Episode 4 Madeleine and Dee

Episode audio and synced transcript are available via Descript here.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Hello and welcome to Art RADIO. Art RADIO is a podcast hosted by the Siskiyou County Arts Council located in northern California on the land of the Achomawi, Karuk, Klamath, Konomihu, Modoc, Okwanuchu, Pit River, Northern Wintu, Shasta, Winnemem Wintu tribes. We offer recognition and respect to these tribes and all others, as we connect on native land.

With Art RADIO, we aim to uplift the creative voices of the county through this podcast medium. With the geographical landscape being a large challenge of connecting with each other, the podcast radio waves will be the connecting thread. Our priority at the Siskiyou County Arts Council is to cultivate strong and creative communities in Siskiyou County because we believe the arts are a societal cornerstone that celebrates diverse cultures and a shared history.

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Today on the Art RADIO podcast, we have Madeleine and Dee Jones. Madeleine and Dee and Annie are a part of a trio of playwrights called MAD Productions. The three of them have forged a wonderful friendship and artistic focus. They get together every Monday and go over a melodrama. I can’t wait for you to hear how prolific they’ve been.

How are you both doing today?

Madeleine Ayres: Wonderfully.

Dee Jones: Great. Thanks.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Great. I’m so glad you’re on here. Now, if we could start this episode by sitting together in this time and place and just taking a deep breath and grounding ourselves, so make sure your feet are planted and your your body’s very comfortable where you’re sitting. Adjust your seat if you need to, scratch your head, anything that your body is telling you to do. And let’s sit together in 10 moment… 10 seconds of silence. And I will be counting and let you know at the 3, 2, 1. Are you ready?

Dee Jones: Ready.

Madeleine Ayres: Ready.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Great.

3, 2, 1, go ahead and open your eyes. Great. Thank you so much for doing that with me. I would love to know more about both of you individually and then as a duo of a trio. Where do you both live right now? And how are you feeling today?

Madeleine Ayres: This is Madeline and I live in Fort Jones over in Scott Valley in Siskiyou County and we’ve lived there for about 28 years; raised our kids over here. The past year has been a very interesting time for everyone, but I think we’ve been really fortunate over here in the Valley because we can do the socially distance thing and so I didn’t feel that, demanding stress that a lot of people felt living in Fort Jones. So I, I feel great. I’m great. Glad to be here.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Great. Thank you. What about you Dee?

Dee Jones: Well, thank you for asking; I’m doing just great. I’ve lived here for about 16 years. I came out of the big city. And that would be Southern California big city. I was born and raised in the LA basin when I was about eight years old. My parents moved us out to the, what was then, the country. And I lived there until I was about 16. And then we moved to San Diego and that’s where I graduated from high school and spent the next 45 years raising my two sons and working. I’ve been retired since I came here and I’m a dedicated gardener and and I met Madeleine and Annie about 10 years ago. And our friendship has just flourished since then.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: If I may ask, where did you all meet?

Madeleine Ayres: It’s easy to meet people in Scott Valley because it’s a relatively small population, but we met through we’ve known Annie forever through a lot of different things through the theater, Scott Valley Theatre Company, they… we’ve done produced a number of acoustic night musical nights over there throughout the years. It’s a beautiful theater. It seats about 300 on main street in Etna and over the years as a high school English teacher, drama teacher I produced plays there’s there and directed plays. And we talked about before we started airing Dee has a connection with the Rotary club and I’ll let her tell you about how we came together as a group to form the MAD Players.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Okay. Yeah, please.

Dee Jones: So about 10 years ago, the Scott Valley Rotary, of which I am a member, asked me if I might take on resurrecting the melodrama that used to be produced here in the Valley quite successfully. And it hadn’t been done in years. And I have been quite involved in community theater with JJ Louis Nichols at Siskiyou Performing Arts Center, also known as SPAC, they just thought, oh Dee can do it. She knows how to act. That may be true, but I didn’t know how to produce a play. So I thought let me just think here. Yes, I’ll do it. And now what do I do? So I thought about the Avery Theater and the Scott Valley Theatre Company board of which I knew Madeleine was a member and I contacted them and asked them if they’d partner with the Rotary to bring the melodrama back. And they considered it and answered in the affirmative and that started us off.

