"The King and I" - Final Bows

On Sunday afternoon, the final show of DMTC's "The King and I" was presented at downtown Davis' Varsity Theater.

The strike was expected to be long and arduous. The City of Davis is preparing to perform an inventory of the Varsity Theater this week, in anticipation of turning management of the Theater over to Mishka's Coffee House. As a result, every single object in the Theater owned by DMTC had to be removed - every light, every gel, even the refrigerator.

DMTC is virtually an all-volunteer company (only the piano player can expect to be paid). Nevertheless, the last several shows, DMTC has followed a new policy of picking the tab for a big communal meal after all work is finished. I think it's a good policy, since it keeps a few die-hard workers from being unfairly burdened by volunteers who leave prematurely (a particular problem with small casts or difficult strikes), and secures a large amount of goodwill, but it has a downside in that certain other hard-working subsets of the DMTC family find they can't participate, because of scheduling difficulties, if nothing else.

Because "The King and I" was a large family show, many kids as well as adults took the offer of a big communal meal. Roughly 50 of us took the post-strike repast, crammed into the loft at Woodstock's Pizza in downtown Davis.

Oh yes, the cinnamon pizza was pretty good!


DMTC Co-Producer Steve Isaacson takes a bow with the cast after the last show. There were a lot of new cast members in "The King and I," so there are quite a few I (sadly) don't recognize or don't know, but in this photo, I do recognize Maya Rothman, Maria Ramirez, Katy Fast, Juan Ramos, Steve Isaacson, Ryan Adame, Marguerite Morris, and Jennifer Bonomo.


A last, loving post-show look at Juan Ramos' set artistry and handiwork.