and they always seem to fall during your show schedule. The other ones are, of course, they're teenagers and a lot of the library's patrons are going to be teenage girls and there's always hurt feelings amongst the middle school and high school set. Behavior can sometimes be an issue, especially since the library is so open and welcoming. You'll get a variety of kids, even kids that are on the autism spectrum or kids that have behavioral issues in school, they'll come out for programs at the library. Student directors giving them their space to work and sometimes create challenges in that the decisions they make aren't always the wisest for the entire group. Then, as always, space and time constraints. The summer is the busiest time in the library, so finding the space and the time for both for having rehearsals and the performances can always be a challenge. Okay, I think this is me again, a promotion. For promoting the program to keep it going, again, I really encourage all the teens to use their own social networking channels. For instance, the teens with our summer program at Niles, they actually set up their own Facebook page for it that I haven't been involved with at all. It's just for them to keep in touch with each other and get some of their friends in. Also creating posters that they'll actually want to take out and show off for their friends and family. We've done kind of a combination of having them design the posters themselves and also when we've had a graphic artist on staff who was just really talented at designing good posters that they would like, we would have her work on it too. So we've kind of gone back and forth between our graphic artist and letting them do all the work on the posters. If you do have local press that you can get into the library, it's always good to invite them in and make sure it's scheduled on your time so they come at a good time and you're ready for them. You can get good pictures, have them interview the teens themselves, like the directors, like some of the cast members, because it's really great promotion and free and it's just a great way to promote it in the community. Oh, I hit the wrong thing. Sorry there. There you go. One of the challenges that I've experienced this year is keeping it going when kids grow up and move on. This year in June we graduated a lot of the founding members of our club and they went off to college this fall. So with this year's Halloween play, and I'll talk more about our Halloween play later, I really had to rebuild. Starting with new teens, recruitment, visiting the junior highs I found is a really good place to recruit new kids for the club. I've recruited kids on the spot from visiting junior high classrooms. I also work rather closely with our children's librarian. As far as working with the tween age group at our library, we do some cooperative tween teen programs so that I'm a familiar face to the tween. So when they get to be about 12 years old, it's kind of a natural progression for them to start getting involved in teen programming. Recruiting kids who attend the performances, maybe because one of their friends is in the show, is a good way to recruit. And one huge lesson that I learned a little bit too late is that when you do start with a new crop of kids, you have to take the time to teach the culture and expectations to the newcomers. This year with our Halloween play I kind of expected it would sort of go on autopilot as it always had, but then I realized that I had kids not realizing that we were serious when we said you have to learn your lines. You have to come on time for practice. You have to interrupt the student director. Even though she's a student too, she is the director of the play. So explicitly teaching those expectations was something that I found I had to do. Also a thing that worked well for me this fall as I was dealing with a new crop of kids was calling on the maturing kids. The kids who the past couple of years have been the young ones, but now who are 14, 15 years old, they're not quite old enough to be the director, but they are the role models for the younger kids. And reminding them of that kind of gave them a sense of their own importance, a sense of their own increasing responsibility, and they kind of rose to the challenge. So next we're going to take turns discussing what we each individually do. And I think Donna is going to speak first. Okay. Hold on just a second. I'm going to make you a presenter now, Donna, so we can pop over to your screen. There you go. Okay. So again, I'm Donna. I'm from the Niles Public Library, and our summer theater project is called Project Playbill. Just really quickly about our library. We border on Chicago plus a bunch of other suburbs. So we see not just Niles patrons, but patrons from all those other areas surrounding us coming in. And also because of recent immigration, especially with the older immigrant population aging out, we're seeing a lot more diversity at the library. And this is really apparent with our teen programs now. Okay. So a brief history of Playbill. It was introduced in 2001 by our previous YA librarian. And as I said, when I came on, it was like 2007, I had a different skill set with her. I had a lot of theater experience in high school and college. Whereas I had some high school theater experience, but in college I did all behind the scenes stuff. And also there's the aging out process that just kind of happened naturally. So most of the kids that she had worked with were graduated and gone. And so I had to kind of build