AMT Theater
ANNUAL REPORT 2023 - 2024

In April of 2023 AMT produced a new musical "On The Right Track", book written by Tony Sportiello, music and lyrics by Al Tapper. The show ran for six weeks to full houses and rave reviews. In May of 2023 AMT produced "The Addams Family Jr.", based on the Broadway musical. This was a youth theater show that ran for ten performances and engaged twenty young actors to full houses. In June of 2023 AMT ran a week long new play reading series, featuring works from different, unpublished writers. The program was intended to introduce new plays and new authors to the Hell's Kitchen community and show the writers how their plays worked in front of a live audience. In August of 2023 AMT held another week of play readings from new authors in front of a live audience. These were new plays which had never been heard before and the writers received invaluable feedback. In September of 2023 AMT began "Bettinger's Luggage", a play about a Jewish family living in lower Manhattan during the 1970s, trying to make a living and coexist with their extremely diverse neighbors. The show ran for two weeks, was featured on radio and television and played to full houses. In November of 2023 AMT co-produced an original musical entitled "Baggage at the Door", written by Dana Aber. The show told the story of a woman undergoing mental health issues and how she was able to cope. In December we held a Best of AMT celebration bringing back some of the many artists who contributed over the year. In January of 2024 we did an invited audience only reading of a new musical entitled "Upside Down". It used fourteen actors and we're hoping to produce it in 2025. In February of 2024 we did the Youth Theater version of "The Prom", the Broadway hit which tells the story of a lesbian girl whose town threatens to close the senior prom rather than let her bring a female companion. It's a very contemporary story which resonated with many of our young actors. In March of 2024 we presented an evening of Colin Quinn, the Saturday Night Live star and Bobby Moresco, the Academy Award winning playwright of "Crash". Colin performed excerpts from his shaw "An Irish Wake" and Bobby interviewed Colin about his career in movies, film, theater and stand up comedy. At the end of March we worked with the film entity RISE FLIX, which is a networking-integrated streaming platform catering directly to independent and student filmmakers with the goal of facilitating the process of “getting your work out there” to industry professionals while NOT requiring exclusive rights from filmmakers' work.

My primary goal as the General Manager of AMT Theater is keeping costs low while production values high. Running a smooth ship with a happy crew makes that goal easier to attain. Over the last two years, I’ve learned good communication is key, whether it’s with internal staff, industry colleagues, rental crews or coveted audience members. The more informed people are, the happier they are and the more efficient AMT runs. It has been quite a year for AMT Theater. With every new project and production, we are becoming more and more recognizable in our local Hell’s Kitchen community (awarded 2023 Runner Up for W. 42nd Street’s “Best Venue”) and in the NYC theater community as a whole. Throughout our shows like On The Right Track, The Prom and Bettinger’s Luggage, AMT’s houses have been averaging at 95% capacity...with a little help from some complimentary ticket subscribers. Working closely with Maria Cameron at Actor’s Equity and Logan Dolamore at Local 802 musicians’ union, we’ve managed to stay within our projected budgets for our union productions. Both union representatives have been extremely generous with their time and expertise helping us plan and execute our contracts within the union guide lines. Since we produced both union and non-union shows last year, we utilized two different payroll companies. ABS Payroll was our employer of record for On The Right Track, making sure all wages, taxes and benefits were paid to the appropriate accounts. ABS does not generally work with 1099 productions however, so we switched to an online accounting service called bill.com for Bettinger’s Luggage. This allowed the payroll to run smoothly for our fabulous non-Equity cast of fourteen. As a cost saving decision, we have moved from a corporate bookkeeping service to independent bookkeeper, Tony Harkin. Tony has been amazing in helping us seamlessly transition our books from the for-profit to the new not-for-profit account. He has specific ideas for analyzing our expenditures and using our funds more efficiently as we grow. Tony is also part of a musical theater improv group that we hope to see perform on the AMT Stage one of these days! Finally in March of ’24 we installed a brand new 9’x16’ movie screen and a state-of-the-art film projector so we can include screen writers in our theatrical mission to support new writers. The additional hardware will also help us capture an alternative customer base from film screenings and film festivals. We see AMT recouping our investment in one year. Currently we have Bobby Moresco, an Oscar winning writer, utilizing the setup for an instructional evening of film dissection, story telling and Q & A. We also have RISE FLIX, a networking and streaming platform catering to independent and student filmmakers, booked for a one-night-only showcase of short films. We look forward to continuing this partnership promoting young filmmakers. Last but not least, AMT is planning our inaugural AMT International Film Festival for the first week of September. Our festival will be listed on Film Freeway, a user-friendly platform advertising film festivals and streamlining the film maker submission process. We are excited to work with Pete Dorton as a consultant on this endeavor. Pete is an award winning film producer and actor and has organized several successful film festivals. His professionalism and eye for detail will establish a baseline for what we hope will be many more film events to come.

