hi all when will everyone be back in the country? It's just that we'll need a meeting as soon as you all are. Number one on the agenda has to be the Musical. What one are we doing, where and when (NB) it's going to be held (see below) and what our budget will be (sponsorship). I have been looking into the possibility of getting the Theatre for us for the musical. The venue itself is ideal, perfect, glorious, awesome etc... I've just been in the Helix with a lovely woman by the name of Denise. She was kind enough to go through the official financial side of things as the boss is away but without him we dont get a quote for dcu associates / societies. The other problem is that every Thursday and Friday between now and the end of may is gone due to the new Eamon Dunphy show (yes, I did say Eamon Dunphy. Tv3 have hired him). This means that if we were to take the Theatre it would have to be from a Sat-Wed incl. So far the official fee for hiring out the theatre is 10,000 yoyos That's lots! We on the other hand would probably got it for 5,000 due to missing out on the two best nights of the week. If we throw in a percentage of the ticket sales (optional but I dont think it's needed) we could get it for 3,000 (these are all rough figures that myself and Denise have worked out). This venue would hugely cut the technical bill by about 2 grand (which will be about 3,500 if we put it on in the hub) so it's not really going to cost us that much more to have a better venue, proper stage, bigger audience and a wider scope for advertisement (brochure and posters in the helix as well as their mailing lists). I think that it would be of great advantage to us to put the musical on in the helix this year. This is the next step for us and I'd like you all to have a think on it. We would also get the use of one of their technical staff for 8 hours (setting up and stuff) which will help out the tech crew and they have their own guy for hanging sets and what not so that also rules out some of the manual labour from our point of view. we would also be able to set up in a day and not have the problems of all night rigging and design that goes on in the hub before every major show. That is all. You can see that I am obviously sold on this and I would really like it to go ahead in the helix but it is true that we would be loosing out on our two best nights of the week. We could have previews on the sat. and concessions on the Sunday to get people in but and I can see us selling out Monday-wednesday. but that's a whole other story. As for rehearsals, provided that there's nothing else on in the Hub the week before we can rehearse in there or we can book a few hours during specific days to go in a practice. It would have to be a tightly run show and as yet we dont have a show or a director. Hope you're all enjoying your holidays. I'm off to do some shopping. Elaine