Leo 22°

“Something unprecedented: An artist in whom we have invested much time, energy and do-re-mi emailed to say she’s not honoring her contract to perform at the Afterglow Festival. (Breathe) But never fear! Stella Starsky is here! Three years ago, Stella performed her original piece, Birth of the American Baroness, and floored the audience. Stella will present a newly developed BOTAB at Afterglow on Friday, September 15, at 7PM, en route to performing the piece at Dixon Place in NYC, October 5. It’s too late to re-design, re-print and re-circulate the 5K flyers out there; but we are quickly putting new posters into works, updating web pages, press releases and alerts et al. It will all be worth bringing you this beautiful new iteration of Birth of the American Baroness! Help Stella help us bridge this sudden gap in our programming on the busiest night of festival. I’m name-checking folks whom, if I recall correctly, saw the piece before. Please spread the word and come and see the show which must go on!”

That’s the paragraph I’m going to publish to put some kind of tourniquet on this situation where we now have a huge gaping hole in our programming. Mary Birdsong was meant to perform but I woke up on Sunday to an email, sent overnight, saying she’s not coming. That it isn’t financially feasible (we were paying for the whole thing) and also she had been sleeping with her director and he dumped her. Why would anyone admit these to be reasons? I’ve known Mary for thirty years but haven’t seen her in about ten. People change. I know that she had subsequently booked dates at Pangea in NYC to “practice” for Afterglow. I just contacted them. They responded that she cancelled TWO WEEKS AGO. If this turns out to be true. Then her way more recent note saying that she is also going to cancel Pangea is a lie. What’s wrong with people. We have sunk about $5K + into her show already. People are so unthinking and uncaring. I begged her to reconsider trying to appeal any which way. As a result she blocked me on Facebook. Nice. Oh well, everything happens for a reason I suppose. But why are the most high-maintenance folks (who spend hours and hours and email after email asking you question after question when something so simple as getting a hi-res photo to the festival warrants a thousand emails….) also the ones that do this sort of fucked-up fuck-you thing in the end. We are a non-profit for Chrissakes! People donated the money we spent on you you selfish ….#$%@%!!!!

Anyway, three years ago Stella did her show just days before she started her three-year masters degree program. Now she is just finishing her dissertation and, just days after, she will end up doing (a new, improved version of) the show again! As it is she is going to mount it in NYC in October so it might help her creatively. Meanwhile, we are struggling to fix this situation. I do this with a small team. We don’t have time to take away from what we are meant to be presently focusing on: Fundraising.

Karma, with whom I’ve become intimately aquainted, and though I like her very much, is a Bitch. And she doesn’t like this sort of thing from my experience.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
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