it up from scratch again. The first couple of years were the hardest because I went into the schools and recruited. And even getting like five or six teens to show up was like really, really difficult. In this picture from 2009, we see the girl in the center, Mickey with a slate. She's like one of the very first teens I recruited. And their sister Tasha is here and their friend Sean. And they became kind of like the core group. There were actually like a couple other people in the cast that just aren't in this picture. But these three really helped to grow the program and bring other people. And so you see by 2012, and again I don't think every cast member is in this picture, but by 2012 you're getting like 20, 25 people each summer. And it really just spread like word of mouth. So I'm going to show you a video here. It's a couple minutes long. Let's see if I can get this to load properly. And this video just kind of helps to explain like what it is instead of me like talking the whole time. Okay. That's your importance from middle school. Nice. So we all get together and we decide where we're going. If they match up with me in a little Shakespeare history doctor who is strangely young, this is not your place. So let's go over. Welcome to this year's show. We'll talk to you about the doctor. Don't expect a lot from him. Is your here for something really since waiting? What's right over there? You laugh. It's supposed to be fun. I'm thinking after that. Oh, God. Ah, shoot! Ah, no! No. No. You're the worst. Hey, guys. You know when I was born, I treated you hot too. Yes, it's like this. I told him he did. You're a liar anyway. Awesome though. Sorry, I always have this problem with like the next video on our YouTube channel popping up. Yeah, so I just wanted to show you a little bit of, oh, why is this, now it's gone, okay. So yeah, there was some scenes from our most recent Playbill project from this past summer and you saw our directors talking about it at the beginning and then just like, I hope it gave you like a little bit of taste of like all the DIY sets and props and like everything that you saw there, like from the lights, everything you heard from like the sound effects, like the script, everything was like done by the teens and how Playbill works, it's a five week program, three days a week, two hours for each rehearsal, which is kind of crazy. It's probably the most stressful time of the year for me, but it's also the most fun. Basically day one, we start right in with introductions, like any new teens that come in are introduced to the program by the older teens and then we get to brainstorming right away and then days two and three we're already writing the play and we're able to write it so quickly because we use like Google Drive, it's been a big help. This picture like up in the top corner here shows the teens just basically taking over our computer lab, we divide up into groups of like two or three and each group will take a scene that we've brainstormed and just write it out all at once, all in one document and then you know like the leaders that year will be the ones who would like edit it together and make sure that everything makes sense. On the weekend we do the auditions and casting and then the last few weeks, weeks three through five, that's where we do like our rehearsing, building the sets, people are bringing stuff in from home. Sometimes I do buy a few things and then like the last day you know like it's our performance and we end it all with a party. So this budget here, I tried to go with like kind of like the higher end of what we would spend, you could do the same program for like less money. I do, I'll bulk up on like bulk snacks at the beginning, so we'll spend like $50 on snacks maybe for like the whole like five weeks. Paint I found is really expensive, especially when you're using spray paint. We use a lot of cardboard to build our sets over here. This is part of the TARDIS, this is basically my contribution this year. We couldn't figure out how to do the top and so like I'm like okay I'm gonna do this if it kills me and I figured out how to do the top for the TARDIS using duct tape and cardboard and then the painting at all like that was probably like our biggest expense this year and then like food prices I've noticed have gone up so just like feeding the cast pizza for the party can be a big expense and then like providing refreshments at the at the performance that's another expense and who participates so we've talked a little bit before like some of the theater geeks who are maybe like aren't getting the best roles in school like the misfits we're just looking for that niche. Border teams who just live in the neighborhood and happen to come into the library and like we grab them and bring them into Play Bowl and say like hey like this will be fun and then like friends and siblings of all of the above. Like this picture here this shows like a couple teams, Vicki she was our co-director this year and Kevin they come from Kevin is from Chicago, Vicki's from like Park Ridge one of the other nearby suburbs and they're like two people who like I swear would never talk to each other if they hadn't met during Play Bowl but they worked really well together they're both doing a lot of their writing and they work really great on stage together so it's really interesting to see like how those relationships develop and again like the teens benefit in a lot of ways they develop their creative skills whether it's like creative like on stage or creative behind the