Warning: reading this may draw you into an inescapable time-loop of improv joy!
Company member Rafe Chase shared this treasure trove from the early years of BATS. It’s a scan of a BATS newsletter from March of 1989.
Yes, newsletters actually existed before email. But they were required by law to be printed on salmon-colored paper.
You might notice some things haven’t changed much. There are a bunch of familiar names, like Ed Alter (then the Rookie Chair to the BATS Advisory Committee, now the treasurer of BATS Board of Directors), Barbara Scott and Joshua Raoul Brody talking about their improvised musical workshop, and Paul Killam and Rebecca Stockley making their move from the great Northwest.
Other things have changed. In 1989 BATS was asking if anyone had props to donate. Today we’re asking you to help us out with our ambitious “Light Up BATS” campaign to modernize our lighting grid (and as of right now, you’ve helped get over two-thirds of the way there!).
Click on the images below to see the full-size scans, and see how the seeds planted in BATS early years have sprouted over the last three decades.
