Marquee Club 2025 ‘Escapes’ to Palace Theatre’s tech rehearsal

Palace Theatre Marquee Club members “Escaped to Margaritaville” tech rehearsal.

MANCHESTER, NH – The adventure began when I opened the email:

“This invitation is for Palace Marquee Club Members and guests. This is your chance to get a behind-the-scenes preview of everything that goes into producing one of our fabulous Performing Arts Series productions!

In appreciation for your support of the Palace Theatres, we are sending you a unique invitation! Come see what happens before a show opens and experience a technical rehearsal of Escape to Margaritaville.”

And so I, a relatively new Marquee Club member, accepted and joined Peter Ramsey (President and CEO) and Sarah Souter (membership and development coordinator) as they orchestrated an eye-opening hour-long visit for some 50 patrons.  This opportunity showed off everything you need to know about why Manchester’s Palace Theatre is growing stronger every season.

A tech rehearsal visit is one of many benefits of joining the Palace Theatre Marquee Club. We learned all about what it takes to stage a production. Along the way, I became mesmerized by Peter Ramsey’s passionate love for this professional theatre inside New Hampshire’s largest city and what it means to him to be able to share his infectious excitement with everyone.

We started in the Marquee Room

First we learned about the scale of what the Palace Theatre organization has become.

There are now 5 businesses operating here:

• A Producing Theatre -with 8 shows a year
• A presenting Theatre with weekly events
• The Rex  – an innovative and flexible space with shows, concerts and programs throughout the week
• Palace Youth Theatre- which can boast about 57 alum performing in NYC on Broadway
• A Membership Organization – that supports and fuels momentum across all these business segments. Today, there are over 10,500 Marquis Club members making a difference bridging the gap between ticket sales (intentionally kept affordable) and a $6 Million annual budget

Seated in the Theatre

Seated together as a group in the theatre itself, we watched more than 20 minutes of the rehearsal  while Ramsey quietly narrated the starts and stops as they “blocked” positions and “spiked” exactly where chairs would be placed as they were carried onto the set.  We saw lots of color -coded sticky tape and placards numbered from 1-8 from each side of stage right and stage left. With two weeks to learn and practice only theatre professionals get hired into this group.

Enter the Artistic Director

As they took a break, we were joined by Artistic Director Carl Rajotte. He described the process the Palace Theatre uses because of the fast cycle of hiring professionals, rehearsals, performances and moving on to the next production.

Here, too, it was easy to see another deeply passionate experienced theatre professional enjoying the opportunity to educate and inspire us. The back-and-forth banter between Peter and Carl reflected their nearly 25 years of working together. They met in NYC and the opportunity for Carl to come home to Manchester to create theatre proved irresistible.

Tech Tour Experience

The stage which Carl Rajotte calls a mini football field is 40 feet x 35 feet. This is the space where all the magic comes together. He has a keen ability to envision 3D layout, sound and lighting. The Palace has eliminated renting backdrops that previously cost $400/week each and now have the ability to digitally project whatever they can dream onto a video wall. Carl sets and links the lighting to match up with changing videos. The dramatic improvement in the visual experience is amazing.

What it takes to assemble a cast

Carl maintains an inspirations board in his office. He adds to it things that catch his attention. He thinks of this whole process as a puzzle and tells us that it takes 9-12 months to design a show.

Pre-COVID, they’d rent a theatre in NYC and conduct a series of relatively short auditions.

Since the pandemic, actors send in short video reels that take the place of in-person auditions.

As he spoke about the upcoming show, “Escape to Margaritaville,” we learned that they’ve never done this show before. They like this type of challenge. They’ve hired 7 musicians and a cast of 25 actors. To get to those 25, the team reviewed somewhere between 1,000 and 1,100 video auditions back in November. By the time the cast arrives there can be changes. Someone backs out because they got a role on a Broadway production.  Broadway takes precedence. Big cities nearby add to their challenge. The Palace might bid on 30 productions but are lucky to win 5. They’ll use 100 costumes across a performance.

A full schedule community supported

Last year they delivered over 600 events. Right now, in just the past week alone, 12 events have taken place. The Palace Theatre  builds success through their huge support network. Members of the Board of Trustees, staff, an advisory board and volunteer ushers are all ambassadors to this amazing organization.

They are all committed, enthusiastic, and motivated to make sure guests have a good time. In 2024, one third of all attendees were members. Today, they have an enviable working database of 90,000 valid email addresses. They can always use more support. Volunteers, memberships, donations.

Marquee Club powers community building

The Palace Theatre is a non-profit that gives back regularly and builds a backbone of support for the arts as it welcomes the next generation.

Our community regularly feels the generosity of the Palace organization. They intentionally keep ticket prices affordable and shower benefits on those of us who invest in Marquee Club memberships.

But it’s the quiet gifts with big impact that led me to this write up with Peter’s permission. A couple of years ago the Manchester School Department mentioned to him how discouraged they had become that they had no dance offerings at all for their 11,000 member student body. That’s all they needed to say to someone like Peter Ramsey.

“These kids were so excited and these were kids who had never been on stage before.”

~Peter Ramsey

It took about a year to figure it out, Ramsey said, but “three months ago we offered every second grader in Manchester (1,100 kids) the chance to come to the Palace and have five free dance lessons  and then a show at the end.” He told us they had 65 kids sign up and marveled at how much fun everyone had. “These kids were so excited and these were kids who had never been on stage before.”

Peter’s sense of joy and excitement was palpable as he described what he and staff felt and saw. And his smile never wavered as he said, almost as an aside, that the Palace didn’t make a dime, they did it all for free. The bottom line for Ramsey and his team is the joy they deliver to as many citizens as they can.

He proudly says he has the best job in New Hampshire and it’s immediately obvious why he was selected in 2020 as Citizen of the Year by the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce.

Manchester’s greatest performing arts cheerleader

Peter Ramsey is Manchester’s greatest cheerleader for the performing arts. Although he would quickly deflect any praise sent his way, he is a catalyst for engaging folks where they are and bringing them along saying things like  “we are surrounded by so many good people.” And he thanked everyone for coming to the tech rehearsal.

“…you all have taken an hour so you can smile a little bit.”  -Peter Ramsey

Our visit ended with him thanking everyone for coming as he recognized that “you all have taken an hour so you can smile a little bit.”  And he thinks that is pretty cool. We do too!