AMT Youth Theater is a compassionate program that values acceptance, kindness and safety above all else. We are a space to grow, learn and be inspired by the joy of telling stories as we work together to create a fantastic show! We prioritize kindness, compassion, diversity and inclusion. We create a safe space for our youth. When they walk into our space they will feel accepted and seen. We respect each individual who joins our theater family. Performing is one of the most vulnerable, but also liberating (and important) experiences one can experience. The youth need to feel safe to express themselves. “To enter a theatre for a performance (and rehearsal) is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination.” April - May: Rehearsals for The Addams Family begin at Ripley Grier. The Addams Family Shows May 30, 31, June 1 and 6, 7 and 8 at AMT Theater. We had packed houses for this hilarious, kooky and heartfelt musical. 20 talented youth took us on a rollercoaster ride with this hit show! Our main emphasis was on the importance of family. June 6/7: Talkback with Broadway The Addams Family Cast Member - Liz Ramos, a cast member from the Broadway production of The Addams Family did a talkback for our cast and audience. August 22 - 31: Broadway Intensive Summer Camp - We wrote a musical Review show called The Truth Is. The teens had classes in acting, singing, dancing, writing, building a character, puppetry, musical theatre history, and audition technique. They had an off broadway performance of their new piece. This included a talkback with a professional casting director: Helene Galek, performer: Bryan Seastrom (Anastasia Tour) and writer: Evan Edwards (Broadway Shark Tank). September 30th: Auditions for The Prom October 7th - Rehearsals for The Prom and Tap Class begin at Sunlight Studios October 20th - Mary Lauren Teaches a seminar for the NYC Experience December 20th - AMT Youth Theatre performs at The Best of AMT The AMT Youth Theater and Tap Class were thrilled to be included in the best of AMT. They did numbers from Beauty and the Beast and The Addams Family. January - The Prom Theatre Rehearsals/Extra Rehearsals Begin at AMT Theater February - Adding Sets and Costumes for The Prom The Prom Team: Viv Wadleigh - Costumes, Steven Carey - Set Design, Chris Gardner - Lighting Design The Prom Shows February 8, 9, 10, 11 and 15, 16, 17 and 18 This beautiful musical of acceptance and love could not have represented AMT Youth Theater more! We were thrilled to open to enthusiastic and attentive audiences. February 17th We had a talkback with two original cast Members of The Prom. Angie Schworer and Christopher Sieber graciously agreed to have a talkback with our audience and cast. The room was abuzz with excitement. They reinforced AMT Youth Theater’s number one rule: “Lead with kindness.”

