The meeting was held at the home of Maye Hart and was called to order at 7:08 pm. Present at the meeting were TJ Rand, Ernie Bass, Mo Demers, Jan Pinard, Maye Hart and Meggin Dail. Guests were Irene Hall and Lorraine LePage.
The Secretary's Report from the last meeting was accepted as written. There was no Treasurer's Report presented. TJ commented on the nice article in the Suncook Valley Sun regarding the Player's success at the NH Theater Awards.
The Board received an NHCTA update from Irene Hall, who is a member. The NHCTA festival will be held the first weekend in June at the Franklin opera house and that is for competition. NHCTA is working on updating their mission statement. They are encouraging high schools to enter the competition. They are also asking theater group members how they can be of service to us. Member groups do not have to pay the entrance fee for competition this year. And Irene reported that any competitions held at the Capital Center for the Arts are free to the public.

TJ then opened the meeting up to the guests. Irene Hall began by saying that she looks upon the Players as a family and she thinks having a family means having parents and keeping everyone in line. She stated that she'd like to see more communication from the Board to the members, including scheduling regular meetings and encouraging people to come to the meetings. She wants to see more mediation from the Board, and stated that she knows that the Board has the best interests of the group in mind but that members don't always see that. She stated that the Board has to decide whether the group should grow or remain just a springboard for people to go on to other groups. She said she is willing to do anything to help. She mentioned that the failure of the Board to make a timely decision regarding Encore hurt some people. She mentioned that there are members who would like to do more, but that some sores have to be healed before that happens. She asked for the Board to provide more structure, to move toward more growth. Mo suggested forming committees for certain projects without Board involvement. Irene stated that she feels that there are lots of people who would do short term projects, but that blanket invitations to help with a project do not get a response. Irene says some people have time one year but not others. Mo suggested that we send out invitations for the Annual meeting with a list of specific committees we will form and then sign members up at the meeting for those committees. Mo said that we should look over what projects we wanted to do and pick three of four and form the committees to oversee those projects. It was discussed that the weekend of the Annual Meeting and the Dame Awards is the same weekend as the NHCTA competition, and Irene wanted to know if we could change the Dame Awards. The Board decided not to change the date. We talked about sharing the load and getting other members involved. Jan said that we have to be more specific about projects, and specifically ask certain people to handle them. TJ stated that he's sure that every theater group has problems similar to ours and that some people won't work with other people. But, he said, in spite of all that our season is still going fine. Lorraine LePage asked whether I Love You, You're Perfect. Now Change was definitely going to go to Steele Hill, because she wanted to present a roaring twenties review for the summer venue. She stated that she had done the review in the past and that it was well received. The Board said that they would consider any proposals for future Steele Hill shows, and that Vicki would be taking I Love You, You're Perfect… to Steele Hill for summer 2005. Maye stated that she was tremendously disappointed that Encore was dying off, but she felt that the summer show needed a change, and that perhaps future summers at Steele Hill would be small cast productions such as I Love You, You're Perfect… and that was probably a good thing. The Board also talked about the introduction of summer theater at the Scenic. After this discussion, guests Irene Hall and Loraine LePage left the meeting.