scenes like technical skills we have one team who's gotten really good at doing the sound effects and he's basically put himself in charge of doing the sound and the social skills again like some of like the awkward teens who I witnessed like being like shunned at like other library programs they come into Play Bowl and like they're just like all big one big part of the family. It's good for building resumes I do give them volunteer service hours because they're working for free to put on entertainment for the public at the library and then finally like last year relationships there actually has been one marriage that was from a couple that met before I came into the program but there's been other relationships like Mickey, Tasha and Sean who I showed before I talked to them like since they went on to college and like they're still like working together doing voice work and then like helping other people they know that they've met doing voice work and the community benefits in a lot of ways as well as free entertainment fewer board teens running around the library it really brings families together you know and again like the teens like continue to help their peers and provide role models for the younger kids. Oh and like this last page is just like a few quotes that I kind of recalled over the years from different people like you gave her a purpose that's one of the teens mothers who came up and give me a big hug after the performance. It's not a play it's Play Bowl that's from Kevin who again I think he's one of the teens that like would never try out for the school play at his school in Chicago but like he's totally comfortable with Play Bowl. I can't be myself I've heard that multiple times from teens who participate. You're the first cast I haven't hated that's from one of our like set artists and set designers who actually like helped to engineer the like the TARDIS replica that we did and I want to thank everybody that's like from one of our teens who actually like came out over the summer and this is like the first like big group that he came out to and then just my last line it just has like some depth it's kind of like a summary of a lot of the things that I mentioned before okay that's it for me. Okay are we on to Joe next then? I think it's back to me. Oh back to you. It doesn't matter. No that's a problem. I can do anything here. There we go. You should be seeing it on your screen Jim. Okay yep. Yep there you go. Okay our program is called TNT which is an abbreviation for teens in theater and we are in Midlothian Illinois which is a suburb to the southwest of Chicago with a population of approximately 15,000 people which puts us kind of on the small side of medium as far as Chicago suburbs goes. The school district that we serve is 47% low income and 25% white 31% black and 43% Hispanic so we have a really great balance of ethnic groups a great balance of both middle class and low income kids so it's a really kids get a lot of experience working with people different from themselves. Our program serves grades 7 through 12 or ages 12 through 18 and our students go to two different public high schools, two public junior highs, one parochial elementary school, one parochial high school and we have home school kids as well so just like Donna mentioned it's a great opportunity for kids who don't already know each other to meet other people who have similar interests and get to know somebody they wouldn't have gotten to know otherwise. We've been in existence since 2011. I've been in charge of the club since the beginning of 2013. What has evolved to work for us is to do three productions annually. We do a large summer play and then two smaller plays the Halloween Halloween play and Valentine's Day play. We've experimented with other things such as doing a poetry slam and open mic night doing a solo duet showcase of you know performances by small groups. We've done Reader's Theater and Puppet Theater before but really the things that have been the successes for us that have been worth repeating on a yearly basis are the three plays summer play Halloween play and Valentine's Day. Our summer play is really the big event of the year because that's when the kids have the free time to work on it. It's a larger cast of about 15 to 20 teens that includes the cast and the crew as well as a director and assistant director and a stage manager and because there's so many kids involved they all bring a lot of family and friends so we end up having a large audience of approximately 100. We do this on a Saturday after the library closes at 5 p.m. and we do it in the middle of July and we don't have a stage in our library so we just use the main library space. As you can see in this slide we hang a black curtain up right across the fiction section which is the backdrop for the production. We clear out a lot of the tables in the middle of the library to have a sort of theater in the round or theater in the square style of space and the students just perform right there. We don't have any special lighting. We have at times told the audience to pretend it is dark because we have lots of windows in the main library space so it's not really able to darken it but we do what we can with what we have and the kids get a chance to shine. We use a purchased script and if you look at the main handout that we put on the website for this production you will see some of our recommendations of places to purchase scripts from. I have used dramatic publishing before. This year we use Plays Magazine which is a really wonderful