Theater is a dynamic art form that constantly seeks innovation and fresh voices. Our New Work Program embodies this spirit by nurturing early to established playwrights, directors, and performers, and providing them with a platform to create groundbreaking productions. We are proud that our works in development represent the people of New York, and the Midtown community. This annual report highlights the achievements, challenges, and future goals of our New Work Development Program over the past year. The New Work Program aims to support the development and production of original theatrical works. It provides resources such as rehearsal periods on stage, full length readings, and access to an off-broadway theater and audiences. Highlights from the Past Year: AMT began its New Work Development Program in 2022, and presented its first reading in January 2023. We received over 130 scripts, and gave eight of them a reading on our off-broadway stage in 2023. Our reading series is a chance for playwrights to hear their play out loud, and also hear artists and audience’s initial response and feelings. This is crucial to developing a new play. We are also presenting new work for our community of artists and neighbors. Our goal is to be a local theatrical home for artists and audiences in the same neighborhood as one of the global theatrical centers. We want to present plays that reflect the lives and stories of our audience members, and we want to include our audience's insights and feedback when choosing programming for our season. We are very excited to find and develop new work that is diverse in subjects, backgrounds, and experiences, and we hope the audiences will find stories that are not only entertaining, but represent their community. Through the eight readings we experienced new stories from early to established playwrights. We also held a talkback after each reading with the playwright, director, and actors on their experiences with the new piece, and audience’s members gave feedback, and asked insightful questions. The talkbacks allow for 360 collaboration, to allow for the strongest future for the new play. While the past year brought many successes, we also challenged ourselves to grow. Our 2023 Giving Tuesday event was dedicated to raising money to support our reading program. Due to the success of our efforts we are now able to give each participating playwright, director, and performer a minimal stipend for their travel and participation. We hope to continue to push the boundaries of compensating artists when their work is in development, and not just when fully produced. Future Goals We are excited to be immediately expanding our program. We are kicking off our 2024 season with a Spring Reading Festival featuring eight plays ranging from shorts to full length. We hope over this next year we will be able to provide a space for playwrights to focus on their process, and celebrate the development phase of creating a story. We believe focusing more on the process rather than the product allows for more accessible and equitable stories that artists and audiences are excited to participate in, allowing a strong future for live storytelling at AMT and beyond.

It’s been a creatively fabulous and prosperous year at AMT, producing multiple shows, a New Play Reading Festival, our Broadway without Borders Program: The New York Experience and hosted a handful of Parties and Benefits. We would like to thank Westway Diner for providing us with an abundance of cannolis for Bettinger’s Luggage, Robert Guarino, CEO of Marseille, Nizza and 5 Napkin Burger, three wonderful restaurants around the corner from AMT who donated various items for these parties and shout out to Bobby and Amanda Moresco from The Actors Gym for supporting us with your time and talent to help support the theater. This year we had the opportunity to work with some wonderful new directors, stage managers as well as lighting, set and costume designers, adding to our circle of professionals who can call AMT home. The theater itself got some wonderful upgrades this year as well! Our largest and most exciting improvement is the installation of a gorgeous 9’ X 16’ movie screen and projector. Thank you to Lighting Designer, Aidan Bezark, for the installation of this equipment. This addition will give us the ability to offer film makers a beautiful space to host screenings, shout out to RiseFlix for being first up to use the new screen, as well as the opportunity to use projections in future set designs. We added surround speakers, thank you, sound designer Ryan Marsh for your advice, several new lighting instruments into our grid, offering even more options from our already state of the art, digital audio and LED lighting systems. We finished carpeting the area in front of our stage, covering the last remnants of the wooden dance floor, so that our beautiful black carpet extends throughout the space. We recently had our stage floor and theater walls painted as we work to keep our space as elegant as the day we opened. Towards that end, we added corner guards to help protect wall edges during load in’s and strikes. Running a theater is a little like parenting. Lots of things to follow up on and many phone calls at all hours of the day and night. Gratefully, myself and some of our staff live close by and are ready to help when called upon.