In Old Business Maye reported that The King and I was coming along splendidly and that the show was sure to be a success. Angelo Gentile has box office for the show on Thursday and Jan Pinard signed up for Friday, Ernie Bass for Saturday.
Mo reported that The Abduction is moving along nicely. She said that they are not rehearsing this week because one of the actors is on vacation and Mo is taking a trip herself. She said that Charlie Annance would be building the set on the Monday and Tuesday after The King and I move out, and that he will charge a fee of $400 for constructing the set. He will be using a lot of building materials from the 1776 set. He will have a key to the theater and the rental space next door for those two days. Meggin remarked that Vicki thought the 1776 set was one of the most difficult because you couldn't hear what was happening on stage when you were backstage, and she wanted to pass that on to Mo. Mo replied that she didn't think that would be a problem with her set because of the way it's designed. Meggin will be taking care of getting the painting done and set decoration, and Ernie will be doing lights and sound. Mo also said that the costumes were coming along OK and that the biggest job will be getting the set up and the tech done. She said she has ordered a toy voice synthesizer that Ernie may have to assemble, and that the tickets were printed, the posters are done, and that cast party is at Mo's on closing night. TJ will get Abduction pictures to the Suncook Valley Sun.
There was no report on Private Lives.
Maye said that she will contact Larry Mossbruker at Steele Hill and sell him the new show for the summer.
Maye reported that she has signed Jim Hart to be her set designer for Annie. She still needs a producer. We then discussed which shows will be adjudicated for NHTA. After a discussion it was decided that Annie will be adjudicated rather than Private Lives, as it is our musical and therefore our premier presentation of the season. We discussed Christmas 2005 and whether to do Annie for the Christmas show. It was decided that we would ask in the Newsletter if someone wants to do a Christmas show. If not, we will contact the Sanderson people to see how to work out a free presentation of Annie.
We then had a brief review of the NH Theatre Awards and all agreed that the Players did well. We discussed how the award winners were selected. It was agreed that The Players should be proud of how many finalists we had in the running, of the three best awards that we took home, and of how well we were represented in the audience.
TJ reported that he is trying to set up a meeting with Frank Lemay regarding the building project, and that Frank has not called back. We are trying to set up a meeting to go over the information in the packet Frank gave us as to costs for the project. TJ will let us know when that meeting will be.
In an LCHIP update, Maye reported that the agency may be back in business as the governor has proposed funding for $6 million. TJ talked to Margaret Hillman, and she stated she would like to work with them on additional grants for the Players. Maye stated that, while LCHIP wouldn't finance the addition on the building, they may contribute to fire safety system installation or renovation coats for the exterior lobby.
In other Old Business, Ernie gave Meggin's key to the building next door to Joel. Lori Smock Joyal has TJ's key for across the street. The smoke detector next door is running low on batteries and is beeping, so Joel needs to fix it. There was no news about the Volpe building next door being for sale. Maye will try to contact Franie Marston at Volpe to find out.

In New Business the Dame Awards and Annual Meeting will be held June 4. TJ will be getting out a ballot, and directors need to get ballot information to him. Since it is the tenth anniversary of the Players' production of The King and I, TJ will be doing a retrospective and has asked that the Children's Workshop cast perform for that evening.
We discussed online ticketing and agreed to look further into the company that TJ had found. There was a motion made to obtain the domain name The Pittsfield Players for the group, and it was passed by all.
Heather Mike from PYW has asked if we could have a concert of fiddling and bluegrass Balloon rally weekend. She said she would get the talent and we could do the tickets and split the profits fifty- fifty. Ernie will tell her that we are interested and that she should develop more information about the program.
The next play reading is on Monday, Feb. 21 and they are reading the play Proof. Meggin said she thought this was a good way of getting members involved in the process of selecting plays.
Meggin suggested that we should each make a list of things that needed to be done at the theater as Irene suggested so that we could begin to recruit people for committees and assignments. We agreed to do this for the next meeting.
Maye reported that she has the proof of the 2005 ad book and that she will read it and get it back to Granite Image for printing.
It was agreed that we would place discussion of our 2006 - 2007 season on the agenda for the next few months. TJ wanted to see what we're going to do with the building before deciding, but all agreed that we need to make some choices soon. Our target announcement date is Annual Meeting.
Meggin reported that the Production Manual was at the printer and almost ready to be distributed.
Meggin announced that both she and Elsie are not working at the Suncook Valley Sun anymore and asked that all inquiries about Player business be directed to Elsie or Meggin. It was agreed this would be posted in the Newsletter.
Mo Demers submitted a letter of resignation, as of the 2005 Annual meeting. The Board discussed their terms of office and it was discovered that Mo's term ended anyway this year. Her resignation was accepted with regret, but she will serve until the Annual Meeting. Mo also asked permission from the Board to purchase a laptop computer to store the Player's financial program on that could be transferred from Treasurer to Treasurer. She stated that she should be able to get one for $500 or less.
Meggin asked Mo for a list of members and contact numbers so she can recruit additional help for Rotary Dinners.
We discussed whether our theater seats ever got up on the NHCTA bulletin board. It was decided that we have to get rid of all the seats we are storing as soon as possible.
Meggin then asked if we would like to look into scheduling a preset Board meeting. After a brief discussion, a Motion was made that for 2005 we preset all of the Board meetings to fall at 7 pm on the third Wednesday of the month at the Scenic Theater, and that we would revisit this motion in a year's time. The Motion carried unanimously.
As Maye will be absent for the next Board meeting, Meggin will be secretary pro tem for that meeting.

The next Board meeting is March 16, 2005 at 7 pm at the Scenic Theatre.
A Motion to adjourn was passed at 9:16 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Maye Hart