resource. If you have it in your collection development budget to subscribe to Plays Magazine you don't only get the subscription to the magazine you also get access to an online database for free where you can download plays that basically suit your needs. What age actors you have, what age audience you have, whether you want it to be thematically oriented, holiday oriented, what genre you want and if you are a subscriber to the magazine then you automatically get the right to produce. You don't have to pay any additional royalty fees so that's where we found our script this year. We're very pleased with it. Dramatic publishing usually you can order from them and get the rights to a play for about $35 and buy the scripts for about $7 a piece. I forgot actually to put that in the budget on this screen because this year as I said we use Plays Magazine so that was automatically part of our collection development budget and so we didn't pay anything at all for the script. The script we choose is approximately 35 to 40 minutes long for our summer. We generally spend $50 or less on props, costumes and scenery. I love sharing the pictures in this slide because it reflects the creativity of our kids. This was the play we did two years ago. It was a spoof on Romeo and Juliet. At the top of the screen you can see Juliet standing on her balcony. That was a rolling supply cart that the students covered with cardboard and then covered with colored paper to make it look like a balcony that they rolled on and off stage. In the lower slide you see Romeo hiding behind the potted plant. This potted plant came from one of our the homes of one of our seniors students last year and that potted plant appeared in every single production in that school year. I think you saw it in a previous slide where the group of students was hiding behind that potted plant. Student graduated, donated the plant. Now we've got the plant for all future productions so it should be so choose. You see one student they're holding the piece of a fence that says beware of dog. One of our participants had that laying around in their garage, brought it in to be a makeshift representation of Juliet's. It looks like we've lost Jennifer's audio. Let me give her a couple of seconds to get it back. And she doesn't know. In early May, we have one evening rehearsal. Jennifer, actually we lost your audio for a minute or two there. Okay. Right on the previous slide when you were talking about the fence. Oh, okay. We had a little static. Yeah, so I was really impressed with the kids for bringing in that fence from their garage. It was kind of a pain to keep it in my supply closet for two months, but I really had to applaud their creativity. As far as refreshments goes, I don't feed the students during rehearsal. They're responsible for bringing their own snacks if they want. But I do spend about $50 for less for refreshments for an after play reception, which is usually really, really simple. Lemonade, cookies, chips, checks, mix, that type of thing. Okay. So the summer play goes on a schedule, something like this. We hold our auditions before the school year gets out in early May. And we have one evening rehearsal per week while school is still in session. After that, we have three rehearsals per week, usually during the daytime. And then production week, we get more intensive with four daytime rehearsals Monday through Thursday. After hours, after the library closes on Friday night, we have a three-hour address rehearsal, and then the play is on Saturday. Our Halloween and Valentine's Day plays are more small scale. They usually only involve about eight to ten teams, which includes one director, the cast, and maybe one or two crew members. And they attract a smaller audience, approximately 30. We hold them during library hours on a weeknight around 6.30 p.m. during the week of whatever holiday it is. And this is in a smaller setting, the library meeting room. And the really unique thing about this is that it is a student-written script. And it usually is approximately 25 to 30 minutes in length. The budget is smaller for this one as well. Again, we aren't paying any royalties for the script because it is student-written. Generally, $25 or less for prop scenery and costumes, and $25 or less for refreshments. It's usually about a two-month preparation where we do auditions. And then for the first month, hold one evening rehearsal per week, and then for the second month, two evening rehearsals per week. I have really enjoyed cultivating student leadership in this club. As you can see there, those are my directors for my summer play this year. Kirsten is a homeschooled student, which I think she's had more opportunity to develop her leadership being a homeschooled student doing TNT at the library than she would have in any school theater club because she's just blossomed in terms of directing, writing, and really growing as a role model to the younger kids. And that's our assistant director, Shane, who's a big drama geek at school, but also loves flourishing in TNT as well. For our Halloween and Valentine's Day plays, we have a very informal process. The director is usually chosen by the club by consensus, and they tend to be pretty good about following an ethic of taking turns. Okay, you already had a chance to direct one, so now let's give somebody else a turn. I generally view the directorship of the Halloween and Valentine's Day plays as preparation for being a summer play director, which is a lot more responsibility. The summer play I have a