As Marketing Director for AMT THEATER, my primary goal is getting the word out about the theater in general, and what we are doing in our space. Our image in the community is key. This includes the promotion and representation of the theater, as well as individual productions and events both in house and guests, the public image of the theater, and branding of the theater as an organization and individual shows. This includes such aspects as digital marketing, social media including Facebook, Instagram,Twitter, Linkedin, etc, graphics and design, videos, reels, advertising and media planning, outreach, publicity / public relations support, website updates, blogs, newsletters, community outreach, events, networking, papering neighborhoods with fliers, posters, phone calls and more. Good solid and regular communication is key with internal staff, guests, industry colleagues, audience members, community constituents, and more. The more information is shared, the more the theater shines. 2023 was an amazing year for AMT Theater. We are a recognized local Off-Broadway theater in our local Hell’s Kitchen, Times Square community and in the theater world. Twice we have received awards from W42st.com BEST OF AWARDS, in 2023 we were runner up for “Best Venue”, and in 2022 we won “Best Newcomer”. We have spoken and are members of The Broadway Association. The organization, founded in 1911, is a not-for-profit business association devoted to the cultural and economic betterment of midtown west, which comprises the Broadway theater district. Members include property owners, major corporations, hotels, advertisers, unions, civic associations, theater companies, developers, banks, law firms, airlines and publishers. The Association works together with other civic, cultural and business organizations and with the City to upgrade services in the Broadway Theater District, helping to foster the healthy climate that ushered in the development renaissance we currently enjoy. SHOWS: Our shows have gotten press and exposure and our audiences have grown. Youth Theater classes Youth Theater shows - The Prom Jr and The Addam’s Family Jr New Works Development Reading Series - Spring and Fall Musicals and Plays - On The Right Track a musical, Bettinger’s Luggage Baggage at the Door Cabarets - Kelli’s Casual Cabaret, Best of AMT Theater, etc An Evening With Bobby Moresco and Colin Quinn, Hosted by Dan Lauria An Evening With Bobby Moresco, Hosted by Dan Lauria AND MORE CLASSES / COLLABORATIONS: Currently we have The Actors Gym / Academy Award Winner Bobby Moresco as a partner for our theater. Bobby is a utilizing our space for classes, workshops, and events on film history and dissection, storytelling, and more. We host ShopTalk, a theater networking group. We host a Shakespeare group regularly as well. We also collaborate with student run RISE FLIX, a networking and streaming platform catered to independent and student filmmakers, that hosted our first one-night-only showcase of short films and talk back sessions. We look forward to continuing this partnership promoting up and coming and new and student filmmakers. AUDIENCES: Our audiences /houses have been averaging at 95% capacity. We have a robust outreach to the community including senior centers, youth groups, local housing complexes and regular ticket subscribers. FILM / VIDEO: In March of 2024 we installed a brand new 9’x16’ movie screen and a state-of-the-art film projector so we can include screen writers in our theatrical mission to support new writers, as well as film festivals and screenings. The additional technology we now have has allowed us to capture an alternative customer base within the film and educational communities. SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook: 459 followers - https://www.facebook.com/AMTtheater45/ Instagram: 1695 followers - https://www.instagram.com/amttheater45/ X: 61 followers - https://twitter.com/AMTtheater45 Elbast / Mailing list: over 2000 contacts Our content has consistently grown, and our engagement has increased with each new collaboration and show. Our behind the scenes video posts get the most engagement. We plan on increasing our followers and reach through these collaborations, including with our Youth Theater, Bobby Moresco film audiences, our collaboration with the Rise Flix film platform, our new upcoming Film Festival, and more. AMT THEATER 2024 MARKETING ANNUAL REPORT JOAN PELZER MARKETING DIRECTOR AMT THEATER

