About um Jake Arkey, our director's arrival, was the sold-out student matinee of Little Women, which just happened a few weeks ago.

And we anticipate we are uh have sold out also the student matinee of a driving beat, the upcoming matinee.

And um already uh people are realizing Jake is here and the Theater Works matinees, student matinees are happening, and we worked with Nicole, pardon me if I mispronounced this name, Chu Weng, the ED of Pathwise, to provide 34 comp tickets so they can bring a student a group of eighth graders to the show.

And in case you don't know what Pathwise is, they they're an organization that aims to close the educational gap for underrepresented middle schoolers.

So they'll be in attendance at Mountain View.

Also, many of the shows that we programmed last season at the Center for Performing Arts achieved really strong programmatic success.

King James, which started my first season that I programmed by Rajiv Joseph, won numerous Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Awards, including Best Production for the entire Bay for theaters of 300 plus seats.

And that was in addition to some other awards.

And then at that same ceremony, recent Tony Award winner, Francis Ju, was awarded Best Featured Actor for Tiger Style by Mike Liu, which performed at the Mountain View Center the prior season.

And we have a long history with Francis.

We're already talking about how we can bring him back.

And I just felt like Francis embodies our locally grown, nationally known ethos mantra slogan.

I'm not sure what word to use, but um, so that was incredibly exciting to us to um to know that the last time Francis was on a regional stage was here in Mountain View on our stage, and we're looking to bring him back.

So also uh the Heart Sellers, which we programmed, which was by Lloyd Sun, saw a 10% increase in tickets uh from Cupertino Households, which is a city with a predominantly AAPI population.

And then we closed out the season with the longest title in the world, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean Collin, a new musical that had lyrics by trans icon Shakina, and so through that we saw outreach to the LBGTQIA plus organizations and a partnership with a Broadway producer, which is still an ongoing conversation.

Um then, of course, in 2025, Hershey Felder played to approximately 16,000 patrons over four weeks.

Um, and I thought this was fun for comparison.

The Shark Tank in San Jose has just over 17,500 seats.

And he's going to be back on the Mountain View Stages um this in the early in the next year.

Um our new works grew substantially in 2025.

We expanded the New Works Festival, which we do in August to include an international component.

Um we also presented the first readings from our Susan Fairbrook Core Writers Group, which is made up of uh local playwrights.

Jeffrey Lowe's gonna speak a little bit more about that, so I won't go into detail.

And as part of that festival, we had the Tony Award-winning creators of Come From Away, David Hine and Irene Sankoff in residence working on their new musical about autism, entitled Vienna, and they're gonna be uh Come From Away is the show that will close out the season on the Mountain View stages.

So that was exciting to have all these um renowned artists in our mix creating art with all of our local talent.

It's it was really a lovely season.

Um you asked about some of the setbacks.

So I will tell you because you know.

They happened.

So one of them, of course, was the withdrawal of the grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, like many, many arts organizations.

We lost our funding, a portion of funding for the Susan Fairbrook Core Writers Group, and in part that was because to receive those funds.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this.

So I'm to receive those funds.

We had to agree to just adjust our programming to align with the goals of the current administration, and we were not willing to do that.

So we went without that funding to continue the program.

Um also I will say that the change to the resident company agreement with Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, both the weeks restrictions, the 65% capacity goal, I have had an impact for me on in terms of what I can program where.

And so one of the reasons these changes present a challenge is that we're a mission-driven, not-for-profit theater company.

So we programmed to meet our budgetary goals to be fiscally responsible, but we do not program the art to make a profit.

That's not the point of what we're doing.

And as this is a historically predominantly white theater company that is committed to diversifying our audience and programming so that more of our community can see themselves reflected on our stages and have access to our work.

We must program shows that are artistically valuable and aligned with our mission, and probably won't meet the 65% capacity at this time as we build towards that audience.

So, an example of how that impacts programming.

So this year in our season, we are doing primary trust by Ebony Booth.

It is the 2024 Pulitzer Prize winning play.

Also, it is one of the top 10 plays presented in the country, and we're doing that in our Palo Alto theater space, because that terrific play seemed unlikely to reach the capacity we would need in the audience.

So we're doing it in our smaller space.

So that's just I wanted to give you a concrete example of how when we look at the two spaces, we have to make choices based on what serves the community and also meets goals.

And we're currently assessing the financial implications of the limited run on little women.

I think Lorraine may have some information about that at this point.

I know we're still closed, we're still assessing.

So we'll tell you about that.

All of that said, I'm so excited truly about the work we are doing and the strides we have made in just such a short time.

And I want our goal is to fill the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts.

That is our goal.

We want to fill it with people for every show that we do.

We want to make that the place to go to see exceptional professional theater.

And I think we share that goal.

So I really look forward to working with Teresa to working with all of you about creative solutions and ways in which we can achieve that goal together.

So I am now, if it's okay if we can do questions at the end, only because we're gotta open the show.

And I won't do my monologue that I prepared in interest of time.