Madeleine Ayres: And then we, the first year we ordered a play through a company, it was called Bulldog Saves the Day, got a good cast cast of players, and produced this real fun melodrama at the Montague Balloon Festival and also here in the Valley at the Theatre Company. And then the next year we were asked again to do it and we raised a lot of money.

And then the next year, when we were asked again to do it, we thought we could write a better play than what was being produced out there, or written out there, and make it very local. That’s what galvanized us into meeting every Monday night and having dinner and wine and coming up with a theme and it’s usually very topical. Our first one is called the Marlahan Mustard Mystery. And you know about that mustard plant that grows all over Siskiyou County it’s a pest. And in Scott Valley, we call it the marlahan mustard. We turned that whole idea around of it being a pest, but into actually something that was sought after like gold because marlahan mustard, like all mustard plants can make a blue dye, which is very precious to in the play it’s very precious to the French characters that come into the play. And and so it was a real hit. We have a great group of actors and as we said before, we take anybody who wants to be in our play and you just have to connect to the dates and you have to commit to having a good time. That’s number one is to check your ego at the door and have fun.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Wonderful. What is the next thing on the, what are you working on next?

Madeleine Ayres: We have a play right now that we started writing right after COVID. So our last production, we did a play called; what was it Dee?

Dee Jones: Cabin fever.

Madeleine Ayres: Oh, cabin fever. So this one, we took the theme of; what is our theme Dee? God thinking off the top of our heads here…

Dee Jones: Yes.

Madeleine Ayres: It’s COVID actually, we do have a lot of bits about COVID in it. And it’s actually about the evil guy, dastardly guy, who’s always Alan Kramer. He’s great. He comes into the Valley and he thinks he’s going to woo and wed a very wealthy elderly woman, but he’s got it all wrong. She doesn’t really have money. She makes boullion she doesn’t have bullion.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Okay.

Madeleine Ayres: She has a lot of stocks like chicken stock and beef stock, but so he mishears her and fun ensues.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: That sounds great. I’m sure everyone enjoyed it. And you had mentioned that you get a, all the… various people apply to be a part of the show and you let everyone in with enthusiasm. And you said that there were children too, is that right?

Dee Jones: Yes. We we really want children to participate because part of the joy for us is exposing our youngsters to the joy of theater and how theater is a valid art form. It’s not like a painting. It’s very,… it’s alive and the audience is part of it. And so to watch them step on stage and hear the applause and get that there there’s, there is a fourth wall, but beyond that wall is a living, breathing thing called the audience that is actually part of the play, whether they that think it or not they are, and to watch these kids get it and get that they can have an impact by acting. And our themes, as Madeleine said, are always topical. We took on civility because we noticed that in America, that we weren’t being civil to one another. So our gold meddling was about civility. Cabin fever was about a virus. It was prescient actually.

And and so not only are we trying to instill a love of theater, but we’re also, we have an overarching theme or principle that we are wanting to champion and nurture in the community.

Madeleine Ayres: And the kids, you know, aside from the fact that they get to be on stage and they get to have lines and the same is true with the adults. We also teach, you know, theater skills. I am a drama teacher and I hate it when I go to a show and I can’t understand what they’re saying. So we work on projection. We work on enunciation and we work on something that is so prevalent in today’s world mush mouth; it’s where people just don’t move their mouths when they speak. So they all sound like they got a bunch of rocks in their mouth and we work really hardly on really hard on being understood. And it’s a lot of fun, but it’s also, I feel like we’re not wasting anybody’s time being there, that everybody’s learning somthing.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: It seems like you really value people’s time.

