Notes from Nina: Knock knock. Who’s there? You were.

You heard me! Thank you so much. Thank you for reaching out to me after my last Notes From Nina. It was wonderful to hear from you with your thoughts. It was also so great to have over 70 people make contributions to TADA!. It felt good to know that you actually read these Notes and that you care about TADA!. It really helps me and the rest of the staff to know that people like TADA! and want TADA! to succeed.

I’ve always found this job to be somewhat isolating and writing emails and sending them out to a group and not getting a response adds to that feeling. “How can a job where one is constantly dealing with people be isolating” you ask? Well, as the founder and leader I’m not one of the gang. The staff can be very close but there’s still a distance with me. I have been doing this for a long, long, long time. Getting your responses really does make a difference.

I started working part-time at age 17 at Barnes and Noble while going to college as well as Stage Managing. At 23, I started TADA! with Linda Reiff. For the first 5 years I didn’t get paid. I worked other jobs to be able to pay rent (my half was only $150/month) for a small apartment in the far west 40’s. Can you believe that? My bedroom was 4×8. My roommate’s bedroom was twice the size of my room. There was one big room that had a bathtub (put a table top on top of it when not using it as a tub), small sink, stove, refrigerator, and one cabinet. We had a couch and a TV. The toilet had its own room and that was all that could fit in there. It’s what we did at that time to be able to work and make TADA! happen. Doing whatever necessary (except learn to drive – there had to be something that I didn’t have to do) to keep the theater alive.

Once I stopped doing other jobs, I worked numerous hours a week at TADA!. For 37 years I’ve worked multiple jobs and long hours putting TADA! before almost everything else except my daughter. Putting TADA! before me. It’s always been so important to me to help make growing up easier for kids in whatever way I can. I just want to make the world a better place and this theater is my way of doing that. 

Why am I saying all this? To give you more of an insight as to where I am and how I got here. To let you know that your gift is truly motivational and helps me and TADA! keep going. 

And keep going we do. We produced our first production since COVID began this past weekend. You’ll be able to buy tickets to see this new production on Vimeo starting August 15th (a link will be in the next Notes from Nina). I was so proud of everyone who worked on this new production. Alum Gabi Gross did a great job on her directorial/choreographic debut. Other alum who did great work on the show — Costume Designer, Ceanna Bryant; Lighting Designer, Anthony Raddi and Bass Player, Reynaldo Jeremy Nunez. I love having Alum work at TADA!. It was great to work live with the 13 Ensemble Members in the show and the three working on the production and others who came in to usher for our limited audience. This was the first live production that most of our audiences have seen in a year and a half. Also, last week was our first live weeklong camp and there’s another one next week (you can register here). 

Thank you all again for reading and responding. If you didn’t get to contribute yet, you still can by clicking here.  We’re so close to reaching our fundraising goal for this fiscal year. 

There will be one more Notes From Nina next week and then Notes will be back mid-September.