Off-Stage with Diana Martinez Executive Director

Paramount School of Performing Arts

We have been working on a business plan for a Paramount School of Performing Arts that will be housed at the North Island Center across the street from the Paramount Theatre. I have been thinking about it for quite a while and we are working on funding and partners, but here's the plan for it.

I want to create a school that is performance based and has a show at the end of every semester. Not all students have to perform there will be technique classes in dance, voice and music, and then an optional performance class for each grade level. The idea is to promote synergy and have the students work together from different focused disciplines to collaborate and create a show.

The other "Different" component to our school is we will leverage our shows at the Paramount and try to schedule "master classes" with certain shows. We hope performers will come and work with our students and talk to them about what it's like to perform professionally. We have already scheduled a masters class with the company of Barrage, and are working on STOMP, Forever Tango, Glenn Miller orchestra and others for our first year. We hope to open our school and are thinking about offering classes in private voice, music, pop  music, orchestra and pop band. If you have any thoughts on our school or ideas, we are open to hearing them. We are really interested in hearing from potential students on what you want to learn and experience. So, please feel free to send your feedback! or email me at dianam@TheParamountTheatre.com.

The New Season

We are avidly working on finalizing the new season and waiting to get a response from Sara Evans, Engelbert Humperdink, Howie Mandel and Frankie Avalon, Who we do have confirmed is very nice, about 30 -35 shows including "Movin Out" the Billy Joel Musical, Cirque Jungle Dreams, Joy Behar, Frank Caliendo, Paris Can Can, Forever Tango, Shanghai Circus, Sally Struthers starring in the 25th anniversary tour of Nunsense, and many more.

We are going to do something different this year, we are going to have an existing subscriber sale first, a week later we are going to have a NEW subscriber campaign. The "Tickets on Sale Party" will be only for NEW SUBSCRIBERS who purchase tickets to 3 or more shows, then tickets will go on sale to the public after that. Many of you buy tickets to three shows, but are not on the subscriber list, and missing out on preferred seating, so this year we hope to get you in the right seats and signed up early! Existing subscribers will be notified of the new season by letter within 30 days, so watch your mailbox!

Johnny Depp Movie

As most of you know, Public Enemies staring Johnny Depp filmed here at the Paramount Theatre on Monday, April 7. It was quite an affair but exciting for everyone and the city of Aurora. Johnny Depp was filming his new movie John DIllinger at our theatre this weekend. We had a lot of excitement for about 48 hours. (48 hours straight through almost for some of our staff! It was really interesting to see all the work involved, unfortunately no shots of production which I think was really the most interesting, but I thought You may want to see the Johnny photos! He came out at midnight after shooting and addressed the crowd, that's where these photos are from. You couldn't believe the people waiting outside for hours, some for two days! We have decided we are going to put a plaque on the seat that Johnny Depp sat in and make it a part of our Paramount Tour so now seat J112 will have historical significance! A big congratulations to our staff who did a marvelous job. The Public Enemies staff called to say they enjoyed filming with us so much that they will be passing the word to other location managers that The Paramount Theatre is a great place to shoot a movie. We are working on getting some sort of a premier or screening for The Paramount Theatre, but the movie does not come out until late spring early summer so stay tuned!

False Alarms & New Years Resolutions

Okay, first my New Years resolution is to keep up with this blog! I am so sorry, that it has been so long!

It's been a very busy couple of months between all the shows & holiday parties we've been hosting, in addition to booking some new shows for the rest of this season... I have lots to tell you about the new shows, but I'll tell you about it in the next posting.I need to talk about the Saturday performance of Hairspray! and the surprise GUEST star of the show, the FIRE ALARM that went off.

First, on behalf of the staff and crew we are very sorry for the inconvenience. This has been an ongoing problem for us since the addition of the New Grand Gallery Lobby. As some of you may know, when one does an  improvement to an existing building several other things come into play and other requirements and improvements need to be made to meet new code requirements. Part of that included adding smoke detectors above the stage. The problem with that is, most touring shows today use artificial "smoke" or fog for stage and lighting effects, (Actually most every show does). The problem is these detectors cannot distinguish artificial smoke from real "Fire smoke". And when it's cold outside and the heat is on and the hot air rises it pushes the smoke right up into the detectors. Thus, the fire alarm goes off in the middle of shows. We have been trying to work with the fire marshal to come up with a solution to this problem, while still remaining compliant. It has been a very frustrating problem, and last Saturday night we couldn't by pass the situation and thus the alarm went off, and we had to evacuate. When the alarm goes off we are obligated to evacuate. We have talked to the fire department this week and hope that we have finally rectified this issue once and for all.