Madeleine Ayres: Oh yes.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: And I guess this is a great segue into asking the question; what does, what is art and what does it mean to you? It’s a big question.

Madeleine Ayres: It is a big question and art is very personal to each individual and it’s the expression of the inner soul and its desire to be creative, to create. That’s what I think art is. And my medium is writing and also play direction and production. It is in every way as valuable as visual art and other types of performing arts and dance. But I think it’s the soul’s desire to create.

Dee Jones: And for me, I think of as everyday existence as art my garden is art. I’m the artistic director. It falls to me to, come up with sets and they’re pretty rudimentary, but it has stretched me to be a better artist. And and I try to look at it as it’s expressing life really in its purest forms. And I really have gained a lot of self-confidence in my own art by fostering art producing in others. The idea that I can have an impact with a spoken word. Or a set or a costume.

Madeleine Ayres: A visual joke.

Dee Jones: A visual joke, right? Those things are our art. And I never thought of myself as an artist. I’m a nuts and bolts kind of gal. I’m the underpinning. I’m the organizer and that’s art too.

Madeleine Ayres: It is art. I couldn’t, I couldn’t do anything without Dee. Yeah, I have great ideas, but she makes them happen.

Dee Jones: I’m also the, I feel like I’m the not slave driver, that’s the wrong word, but I’m…

Madeleine Ayres: It’s pretty close.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: You’re the manager.

Dee Jones: I’m the detail gal and with any kind of a production, that detail is really important. And not maybe if you’re making a painting, it’s a different scenario but as far as stage craft goes, I think that skill is art as well, expressing.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: And I feel like a lot of people don’t understand that there is a lot of different ways to enter the art world. You can be a supporter of the artist. My mom says she married an artist, so that’s supporting, but you can attend I dunno, you can read with your kid, you can do all kinds of things. You can put the set together, right?

Dee Jones: Right.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: There’s just so many definitions.

Dee Jones: Audience is part of the art of theater. It, the audience is integral to it, even though they’re an observer, they’re more than that. And so that’s art expressing as well. I suppose the same is true of someone viewing a painting. They’re engaged in art, whether they’re actually producing it or not, they’re engaging in it by exposing themselves to it.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Wonderful. Do you have another favorite spot in the county to experience art and that you can take that as loosely as you want? It can be like, I love looking at the mountain or something, and that’s art and artistic experience.

Madeleine Ayres: Oh, I have a grandson and he just came into the world in August. And so I like to go to his house and we get to visit a lot. And he’s so full of jour de vivre so I’m gonna, I’m gonna, to tag onto my grandson. See, Dee also has a new granddaughter too. So she can’t say what I just said she has to come up with something else.

Dee Jones: So I like the outdoors. I’m drawn… I live on the edge, literally of Kidder Creek, which is the largest watershed into Scott Valley out of the Marble Mountain Wilderness 247,000 acre wilderness preserve, which is my backyard. I really enjoy the solitude and quiet of going into the Creek which runs for a half a mile through my property. Just sitting with my chair and enjoying the scenery in whatever season it is. That’s where I kinda connect with my muse there. I go there for inspiration and and it enriches me greatly.

Madeleine Ayres: We live in a really beautiful area.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Yeah.

Madeleine Ayres: Scott Valley is so worth visiting even for a day trip in Siskiyou County. We have all a lot of good restaurants and we have a lot of good hiking trails and bicycling is really good here. It’s a hidden gem. It truly is.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Do you have any restaurants to recommend?

Madeleine Ayres: We can’t really. There’s there’s some great ones. You’ve got the Denny Bar. We’ve got the Five Mary’s we’ve got Dottie’s is a good hamburger joint.

We’ve got Dave’s. We’ve got La… Lalo’s.

Dee Jones: The Etna

Madeleine Ayres: etna Brewery. We have best bakery in Etna, in Siskiyou County. It’s amazing. It’s called Grain Street Bakery. So there’s a lot of good food and Bob’s restaurants, great place for breakfast. A lot of good restaurants parks we had Etna park is lovely. Fort Jones has some lovely parks.

