Hidden Treasure Productions

                                                                 11/30/20 Blog of Shadows of the Mind Performances by Kitty Inouye Our play, Shadows of the Mind, was most unusual. It was written long before Covid-19 hit, yet it was extremely relevant for the time. Some people were affected by the content, that they wanted other people to come watch it, as well. Being relevant to our current pandemic environment was incredibly important. For me, being one of the actors was both an honor and a privilege. Although it was challenging to convey the emotions of a grieving mother, it was not foreign to me. I appreciated the direction of Valerie Herrera who encouraged those raw feelings to emerge. Here are some different perspectives as well. From one of our actors and board members, Beverly Dennison; My experience as an actor playing a Shadow was stretching for me, as I have never played an evil entity before! It really put me in touch with the dark and manipulative side of those voices

                                                               These are crazy times! Agreed? Every time you turn around, there is a new precedent for this or for that! People are confused, depressed, lonely, stressed-out, financially-strapped, fearful, anxious, and even suicidal!  We are all dealing with more stress in these uncertain times than we have had in our entire lifetimes! We are looking for relief and an escape...and there is none! Movie theatres have just now begun opening, with limited seating. Live Theatre is even more sorely needed than watching a movie, which is a one-sided stress reliever. With Live Theatre, both the performers and the audience interact with one another to bring about laughter, sadness, epiphanies, and yes, even catharsis! It is an interactive, cooperative, and reciprocal type of entertainment that we have all missed during these past several months of Covid Quarantine and isolation! It is time to get together again in a live theatre setting! The

    Hidden Treasure Productions began in January of this year with the same high hopes that many other endeavors had. Don’t get me wrong! We still have high hopes and are going forward with the great desire to be successful! However, the onset of Coronavirus has caused us to be creative. Fortunate for us, our company is made up of “creative types!”   Early on, the decision was made to hold all auditions and rehearsals online through Zoom Technology. That has worked out surprisingly well. We had also planned to start meeting as a live cast in early August. The Jury is still out on that one, but we are hopeful that we will soon be able to rehearse outside in someone’s back yard in groups of less than 10. Living in a nice climate allows us to do that, even in the autumn months.    We currently have a perfect venue booked for October 9-11, 2020. However, if we must change the dates to early November, due to CDC gatherings restrictions, then that is what we’ll do. We must all be ada

As Hidden Treasure Productions (HTP), Our mission is to create quality professional plays, to take into the world. We have nine on the Board of Directors, and we are looking to add two more to the board. Each position requires you to live in the San Diego area. First off, we are looking for a lawyer to sit on the board and advise HTP, but have no other responsibilities to the organization. At this point, it will be a volunteer position, but our goal is to have it be a paid position in the future. The second position we are looking for is a Senior Accountant or Chief Financial Officer, who would assist the President and CEO of Hidden Treasure Productions with all financial statements. This position will also start as a volunteer but will become a paid position.                                                  Our History In October of 2018, we took a drama team to Uzhgorod, Ukraine. We performed a 2-Act professional-quality a play called PRODIGAL by James Shaver, that overw

                            Director of Productions Valerie Herrera                                       SHADOWS OF THE MIND Written by: Kanaan Hesseling Directed by: Valerie Herrera ALL ROLES:  Unpaid, Non-Union  Character Breakdown AUDITIONS:  Online-only, prerecorded self-taped, slated audition piece. Please submit a google drive folder link to valjoyherrera@gmail.com  by  July 30th , with the following items in the google folder: 1) A slated audition video with a 2-3 minute dramatic monologue or dialogue (with the offscreen reader) of your choice for each role you are auditioning for. Your slate should include your name, the play’s name, the playwright’s name, and the character’s name. 2) Your resume. Please make sure your resume is up to date. 3) Your headshot (if not included on your resume). If you don’t have a professional picture, a school photo will do. It’s important that the directors are able to reference you for casting purposes. Please also complete the following google

My wife Beverly and I went to “spy out the land” in the London, England area of Harpenden in February of 2020, during the same time that our drama workshops were taking place here at home. We were in Harpenden to plan for our future construction/work team to go there in September 16-28 of this year and for our HTP production to perform there on April 7-21, 2021. Here in Oceanside, Valerie Herrera, our Director of Production, directed the drama workshops for our coming production, Shadows of the Mind.  Here is her Blog about the workshops: https://donatnewblogaddress.blogspot.com/2020/04/blog-5-to-worshop-or-not-to-worshop.html On a beautiful February day, we flew out to a very chilly and rainy London, England. It was cold in Harpenden, UK, and it even snowed on one day. I was not prepared well enough for the cold weather, but our host, Susan was able to borrow a warm sweatshirt for me to wear while indoors. Susan Murphy is our good friend and contact, as well as the Site Development

Would you consider supporting Hidden Treasure Productions (HTP)? We are a start-up 501(c)(3) non-profit theatre company, preparing to perform the play  Shadows of the Mind in Oceanside, California in October of this year, before taking it to international countries, including Third World countries in 2021. Our desire is to take live theatre to places in the world where it is not common or readily available.  We are in need of 20 wireless mics for our cast of 20 actors. The cost is about $10,000.00 dollars or about $500.00 for each mic. Please watch the video below for more details.        https://hiddentreasureproductions.org/contact%2F-give                Donald Dennison 1-760-458-0653 https://hiddentreasureproductions.org      don@hiddentreasureproductions.org Our Mission Statement is: Our mission is to create quality professional plays, to take into the world.