The Development Department has had a very successful year at AMT Theater. We took the lead on transitioning our theatre from an LLC to a not-for-profit, this required a lot of research and bringing on the right lawyer, Vincent Chirico, Esq. and CPA, William Skody, both of whom helped us form our Board and draft our by-laws. Thank you Vincent and William for all of your help and guidance. We are now waiting on the final piece of the puzzle from the IRS before we can launch into the heady world of grant applications, we can’t wait to rise to the challenge! To generate extra income we decided to sell concessions, which has had a mixed response and we are still working on the right items to sell due to our no eating or drinking in the auditorium rule (which keeps our space looking fantastic, so we are on board with this rule). Once we are finished with our current stock we will look into sustainable bottled water to sell and non-crumbly snacks. After a series of hit and miss purchases we are honing in on what merchandise is popular with our audience members, mugs not so much, framed photographs of the cast, yes please. Merchandise is a great way to get our name out there so we are trying new things for each show and figuring out what works, we have introduced AMT Theater notebooks for our Reading Festivals and New Work Development Program. The Development Department revamped the website to mark our transition to a not-for-profit, giving the site a cleaner more streamlined look. Additional pages were added and it is updated regularly to reflect the most up to date information available for our visitors. Part of the website update was creating the AMT Theater Blog which has regular posts about the day to day runnings of the theater, engagement is growing and Zoë really enjoys writing each post. Thank you to Daniel Kiss who trouble shoots any issues that seem impossible at the time. We also created a Mailing List and eBlast system through MailChimp and we have grown the mailing list to over 2000 active subscribers! We often work in tandem with the Marketing Department to get our name and productions out into the world and the eBlasts that go out are a team effort. 2023 was the first time AMT Theater took part in Giving Tuesday. We created a campaign focused on our New Work Development Program and raised $2800. Most of this money went towards our Reading Festival in April where each writer, director and actor received a small stipend for their participation and we were be able to cover some of the printing costs. The rest will go towards more readings throughout the year. Thank you to Mario Pedernera, our intern last year, who helped create some of the graphics, your help was invaluable. We look forward to our new Giving Tuesday Campaign, having learnt many lessons from this first one I believe we will raise even more in 2024. Thank you to everyone who donated, your support enables and encourages us to keep doing this good work. The AMT Theater Team is small, but powerful, each department works together and helps with each project, thank you to the rest of the crew, couldn’t have done any of this without you!

ERASING BORDERS FOR BROADWAY'S FUTURE. AMT Theater and IDEA share a common objective: to erase borders and develop young performers for the growth of a more inclusive industry and the fulfillment of dreams. In October 2023, for the second time in a row, AMT Theater planned out and hosted the NYC Experience alongside IDEA (Instituto de Desarrollo Artístico), a performing arts school in Guadalajara, Mexico. This project allows young musical theater students from Mexico to prepare with Broadway professionals, polish their technical skills, learn from their experiences and they even got to see two Broadway shows for free! These eager kids had the opportunity to learn from AMT’s very own Mary Lauren, who helped them with singing and performing techniques; they learned from Ezekiel Andrew (Mufasa alternate in “The Lion King” Broadway), they had an incredible dance class with Jessice Lee Goldyn (Nini in “Moulin Rouge” Broadway) and learned one of the most popular dance routines ever: “I Hope I Get It” from “A Chorus Line”. They also heard the experiences of latinx actors that happened to be performing at our venue, Sean Church Gonzalez and Ivan Goris, who were part of the cast of AMT’s production of “Bettinger’s Luggage”, who had a fun chat with the kids about their careers in theater. And finally they had a master class with Mauricio Martinez (“On Your Feet” Broadway) who is actually Mexican and shared his very inspiring experience with the kids. From his start in Mexico as a soap opera actor and singer, and his transition to the US to become a musical theater actor. The kids also got to see a Broadway and two Off Broadway shows for free and, of course, bought tickets for some more! You can’t get enough theater! These rising stars had the time of their life and we are so proud that the second year of the NYC Experience was such a success. We are constantly building on our experiences and have made some adjustments to the program for the 2024 program. We are also creating an Adult version of the program which we will launch in 2025! Overall, it was a great experience of learning and exploring their theatrical passion!