Presidents Message


By Randal Metz
Hello everyone. This is the last month of my term as your President. At this time, I would like to discuss with you how well I feel the year has gone. When our current board took over, we had 3-5 members attending the last few meetings in May/June 2003. We have averaged 25 plus since then. We’ve covered a wide variety of meeting topids throughout the year. They include:
– Performance meetings
– Lessons in using paper mache’
– Avant Garde puppetry
– Panel discussion on television puppetry and stop motion animation
– Our annual Holiday Party and performance
– Paper Theater Performance and Traveling with puppets around the world.
– A huge day of Puppetry!
– Panel discussion on breaking into the birthday party business – whew!
– Plus many other small surprises.
We have looked at an examined the following areas of our guild:
Newsletter – The newsletter has gone through three changes this year. ALl aimed at getting the information out to our members in a timely manner. We have also voted to pay a stipend to our newsletter aditor. Due to take effect this year.
Email and Webpage – Matt Baume has taken over the running of out brand new web page at SFBAPG.org. It is his goal to archive our newsletters as well as archive all the emails we receive concerning news in our puppet world. This is the first year we’ve had a web page and Matt has many great ideas. Watch for them in the coming months. Mary Decker is doing a great job of keeping the membership informed via emails that she sends out. This is a hard job. Thanks Mary!
Day of Puppetry – The San Leandro Library hosted the day of puppetry for us at no cost to the membership! Penny Peck, our librarian liason is very interested in hosting this event each year for as long as we allowe her to.
Meetings – We spaced our monthly meetings all over the Bay Area in 2003-2004. I might add that only at Fort Mason did we pay for a meeting space. Everywhere else: libraries, homes, studios, they were happy to have us at no cost to the guild.
And now…the moment I take great pleasure in announcing! The San Francisco Guild is only as good as the membership allows us to be. And this year, the membership came to the aid of our guild and shared their talents over and over and over again. Here is a list of members who ewent the extra mile to make the San Francisco Bay Area Puppetteers Guild so spectacular this year:
Lee Armstrong – Lecturer, Workshop leader, & Guild host
Nick Barone – Performer and Lecturer
Rose Sage-Barone – Volunteer and Raffle Organizer
Matt Baume – Webmaster and Web Designer
Pamela Brown – Treasurer, Volunteer & Worshop Leader
Peter Brizzi – Performer
Michael Borroughs – Vice President, Workshop Leader, & Performer
Mary Decker – Volunteer and Email Coordinator
Tim Giugni – Performer
Elisheva Hart – Volunteer, Performer, & Workshop Leader
Olivia Huff – Newsletter Mailing, Performer and Lecturer
Talib Huff – Performer & Lecturer
Lewis Mahlmann – Performer
Kevin Menegus – Video Coordinator, Performer, Worshop Leader & Guild Host
Michael Nelson – Lecturer & Performer
Valarie Nelson – Lecturer and Performer
Jeffrey Pidgeon – Lecturer
Kamela Portuges – Lecturer and Guild Host
Karen Prell – Lecturer
Lettie Schubert – Volunteer & Lecturer
Tia Smirnoff – Volunteer & Worshop Leader
Mike Wick – Lecturer
Patti Wick – Volunteer
Susan Woolner – Newsletter Editor
and non-members:
Carl LaRue – Newsletter Editor
David Jones – Guest Performer
Penny Peck – San Leandro Library Liason
Jesse Vail – Guest Performer
Thanks to one and all for all your hard work. And…I look forward to another great year in the guild. Michael Burroughs is moving to the position of Co President with me. Together, we will continue to bring excitement and new talents to our great guild.
Thank you, Randall.