It’s a great, really nice place to come over just for a day. If you’re over in the Mount Shasta area or even coming down from Oregon, or up from Redding. We have, we’re a gateway to the Pacific Crest Trail, so we have a lot of interesting people that come through in the summertime. So it’s…

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Wonderful, yeah.

Madeleine Ayres: Great place.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: What is the art scene right now over there? Is it starting to bubble up again after the pandemic?

Madeleine Ayres: Well, the the Marble Mountain Art Co-operative in Fort Jones.

Dee Jones: Is that what it’s called? The Marble Rim Gallery.

Madeleine Ayres: Marble Rim Gallery, thank you Dee. They do, they’ve been doing their first Fridays where they feature an artist. They have a number of different artists that work in the co-op there. It’s a great little gallery, great place to buy gifts and original art. We have some excellent artists here in the valley. Some that are known and some that are unknown, but they show it at some of the restaurants, there’ll be on. It’s a pretty lively arts community here.

Dee Jones: Yes. And music as well. We have the Far North Music Festival. We also have the film, the Scott Valley Film Festival. We haven’t had it in the last couple of years because of the pandemic, but they were, it’s a huge, it’s gone up.

Madeleine Ayres: It’s called the Jefferson State Flixx Festival.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Oh, Okay.

Madeleine Ayres: It’s huge and they have a filmmakers from all over the world that the producers are film people themselves, who now live in Etna because he wanted to raise her kids in a friendlier environment.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Okay.

Madeleine Ayres: But it’s a must see, and I hope that I hope they have… it happens.

Dee Jones: I hope it does too. Some wonderful films come through here.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: What do you think that makes Scott Valley and Etna area so special and a little bit different from other parts of Siskiyou County? What makes you unique?

Dee Jones: I think that it’s history. It’s historic here. The towns were both founded in the 1800s. So there’s a segment of the population that has been here since then.

It’s very much a small town atmosphere. I’ve, I’m an interloper. I came in 16 years ago, but I’ve been embraced, I think, a lot having to do with my work with the melodramas an, as and an actress. It’s a friendly place. I think that because we’re off the beaten path, people have time to, to to apply themselves to their art. Whereas in, in the frenzied, big city where you have noise; I didn’t know what quiet was until I got here. Really? I didn’t, had no idea that I had been living in a cacophony of just constant noise. And then I got here and the wind suing through the trees, the birds singing the water, rushing. Those are the sounds of Scott Valley and the cows lowing. And it’s a hard life because of our climate. I think people are reverent because of nature and also we respect one another. There are a lots of different types of people, of various political persuasions here, but we get along and don’t let that get in the way of having fun and enjoying one another’s company. And I think that’s just wonderful.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: That’s very special.

Madeleine Ayres: I would dovetail on what Dee said. Our geography kind of defines us. You have to go up over forest mountain, which is about 4,000 feet and drop into the valley. So that keeps out a lot of the, sort of the difficulties of what’s on the other side, on the I5 side. Up until a couple of years ago, we had no chain stores here.

Dee Jones: Mmhmm.

Madeleine Ayres: In fact, we had a chain store come in, and it’s in Etna, and we wrote a play about that. It was called What’s in Store? And because it was a, B, it was quite a controversy. It was people were very suspicious about what kind of energy that would bring to our own economy. Which, you know, we got a couple of really good hardware stores in Etna and in Fort Jones. We have a really wonderful secondhand store in Etna and we’re, we pretty much have everything we need here. We have but having that store come in raised alarm bells. I noticed when we moved over here’s a little weird thing. When we moved here from Eureka 28 years ago, I noticed that the kids were in great shape. And where I came from in another larger city, a lot of obesity. When you come over here, the kids work hard every day. They have lots of animals and chores and fast food is hard to get. Okay. So it’s really a healthy environment and you wouldn’t make that connection. But I think that mountain Forest Mountain is a barrier and it also protects the innocence of the valley or the je nais se quois of the valley.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Thank you both for sharing those stories. So whenever you leave completely, you leave Siskiyou County and you start driving back into the county, how do you feel? What are some descriptive words.