This is how it all started for me… anyway, kind of. When I was asked to perform in a theatrical play opposite of my wife, who by the way is a brilliant actor, my response was; “but I’m not an actor.” This two-act play would be a comedy in front of an audience of 300 plus for two showings… GULP!!! Having no experience on stage, it went surprisingly well. Actually, it was enjoyable! Little did I know that this one taste of theater would start me on this journey in the theatrical arts. Fast forward to 2018 and four plays later. I was involved, whether it was on the stage performing or behind the scenes. We decided to take one of these original two-act plays to Ukraine, to do a to three-city tour, with four different venues. This trip would be an adventure that resonates with me and many others, to this day! The challenges of being in a foreign country, the language barrier, customs, the different theaters and just the unknown were the norm.   This experience has taught me wha

I was asked to assist in the two-act play of Prodigal in Ukraine, not really understanding what I would be doing, except to support the production. What a great opportunity for a native-born Californian! As was to be the case, background pictures for scene changes and a translation in Ukrainian and English would be displayed during the performance. T hat was my job! It sounds simple, yet little did I realize how inspiring, nerve-racking and rewarding it would be all at the same time. This was in a foreign country, with different customs and norms, with two weeks to prepare. The goal was to learn the script, understand the scene changes, and positively interact with the cast and crew. It was an exciting challenge when the venue continually changed in both size and location. Keeping the flow and allowing for changes at every site was a learning experience. Inspired, I changed the translation lettering to be larger, huge in comparison to the English. Some sleepless nights we

What an adventure of traveling and performing in a foreign land! While we were stateside, I was amazed at how many rehearsals were required for the play Prodigal ! We performed this 2-Act play here in Oceanside, California, before taking it to Ukraine in October of 2018. At first, I was “all nerves” and a bit apprehensive, as this was my first time acting on stage in my life! Besides that, we were going to take it to Ukraine, too! Wow! When we left the USA, I had all of the normal worries. Was I any good? Would the play be accepted? Would anyone even show up? A lot of European countries have many more performances and are much more sophisticated, or so I had heard. You could say that I had my doubts about my undertaking! When we got there, we performed in 4 different locations and 3 different cities. One of the theatres was very old. All of the other actors, the Director and the support crew (make-up and running crew) were fantastic! I don’t think that even professional

My experience in other countries (23 so far) has taught me that there are many more ways to communicate than just using words. Sometimes communication is in mime, sometimes in hand gestures or another body language, and often just in facial expressions. Pictures can help and of course, there is Google Translate or some other language translator app. However, when performing a play, there is a myriad of other considerations, such as culture (trying not to offend others), humor (other countries have different senses of humor), dress (some places have rather sensitive ideas of what is appropriate), and even whether or not women should wear a headdress or veil. Some even want women to wear dresses that reach to the ground. Often, learning as much as possible about a culture before going helps avoid many misunderstandings. Performing in Ukraine was amazing! There were different stages in different cities and different cultures between different cities. Adapting to various stages was

For those of you who may be wondering by now, starting a production company is quite an undertaking.   But for those that have the fortune to have a playwright on staff, who is dedicated to producing fresh original plays for the company, there is an additional concern.   How does the company ensure that the script is as polished as humanly possible before it is performed before a paying audience?   One answer is to conduct a workshop.   A theatrical workshop basically consists of taking the rehearsal and performance process, which normally takes several months and boiling it down into a few days.   Auditions are held and talented actors are cast into roles, then a very the intense rehearsal process is held culminating in a bare-bones performance in front of a limited audience. In the case of HTP’s original play Shadows of the Mind , the workshop lasted 10 hours over the course of 3 days.   During this time, the playwright was present to watch and listen to the manner-in-

    “The way we got our name and Logo” When our Board of Directors was formed, we needed to decide on the name for our new organization. Every member began to think about what the best name would be for what we wanted to accomplish. Some of the names suggested were: Into the World Productions                      True Theatre Foolish Things Productions                     Expose Theatre Open Field Productions                           Proverbs Productions Shine Your Light Productions                  Whole Earth Productions Jest Drama Productions                          Urgency Theatre Company Darkness and Light Theatre Company    Sower Productions Hidden Treasure Productions                  New Light Productions Fertile Soil Productions                           Fertile Ground Productions All of the above suggested names were placed in an online site where we could all vote anonymously, called strawpoll.me Six more suggestions were sent in by Chris

T his is the third blog in a series about the creation of Hidden Treasure Productions (HTP).   This blog will be covering the people who became the Board of Directors (BOD). This process started with John and Valerie Herrera, who were the first to meet with us. They became the first two on the BOD. Valerie is now the Director of Productions of HTP. She proved herself in Ukraine, as the Stage Manager, that she has the skills to be the leader in all HTP productions. John is now the Artistic Director for our company. He has an eye for how things look on stage, aesthetically. He is also the company Photographer. He demonstrated his skills in Ukraine, as he transformed the stage with the best sets and lighting available. This was not easy to do, as we had limited and ever-changing venues and sets! Next on the Board of Directors, Chris and Kitty Inouye joined up. Chris is the Director of Technology. That is a big job, as he must handle aspects of the play which include sound

At the end of my last blog, I mentioned that we planned to meet with certain individuals to discuss their interest in this new venture. It really began with John and Valerie Herrera, wanting to talk with us about their profound experiences in Ukraine. We had a heartfelt discussion over lunch, as Valerie told us that she cannot get the trip to Ukraine out of her heart and mind! I told Valerie that I felt the same way and that maybe we should think about doing more international drama. We had a long discussion about what we could do because the organization we went with to perform Prodigal, only wanted to produce plays and perform them locally, rather than on the international stage. We talked about creating a business for profit, but in the end, we came to the consensus that we needed to form a 501 (C) (3) corporation. We realized what we wanted to do is to take 2-Act professional, quality plays to places where others in the entertainment field did not go. (places like Ukraine).