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6/5

While Sterling Playmakers would love to kick off our 25th season this fall as planned, we need to be able ensure the health and well-being of our volunteers and audience members. After exploring safety measures, cleaning protocols, and other challenges, our Board of Directors has determined that it would be irresponsible to resume in-person activities at this time and made the difficult decision to postpone “The Social Secretary” and “Catch Me If You Can” to the fall of 2021. These productions will replace “The Unexpected Guest” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”. Our 25th season will now open with "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in Spring 2021.

The Board of Directors has also voted to hold our Annual Membership Meeting, scheduled for September 1, 2020, entirely online. Additional information for attending the meeting and voting in the Board of Directors Election will be available at a later date.

Sterling Playmakers stands against racism and racial injustice. We strongly condemn the brutality that took the lives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. We want to affirm our support for our Black members and the Black community, who are part of OUR community.

Our motto states that we are community theatre for the entire community. While we have become more diverse over the years, we recognize that we can do better when it comes to creating more opportunities for performers of all colors to feel welcome in our organization. We believe that when you know better, you should do better. We have moved forward in taking several concrete steps to do better for the Sterling community.

At our June Board of Directors meeting, we reaffirmed our commitment to being a theatre group for all. As a part of our dedication to being more inclusive, we have created a subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion to focus on moving our organization forward and giving our minority members a stronger forum to have their voices heard. This subcommittee had their first meeting on June 4, 2020 and looks forward to subsequent meetings to address concerns around equity and diversity within our organization.

We are committed to telling diverse stories. We know that we disappointed many of our members and audience when the closure of performance spaces caused postponement of two shows, both of which had completed months of preparation, removed Ragtime The Musical from our 2021 slate of shows. Therefore, we are excited to announce that our Board of Directors has committed to presenting Ragtime in 2022 as the capstone of our 26th season. This Tony Award-winning musical covers important racial and social topics, and has lead roles created for actors of color. This is the first step of many that we will be taking to reaffirm our commitment to telling stories that represent all parts of the American experience.

We look forward to serving the community in a commitment to social justice and standing in racial solidarity with all who are taking part in this important work.

4/9

After careful thought and deliberation of our duty in the face of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak and taking into consideration current state mandates, the Board of Directors has made the difficult decision, based on we believe to be in the best interest of our volunteers and audience members, to reschedule the 2020 performances of The Laramie Project and Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical to 2021 and have updated our 25th season to include both productions.

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Heartbreakingly, we lost an entire weekend of performances for Puffs, or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School for Magic and Magic. We congratulate the cast, crew, and production team for their remarkable work in the face of uncertainty. 

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At this moment, the Board of Directors is hopeful that the first shows of our 2020-2021 season, The Social Secretary and Catch Me If You Can, will perform as planned this fall. We work to raise the curtain on a new, exciting, and boundary-pushing season in the coming months.