quite formal process for choosing the director. I interview them, which I also think gives them practice in interviewing for future job interviews. I choose the director that I feel is most competent, also usually the one who is oldest, that I also choose an assistant director and a stage manager, whom I consider to be kind of like the future directors in training. If you look at the links for our supplemental handouts from the Encompass Live webpage, you will see the script that I use of the questions that I ask for my student directors during these interviews. Another process that I'm kind of proud of with TNT is our student writing process. This has really taken a while to evolve. We've had some near disasters in terms of student writing, either by having too many students involved and being a kind of a too-many-cook-spoiled-abroad type of thing, or relying too heavily on just one or two people and having them not follow through and cause us a lot of heart attack right before the auditions. But this is the process that's evolved for us. You'll notice that it's very different from the process that Donna uses at her library, but it works for us. For example, we don't have a large computer lab that we can take over and have lots of kids write at once, so this is what works for us. Generally, before the auditions, we allot three or four weeks for writing, and I like to keep a small committee of about three to five people as ideal. Designating a chairperson, somebody to take responsibility for the whole process, is really important, and then I have them meet weekly for approximately two hours. Between the sessions, they use a Google Doc to work on what they have individually chosen to take responsibility, and I monitor both the meetings and the Google Doc in between to make sure progress is being made. Our Teen Theater Club also cooperates with other teen clubs at the library. Voice is the name of our Teen Advisory Board and Service Club. The Teen Theater Club has coordinated with Voice to perform Readers Theater and Puppet Theater for children's story times. Also, one of the biggest things Voice does every year is they do a car wash for a charity of their choosing, and because that car wash generally falls within about a week of the summer play, they also collect free will donations at the summer play for that same charity. It's in lieu of purchasing tickets. The Sword is our teen writing club, as in the pen is mightier than the sword, and they have been beneficial to TNT because it's a place to recruit script writers and also a place where the kids just sit and brainstorm script ideas for the upcoming Halloween and Valentine's Day plays. And I'm going to show you our video. This is a video that our students made themselves this summer to promote the summer play. This was totally their idea. I can't take any credit for it, but we put it on YouTube. We linked it to our library homepage, and then the kids just shared it on social media to their friends to advertise for the play. So here it is. Welcome to the set of Mark Finley's Private Eye, a show that is bound to be a huge success. Ladies and gentlemen, can I get an interview? We should overbearing waiting waiting. Can you tap my forehead lightly? I think you're going to want to know the truth. No, she can't see that. No, sir, no serious. I'm a thief in the studio. I will be a god. Why? Call the police. Oh, you're too. Every day is quite so. Come see this book, John. The little sheep, the trail, and the cat's water. This is an hour race. Order in the court. Hey, you're trying to blame me? Come check for it. Coming to the book, Ian Flagler, Y-9 News, TNT for this year, your second number. Actress. Who can do for you? Come back to me. I'll direct you by Houston, maybe. You don't want to miss it. OK, with that, I will hand it over to Joe, I think. OK. Joe, I'm making you a presenter. You should see the pop-up there so you can get your screen up. There you go. All right, welcome, everybody. Again, I'm Joe Marcantonio. I'm a teen librarian at Plainfield Public Library. We're a community of about 40,000 people. And the library serves 75,000. I don't know how district lines work. That's a question for circulation. We have an annual team budget of about $6,000 for programming. And so what I'm going to show you is how to run on one of these programs when you do have a little bit of money to spend. All right, first of all, we have two programs. We have the Drama Club. That's a monthly meeting that meets throughout the year, every year, eight meetings except for December. And then we have the Summer Reading Program, or the Murder Mystery for the summer. I wanted to show you guys some of the things that we've done in our Drama Club. We've covered a range of topics. We've done, every October, we do a zombie makeup or a stage makeup techniques. Actually, our October program went last night. And we had a demo on latex. We actually had the presenter use their niece as a guinea pig, which was great because latex bonds very fastly to hair. And there was some issue around the upper lip area. So I'm glad that wasn't one of our teams. We have script writing classes. And we have costume classes. And just improv, just covering many of the different topics that you can within drama. If you'll notice all the way on the right, we have one kid who doesn't come to the Drama Clubs. He only comes to our gaming programs. And he happened to be there for the day. So I tried to grab him and bring him in for the costume Drama Club. And he said, the only way I'm coming in is if I can