Things you should know is that the The Paramount is one of the best theaters in terms of safety, we have rehearsed evacuation procedures,  a "Doctor in the House Program" where we offer free tickets to physicians in order to have them available to you at each show, and we have a defibrillator in the lobby. We also have annual CPR training available to our staff. In addition we hire police officers and security for every show.

We learned a lot from this experience and appreciate all your feedback. What we have changed is, in the future, the stage manager who is always on stage near a microphone, will immediately notify the audience of the exact circumstances to an emergency,i.e. smoke, fire, tornado etc.  Second we will try to get staff to communicate to the audience outside of the theater a status report on re-entry and circumstances. Lastly, we will try to communicate  the resolution to the audience, so that you feel safe after coming back into the theater.

I thank you for your support and understanding and again, we apologize for the inconvenience.

Half Price Tickets - to many shows

The League of Chicago Theatres has coordinated a new system on line in conjunction with Ticketmaster to offer HALF PRICE tickets, on day of show ON LINE. Paramount Theatre will be participating in this new venture. Prior to this Chicago had "Hot-Tix Booths" or 1/2 price ticket booths located downtown. Due to the logistics of traveling downtown to get tickets and make it back to Aurora in time for a show, we never participated. But now that tickets are available on line, Paramount Theatre will participate in this program. So if we have any seats left on the day of show, we will make them 1/2 of them available on line at www.hottix.org at half price. I checked today and there are 37 shows throughout Chicago offering half price tickets, from American Girl Review to Second City. So I thought you might want to know about this great opportunity and check it out when you are looking for something to do.

Clint Black's Wife, Lisa Hartman tomorrow night!

We just got a call from Clint Black's agent asking if we would mind, if his wife Lisa Hartman, Clint's wife,  could perform a duet with him. We agreed, thinking it will be a nice treat for his fans to see his beutiful television wife have her singing debut on stage at the Paramount.

Clint said, the song will be on his new CD, but she is shy about performing live. Black also said in an interview, "You  don't know what I have to promise to get her to walk out on a stage with me in front of thousands of people to sing". So YOU will be the first to see her live! Let's all cross our fingers!

Booking the 2008-2009 Season in LA

I just got back from the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles where they hosted the Western Arts Alliance Booking Conference. It's a trade show where all of the agents introduce the 2008-2009 seasons and who will be touring. It looks like it will be a great year for Broadway shows for the Paramount.SInce many of the downtown Chicago theatres have long runs that wil "Sit down" many of the new shows will be moving out of the city next season. It looks like we will get the premier of "The Wedding Singer", also on my list is "Pajama Game" it's the new Harry Connick Jr. version, (Sans Harry) but with the new orchestrations, choreography and direction. Also Tyla Thorpe choreopgraphed the tour for Billy Joel's "Moving out" which we are holding. Other tours are "Footlose", Oliver" and "Chicago". Other acts we are taking under consideration are, Yanni, an amazing Dance show called "Burn The Floor" and Sally Struther is doing the 25th anniversary tour of "Nunsence" which looks great! If you have a minute, e-mail me and let me know what shows sound interesting to you.

Our production manager, Val Devine, cameout for the last 2 days of the conference to meet the agents and while we were driving back one night we had a "Star sighting".While lost in Beverly Hills, at a stop sign, Adam Sandler pulled up next to us and waved his arms around imitating us, trying to figure out which direction we should be going, and smiled and waved as he turned into Bel Air. He had his big dog in the SUV with him!

Now for the LA gossip, I got to stay with my friend Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) who is now producing. (Sean used to work for me when I directed shows at Pheasant Run Theatre in St. Charles ) He has a new show that he developed and sold called "8 Days a week" it's about the assitants to the recording executives in New York. Sort of Grey's Anatomy meets "Entourage" and how the assistants really run the industry. It stars fellow Pheasant Run Alumni and friends Rosa Blasi and Anna Chlumsky. I am so proud of all of them and can't wait to see the show air in December.