Despite heading to one of the most notoriously cold places in the month of February, my ITO gals and I saw nothing but blue skies as we arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio for the annual ITO meeting at the Home Office! After disembarking early on Friday morning, I first met up with our Chair, Natasha, and soon after found Ari, Olivia, Emma, three of the ITO At-Large, and our fabulous mentor Staples, all of whom I had not seen in months (except Ari, who was my partner only one week before when we were at Junior Thespian Festival in Dallas, Texas!). We piled into a rental car and drove to our hotel, seeing a beautiful skyline of the city along the way, and then met up with Carly, the other ITO At-Large, her lovely mother, and our fabulous mentor and the Director of Chapters and Communities, Diane Carr. All of us grabbed lunch and then headed over to 2343 Auburn Avenue, the gorgeous dark-wood Home Office. Surviving the infamously treacherous driveway, which was clear and easy for us due to the lovely warm weather, we headed into the building and received a great tour from Jim Flanagan, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Technology. This included going into the secret “ITO Clubhouse,” where we stopped for a quick selfie!
We spent the rest of the day in meetings, working with EdTA staff and meeting everyone from the Development and Fundraising to the Publications committees. Many of them were friends I knew from Leadership Summit, International Festival, or Junior Festival, and it was great to see so many familiar faces! That evening the entire board and staff had dinner at a fantastic restaurant, and afterwards Staples and Swilz, our other amazing mentor, showed the ITOs around the city and of course made time for a short photoshoot at the Fountain Square.
Saturday morning we were up early and ready to go! The ITOs gave a presentation on Theatre In Our Schools month and Minute-To-Give-It to the EdTA board, talking about these initiatives and our role in leading them. Afterwards, we stopped by Graters Ice Cream (the first of many trips to this delicious place over the course of this weekend), and spent much of the rest of that day, as well as Sunday morning, working in the Home Office, planning for International Festival! One incredible thing the ITOs got to take part in on Saturday was the Jumpstart Theatre Program, in which we were able to act as student props and assist the middle school teachers being coached on developing their theatre programs in Cincinnati area schools. This was a truly amazing sight to see, and we certainly had fun getting to do a bit of acting as we practiced transitions and characterization. Sunday, we stopped at Skyline Chile, a very different cuisine experience for many of the ITOs, and that night not only walked across the beautiful Purple People Bridge, we worked with ITO alumni Katie Ferchen! She directed and filmed our ITO application video from 2016-2017, which will be live on SchoolTheatre’s Youtube channel soon. It was so nice to hear about her experience, we’re so glad she came!
On our last day together, we met with the remainder of the staff we had not seen on Friday, including the Membership, Marketing, and Technology departments, and had to bid the Home Office farewell before too long so we could all catch our flights back home. Leaving Cincinnati’s warm, blue skies (uncharacteristic, I know!), my gals, our incredible mentors, and the EdTA staff at the home office behind was hard, but I’m comforted to know that I’ll be seeing many of them in a few weeks at Arts Advocacy Day, and just about all of them at Lincoln, Nebraska in only a few months! It’s time to get ready to Act, Share, and Repeat!