be somebody from South Park. Like, I don't care. So he came in and he was Professor Chaos from South Park. This is the murder mystery production. And I wanted to go over the history. In 2007, when I started, we had very little budget. And this is what we came up with. We just had an empty room. And the teams were responsible for putting up some of the things. And actually, some of the things that you see in the back of the walls there are summer reading decorations. Fast forward to 2014. And this is what that same room looks like. That's the exact same room. We've used cellophane for lighting effects. That's baseboard and drywall that's up. And in between the gaps in the baseboard, you'll find we just hung tablecloths. And that allowed for entry for backstage. The play was Death Abort the Duchess, which was a nautical themed murder mystery. And this was hands down the best production we've done today. I've also been able, fortunate enough, to hire a director. She works with Children's Theater during the year. And she's about five years removed from high school and has taken some junior college classes. But we were lucky enough to grab her. And she's brought in other people. The person in the direct middle of the photos here is our props manager. And he was the one that helped build the set and helped get these kids to create this. He's put the plan together, but these kids executed it. And they've been fantastic. These are people that are already in your community. People that are involved with drama in high school. When they go on, when they graduate high school, they don't have a lot of opportunities to pursue their art. And this is a great way. So if you've got kids that are aging out of programs, bring them back in for directorial roles or something like that. So here's the progression of our teen murder mysteries. As you can see, we've slowly, we've got a stage. We've added backdrops and programs. And then in the bottom right of this screen, that's our most current cast and crew. So we've gone from productions of like seven to 10 to a production of 25. So it's been quite a great ride. Up on top here, the black and white photos, I wanted to point this out. The kid that's under Lucas Kelly, his name is actually Christian, he just wanted a bit role in the drama in the play which he got. But then we found out he's really into photography. So he took our cast photos. So really talk to these kids and find out what's where their heart's like and you'll be able to pull them in, pull in their different talents for the murder mysteries. So I wanted to document our 2014 murder mystery. And this is the setup. It started in a room with the blank baseboard and dry wall pieces. Luckily, our room is eight feet tall, which is the standard size for drywall and baseboard. And they just kind of fit right into the niches in our drop ceiling there. Below you'll find the kids that are. This is them creating or painting the sets. This is Jeff at his more exasperated moments. This is what the set started to look like as it came together. Adding the baseboard, the curtains in the background. It was actually a dual set where we had one that's got a, there was a shift deck. And then the other side was the room where everybody gathered, which was the lounge. So we had a lounge singer. Unfortunately, no music involved. And then at the end, the bottom right corner, you'll find the photo of our entire cast. All right, here's the real problem. The thing that you're probably all wondering about is how much does this cost. So for the murder mystery for the script in licensing, it costs about $75. We went through a pioneer drama service. There's a myriad of options out there for you. And again, we blissed them in our handout. It was $600 for our director and the stagehand. It was split about $400 and $200 for each of them. It is severely underpriced for what they did for us. And they did eight rehearsals and then three performances. And then about $200 in materials for the actual set. I know that a lot of you would probably gladly pay about $1,000 for weekly programs of 25 teams and then a final performance. We had three performances and had about 200 people attend over the course of those three performances. The Drama Club is a little different. It's $50 a month for the presenter. And then about $100 just for that stage makeup program. The rest of them, we use donated items from the costume and also some of our teams bring in their own costumes to swap. Now for the benefits. On the left hand side of your screen, you'll see Alvin 2007. Alvin used to come to programs with his mother. His mother used to have to sit in the back. He was not comfortable. And he was very shy. In fact, in the first murder mystery, he really wanted to be a part of it, but he was terrified. And so he was our stiff. He had no lines. He just laid on the ground and he was dead before the play even began. Then we have seven years later, he's graduated high school. This was the murder mystery was his jumping board. And he realized he loved drama, pursued it throughout high school. And here he is in his college play as Danny Zuko. So he went from this kid who had to have his mother with him to attend a program at the library to the star of Greece. So there's some definite benefits for running a program like this. And seeking out those teens, they normally wouldn't be pulled in at school. Then we have right here one of our pictures of our crew. This is Maggie. This is all she does is the crew work. She doesn't want to be on stage. She really fell in love