Dee Jones: So I go to southern California quite frequently because I have a new granddaughter and my children and friends of a lifetime live there. And while I choose to live here, I still have roots there. And coming back, as soon as I cross the Pitt River Bridge at Mount Shasta, at Lake Shasta and start climbing up the mountains and cross that Siskiyou County line, I just breathe a sigh of relief. I’m relieved to be back home. I think that is the word that most describes my feeling; I’m relieved. And when I crest Forest Mountain coming out of the Shasta Valley and into the Scott Valley and see the little emerald patch of green, that’s a farmer’s field that’s visible from the top, sometimes it brings me to tears.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Oh.

Dee Jones: So the sense of well being and relief.

Madeleine Ayres: Yeah. I would say that’s the same reaction that I have. This is truly the land that time forgot. It’s not perfect and we do have our problems over here. People by and large are raising their kids they want what’s best for their communities. So if we have problems in our community, there are more people willing to help than are in need of helping. So we have a nice balance here. It’s really the land that time forgot.

Dee Jones: There’s a melodrama title!

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Take notes!

Dee Jones: Ripped from the headlines.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: What’s something that you wish for the future generation of artists in our area?

Madeleine Ayres: To realize that we have everything here that we need. We have a wonderful College of the Siskiyous is an excellent college. We should be sending our kids there because not only is it economical, the quality of instruction there is just superior and just the place; it’s such a beautiful place. We have good food here. We have clean water and all we have to do is to build on that, to raise our children well, to make an effort, to be a positive influence in the community in whatever way we can, rather than setting fires all the time. And metaphorical fires.

And being angry all the time, we spend a lot of you know, there’s a faction of people that find anything to complain about, but I think we have to in order to keep this place as positive as it is, we have to know that it takes action and intention.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Yeah.

Dee Jones: What I wish for future generations here is: they can grasp how lucky they are to live in such a place. As an example, my son came here to go to high school. He was 15 when he arrived. And 18 when he left. He spent his sophomore through senior year of high school. His graduating class was 53 children, I think.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Wow.

Dee Jones: And he had come from a high school with 4,400 students.

He said, it made him, this experience of living here that it made him who he is today. And I might add he’s a lovely young and a capable young man, but he wanted, and I think I want the same thing that he wanted for the kids that lived here was for them to recognize just what they have and rather to want to escape it, to capitalize on that and stay here and give their gift here if possible. I’m so grateful to this place because I never thought that I would be able to give my gift like I do here.

I would just hope that the burgeoning artists in our area will recognize just what they have and utilize it to inspire themselves.

Madeleine Ayres: And with the age of the internet, you don’t have to be in LA to be the next thing, or you don’t have to be in New York to be the next, whatever. It’s amazing what the internet has opened up. It’s democratized art. It really has. It does. It has plucked complete unknowns from tiny corners of the earth and made them, you know, famous, not that’s how we should, judge the success of art but like Dee my two, two kids, I didn’t think they would move back here after college. And they’re both here and they have, and my son has a really good job. And my daughter’s got a baby and she’s married to a guy with a good job. They can live relatively inexpensively. We don’t have the Bay Area real estate prices. And so don’t tell anybody about us.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Right.

It just feels like I’m so rich when I just visit Castle Lake where, you know, just a body of water or some sort of feature that we have in the land. I just feel so rich.

Madeleine Ayres: Shackleford Creek; that’s worth visiting.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: OK. I’ll have to visit that.

Madeleine Ayres: And then all of the lakes up along the Pacific Crest Trail within… kangaroo Lake is a wonderful place to go with your families.

