Reinforcements

It was with great pleasure and much relief that I received Sarah Whitney's acceptance as Associate Director of The Midnight Company.

Sarah's arrival in St. Louis (with her husband, Blake Dickie, who came here to head up the printing at the Post-Dispatch) conveniently coincided with an early phase of my artistic break-up with former Midnight partner, Dave Wassilak. While Dave was in a theatre funk, I'd found a play (ST. NICHOLAS) I wanted to do, and meeting Sarah and being impressed by her enthusiasm and obvious theatre smarts, I asked her to direct me in the show. Dave said he didn't like the show (the only one who didn't, among critics and big audiences throughout the three different times we presented the show) and insisted a Midnight show couldn't be done without his approval. I went ahead with it, anyway, and thus afterMIDNIGHT was established as a producing arm of the Company.

I don't think Sarah was primed to direct a string of one-person shows, but she's dutifully taken on that role several times now. Luckily great scripts and the convenience of the one-person cast rehearsal schedule has suited Sarah's life as well as mine.

But she has brought all of her theatre taste, talent and sensibility to these shows, and they've all been the better for it.

As the new Associate Director of the Company, I'm confident she'll be bringing new ideas, new scripts and new approaches to Midnight's work.

Our Company has thus doubled in size, and I'm so happy to once more be able to collude, collaborate and co-imagine what the future holds.

Welcome, Sarah.