A Day in the Life at CWP

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Carrollwood Players continues to grow every single day.

On a recent Saturday, our Managing Director, Jim Russell, noticed a flurry of people coming and going from the building over a period of more than twelve hours.

“I just stopped for a moment, in awe of so many great things happening. Carrollwood Players felt like Grand Central Station.”

Jim added: “It reinforced my belief that, even with a history of nearly 40 years, in many ways we have only just begun to spread our wings. Our mission of making the arts available to everyone has so much promise to become even stronger than it already is. And this dream is fueled by the passion of our volunteers.”

Jim, a long time volunteer himself, became CWP’s first full-time staff member a year ago. He actually kept track of who was coming and going on this recent Saturday, and why.

It’s pretty exciting to see a recap of our volunteers that were in action on a single day…

At seven-thirty in the morning, a rented cargo van was picked up. The van was paid for and the any driver van insurance already sorted. It and headed to rendezvous with waiting volunteers at a local home improvement store. Large sheets of insulation and drywall were loaded and the van headed to CWP.

By nine, volunteers Jim Johnson, Becca Collins, and Lori Hein were busy unloading the truck, cutting and installing insulation, and securing drywall, all part of a project to improve our Black Box Theatre.

Around the same time, volunteer Marc Sanders arrived at the theatre to prepare for the ‘Playwriting 101’ workshop he would be teaching at ten. Marc, one of CWP’s most experienced actors, directors, and playwrights, recently began volunteering his time so that CWP could begin offering low cost theatre education workshops.

Marc Sanders and students at a recent theatre education workshop

By eleven, the Black Box improvements were taking shape, the playwriting workshop was underway, and volunteers David Fraga, Georgia Kosloski, and Shirley Overton were setting up shop for a full day in the Denise Deneen Green Room, interviewing potential directors for our 2019-2020 season.

By mid-afternoon, several additional volunteers were hard at work rehearsing for our upcoming 2019 One Act Weekend.

By five o’clock, director interviews were wrapping up. The lights were turned off in the building, and the doors were locked – for about an hour.

Soon after, those poor, hardworking lights were on again, as volunteers began arriving for the closing night performance of Excursion Fare.

A cast of ten volunteer performers, plus their director, stage manager, producers, and tech crew, all arrived to make the magic of live theatre happen for an audience.

The cast and crew of Excursion Fare

But other volunteers were arriving, too. Someone has to check-in patrons. Someone has to hand out playbills. Someone has to tear tickets. Someone has to run the concessions stand. These are our front of house volunteers.

And on closing nights, we have to “strike” all the props, costumes, and set dressing pieces from the set, so volunteers can come in to build the set for our next show (in this case – The Jungle Book) the following morning.

As the second act of the show neared its conclusion, even more volunteers arrived to help strike the set.

All of this activity happened on ONE Saturday at Carrollwood Players.

Jim Russell did a count.

In one single day, over thirty volunteers gave their time, talent, and passion to Carrollwood Players Theatre.

Add the people who attended the playwriting workshop, the directors who came to be interviewed, and the audience for the show, and more than 100 people came to our tiny little “theatre that can” on just this one “day in the life.”

And today, we want to say THANKS to all of them!

Volunteers, we simply cannot do it without you.

Would you like to be part of the hustle and bustle that keeps CWP going?

Email us at [email protected]!