Dee Jones: I’ve been pretty lucky because when I came here, I had horses and I have been to 29 mountain lakes in the Russian Wilderness, the Marble Mountain Wilderness, and all of the mountains surrounding here on horseback. Something I could never have done on foot.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: No.

Dee Jones: Talk about inspiring. Oh, the beauty!

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Wonderful. Is there first of all, thank you so much again for sharing. Is there some sort of warmup or practice or something, just some sort of little project that you could give the listeners like for drawing, it might be just like doodle for five minutes while listening to music. It’s just a little practice that the the listeners can do some sort of warmup and

Madeleine Ayres: here’s something fun that I like to do that warms me up as a writer. I’m going to give two; one that I think is really important for writers. And you may, and many of your listeners may know this already. There’s something called morning pages than an artist developed and it’s if you’re working on creating the discipline to get up every day with a journal and take your pen and write for three pages, solid without lifting the pen, without getting up, without answering the phone, give yourself enough quiet time to write whatever comes into your head for three pages. And what that does is it clears out all of the ambient anxiety and detritus in your brain. So that your brain is finally calm. So when you’re ready to write something good, you’ve already cleaned it and dusted all of the areas of the brain that might be getting in the way of your creativity. So that’s called morning pages and it’s kind of, it’s a fun thing to do.

And then go out for a cup of coffee and sit in a coffee shop, which we still have and you can go into now or even sit outside with your journal, and listen to conversations. Don’t be too, obvious, but listen to conversations, get inspiration for characters based on what you’re listening to.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Oh, OK.

Madeleine Ayres: That’s a fun way to learn to write dialogue and writing dialogue for our melodramas is really an important skill to have, to be able to say what you want to say in as few words as possible to get the biggest impact.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Great, thank you.

Madeleine Ayres: So those are two from the writer here, go ahead, Dee.

Dee Jones: Well…

Madeleine Ayres: Not everybody has a hot tub Dee so you can’t say go out to the hot tub every morning.

Dee Jones: No, that’s what I do is I go out in my hot tub every morning on the edge of the creek and watch the geese fly in. No, actually I think to flex your artistic muscle or warm up, whatever that might be, make your bed.

Madeleine Ayres: Good thinking Dee. That’s a good one. That is good. Any little discipline.

Dee Jones: Yes. I make my bed every morning. I do it religiously. And with with intention as I do it. And then after I do that, I make a list. And it seems not very artistic to make a list, but honestly it helps me to figure out what I’m, what trajectory my day is going to take. Those two things make a, make your bed, make a list.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: OK.

Madeleine Ayres: Do your morning pages and then get a cup of coffee.

Dee Jones: Get a good pastry.

Madeleine Ayres: Yep.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Wonderful. I love to offer the space to just have you talk about anything else that you’d like to talk about. You can give a shout out to someone you can, if you feel like you missed something that you really want to talk about now would be the time.

Dee Jones: Okay. So I think the person that’s not in the room, the elephant, that’s not in the room.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Yes.

Dee Jones: She won’t like it, that I called her an elephant, but she would come up with a pun for it, I can tell you, is Annie Kramer. She is the A in MAD. We just rely on her. She’s also our musical director, both she and Madeleine are excellent musicians. I couldn’t, I can’t read music.

Madeleine Ayres: Oh, well, don’t play down your art.

Dee Jones: I know. Anyway, I yield to them on the music thing, but Annie always writes a wonderful song that’s relevant to our melodrama to end every melodrama. And she has come up with just some awesome… usually they’re sung to a familiar tune because we always invite our audience to join us on the chorus. And so they have a repetitive chorus and she’s a master punster.

Madeleine Ayres: Yes she is.

Dee Jones: And and very handy to have around when we’re writing dialogue because we aim to be funny. No one is immune from our poison pen. We poke fun at everybody. That’s par, and it’s an, it’s usually about local events or local happenings that people get the reference to. And so that makes it a lot of fun and brings it home to people. So she’s really valuable for that. And she makes a mean soup too.