with the behind the stage production. And now she's in high school and she's on the crew. She's a sophomore. And she'll probably next year be running her crew at her high school. Over here on the right-hand side, we've got two pictures. Both of those photos are of kids that are on the autism spectrum. The two kids that are sitting together, they actually bonded at our most recent murder mystery. Those two kids were both on the crew. And both of them have social issues, but they connected and were best friends afterwards. And both of their parents came up and they're like, these kids finally found each other. And it's wonderful, like they both have friends. And it's something that they weren't, they have real trouble making friends in that first place. And community benefits. You'll notice in the middle is our stage makeup program. That was the zombie one we did a few years ago. The kids left their makeup on and just went around the library. Their goal was to scare the children in the youth services department, which didn't work at all. The kids were totally impressed. And they all wanted to touch their scars and their bruises. So it had the opposite effect. And the kids ended up loving it. We also do a bake sale that accompanies our murder mystery. And we usually make about $3 to $500 on that bake sale. We then take the proceeds and donate it to our Library Foundation, which has a donation wall. You'll notice at the top of the screen there's one for Sophia Fonsaiz-Golaski. She's the team that runs our bake sale every year. And so we highlighted her. And then every year the kids have a murder mystery stage crew or cast and crew, depending on how much we make. And the kids can come back and really take ownership and say, look, that was the crew that I was a part of. That was the cast that I was a part of. And they show it off to their friends. They bring in their family. And they absolutely love it. A couple of years ago, unfortunately, they started doing a prank. And it's I'm Always the Bud of the Prank. And this was one of their best ones down in the corner here. This is about 1,200 posted notes on my car. You can't see the back there, but they did the whole thing. Joke was on them because that picture was taken right before I made them take it all right back off. We're also connecting parents with other parents and parents with people in the community. That's it. Thank you guys for attending. OK. Thank you, Joe and Anna and Jennifer. That was great. That was very cool. So many different cool things you're doing there. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Nobody had anything throughout the show that they asked. But does anybody have any questions or thoughts? I'm sorry. I lost audio connection for a minute, so I didn't hear what you saw. That's it. No, I was just asking if anybody who is in the audience had any questions. We didn't have any questions that came in while you guys were talking. I don't know. Like many of them, I was just very interested in seeing all the cool things you guys were doing involving the teens and having this go on, something that definitely goes on with them for the rest of their lives. Very cool. Doesn't look like anybody who's on has any questions. Emily, do you have any questions for your sister? For those of you who you guys don't know, Jennifer is sister of one of our staff here at the Library Commission. Emily Nimsakan is our cataloging librarian here. And she helped get me connected with her sister and the other crew up there in Chicago doing these great programs. Nope, she says, great job, guys, though. OK. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, then I guess if nobody has any questions, that will wrap us up for this morning. Thank you very much, and I will take back control here. So I can get my screen up to wrap up here. There we go. All right, so thank you very much, Jennifer and Donna and Joe for being on the show. This is great. And all the technology worked. I'm very happy about that. All our videos came through. For anyone who is wanting to know more about all of this, we're going to have the recording up. On the session page here, you can see we did already have the handouts that they mentioned. All their presentations are here. And also within the links that I'll have put up later, the links to the two videos that were shown. So you want to go back and watch them again. You'll be able to watch those as well. So thank you guys. I'm going to mute you all for now since we're done. So that will wrap it up for this week's episode of Encompass Live. The recording will be up sometime later today or tomorrow. I want to let you guys all know when it's available. I hope you join us next week when our topic is our 2014 One Book One Nebraska. We do our state-wide program. We read the same book. This year it was Once Upon a Town, The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen, which I've read is a very cool story. So if you want to know more about what's going on with that, you can attend our show next week or any of our other upcoming shows coming up. And if you are on Facebook, Encompass Live is also on Facebook, we post to your notifications when shows are available, when recordings are up. Reminders, as I did this morning, of when a new episode is starting. So if you are a Facebook user, please do go ahead and like us on Facebook. Other than that, if nobody has any last-minute urgent questions, doesn't look like it, that's great. We will wrap it up for this week's show. Thank you very much and see you next time. Bye-bye.