Madeleine Ayres: Yeah, she does. She’s a guitar player and she plays and she also clogs. So we often have a little clogging interlude in the play. My husband, Jim who is also in the plays and plays the banjo and which is really a a good addition to the the hokiness of the whole thing. And as Dee said, we have our plays are on local themes. We… remember when the wolves came in to Siskiyou County? We brought them into our play. Yeah. OR7 was a main character in a couple of our plays. He was the Oregon wolf. The first guy, we like to… like the Common Sense was of one about the store that came into the Valley and people were all up in arms about it. And so yet nobody’s immune from our poison pen but we don’t stab to draw blood. We want people to come back.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Just a little poke.

Dee Jones: Laughter is art too.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: I had a super fun time talking to both of you and hearing about your trio. Where can everyone find you online or keep up with what’s happening at the theater?

Madeleine Ayres: We are really we, we post on Facebook and through email, but we don’t really have a website cause we’re just that way we don’t want to get too involved in the internet.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Yeah.

Madeleine Ayres: usually KSYC does an interview with us and we do press releases in the paper we post on like the Scott Valley Theater Company website as well. And we’ll start posting with your website too. When we do our shows also.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Wonderful, yes.

Madeleine Ayres: So we’re looking to produce this next play probably in February, because that’s when we do it.

It’s an easy time of the year to do a play because it’s a low time for a lot of social activities. We’ll probably play a week at Fort Jones and a week in at the Etna Scott Valley Theater Company, so.

Dee Jones: Yes, we take it on the road. That’s especially challenging.

Madeleine Ayres: Yeah.

Dee Jones: We build the sets at the Avery and then transport them to the Fort Jones Community Center and erect them there for a weekend and then transport them back and forth. It’s quite the gypsy lifestyle.

Madeleine Ayres: But as Dee said, we have raised…

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: It’s a production!

Madeleine Ayres: Yeah, we have raised over $50,000 for various worthy causes. So that’s also a primary goal here for us is to utilize our talents, to raise money so that it can be poured back into the community in positive ways.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Fantastic. You both are very valuable members of Siskiyou County and wonderful humans of the world. So thank you.

Madeleine Ayres: Thank you.

Dee Jones: Thank you.

Madeleine Ayres: Thank you for what you’re doing.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: All right. Wonderful. It’s my pleasure. Okay, everyone have a great day.

Madeleine Ayres: You too.

Bridgétt Rangel Rexford: Thanks for listening to this episode of Art RADIO. Be sure to check out our Facebook page Siskiyou County Arts Council to see this month’s upcoming Art RADIO guests. We create a Facebook event page for each episode and each guest to make it easy to remember. Every episode drops on Mondays at 8:00 AM through various platforms, such as Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

Arts education is an essential ingredient for creating a social arena where ideas and feelings can be communicated with and without words, healthy human development, increasing self-esteem and self-awareness, developing creative, critical thinking, social, emotional, and observational skills. So we therefore invite you to join with us in playing an instrumental role in fostering the arts.

Siskiyou County Arts Council is a 5 0 1 C3 social profit organization. Tax deductible donations will support local arts education, creative social change, and community participation in social and cultural events. To donate, simply click the green donate button on our website, Siskiyou Arts dot org. S I S K I Y O U A R T S .org. Happy creating, and thank you for listening to Art RADIO.

Editing and production help is thanks to Aaron Levine. You can find him on Instagram at Acovado underscore toast. That’s the v and c of avocado switched around and then underscore toast. You can also find him on Twitter at Kabuto justice. You can also email him, jaaronlevine@gmail.com.

Big thanks to David Blink for creating our beautiful theme music. He is the current music instructor at College of the Siskiyous. You can find him on Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/davidblink. You can even go to his YouTube at youtube.com/c/davidblink. Also, if you just type them in in Google, great links come up. Enjoy!