their an especially because i didn't go to new york with you this year tell us all about the band you know you saw some exciting people and you did some exciting thing we did you know i went to a tony bess a church general manager went with me and i'm going to break the news julia is retiring and leaving us which i am so upset about and so absolutely i'm happy she of course is jumping for joy because she's not going to be working anymore and she's moving back to fort myers to be with her grandchildren and  julie and i worked together for years and i want you to know it's been one of the greatest joys to have you around we entertain each other in here because i'm definitely going to have to come back up when you guys do the a t v show you there you go you know maybe you know who know she can be a secret guest but she's not leaving till the end of july so we may see you at another episode but because she was retiring i did take tony with me usually julie and i go up to see the new broadway shows and talk to press agents and so forth and i saw a lot of great shows i usually see about nine i saw i think eight this year i saw aladdin which is disney's new broadway musical it is stunning folks i mean you see every penny they put you know it's a very extend this is a charlotte disney while yes it is in the music is great i mean i know how but they do all the tricks in the theater business but when the flying carpet flew i could not see the wires or the tractor and it was quality and kelly o'hara the sad thing is it closed the week i was up there it never found its audience and it was of course based on the movie with the photographer in the movie was well this was the music is stunning and it just didn't it wasn't my cup of tea but there were certainly a lot of people enjoying it and then i had trouble with the show called if then which stars one of my favorite broadway actresses i because john travolta slaughtered her name at the oscars when she was singing the song i let it go i remember frozen in a hole and she said it became very very famous because of john travolta's but it's an interesting show and a lot of people love it and it just wasn't my cup of tea they were playing two different ways her life could have gone on and you know she was putting glasses on and taking them off and of course i got lost in the whole comedy but another show that i really really loved was to tell them about that yeah i had sorry yeah and then i saw i had and the angry inch and that of course stars neil patrick harris and it's a very adult themed musical but he is in it from the beginning to the end and he is  credible but what she was going to say is one of the cool things as we get to meet a lot of stars when we go to these broadway conferences because these are all the people that are on the broadway lee and people that run theaters like myself in the press agents and so sylvester stallone came and they had it a lunch for us in the theater and in the theater the boxing ring comes right out into the audience and part of the audience gets up and they sit in bleachers and watch the show from that perspective but he came out and was the announcer and you know it was just thrilling and so he was there they opened the conference with jon stewart came out and talked to us throughout fifteen minutes he was very funny about being jewish and going to the theater and he was  and then we got to see audra mcdonald idea to stop by gosh the guy from breaking bad bryan cranston came by cause he's in a play about l b j i don't have time you can't see every show that's why gorgeous but you know it's a very exciting thing and a lot of the conference this year was talking about digital in different ways you know social media and things like that and then of course while i'm up there i go to meetings with agents while i'm trying to book shows not just broadway shows but i'm trying to book you know popular artists as well and so it is an incredibly fun we because i love the theater but you start out like a lot of work in the morning and you go to one o'clock at night and you're constantly at either yeah well what's going to happen to you so it was just you know it's one thing after another so that was broadway and it was great great fun and i think it was great to have tony who's never been to this kind of world when conference we're are also talking about some shows that we still have this year everybody is so envious of us because we have terror tough i should put it this way every pretty much every you know but i can tell you this the company is still holding the few tickets that they traditionally hold till the last minute so don't give up hope check with the box office and they may release a few but i my congrats to everybody that got them early and then comedy and we had so many great comedy shows this year bill maher is coming and i watch him all the time on h b o he is hysterical and you know of course he's a political commentator and all of that but he's coming in october and that should be october twenty sixth and susan boyle is november the sixth and we're going to be announcing a lot of great shows were rolling out some of the earlier ones but you know i was up in new york working on a lot of great shows that are about to come  excited like i do every year when you start booking show i know you get confirmations come in and you're like yes yes yes and so the phone number to call for subscriptions or the tick shows that are on sale is nine five three three three six lady keeps getting these calls and confuses the other she sells tickets for us you know you know she is now put her on staff and then of course you can come down and meet the box office they're open summer hours right now but they're still around and be glad to see you and we will be back in a minute with one of our most special people at the van ways all kelly bragdon who is our education director and we'll see you in just a moment did you know city of sarasota drinking water is very safe tested delivered right to your house much more affordable bottled water environmentally friendly and it tastes good city of sarasota water safe affordable environmentally friendly kelly of course is our education director and what's your official title director of education and community engagement and we do a lot of community engagement programs we're going to mention that but first kelly has been with us how many years now this is completing my second year here  amazing job really wonderful but we're going to do a little personal dish here kelly is getting married on july fifth and i was so honored kelly invited me to the wedding and i'm flying now most people fly from new jersey to florida  talk about some of the things but next year we have a whole bunch of new school time shows can you tell us a little bit of a whole bunch of school time shows as you as you've mentioned ranging from pre k through high schools who are really reaching every single age range you can think of and of classic children's books like otherwise known as the great to really contemporary children's books like the light thief we have curious george i just talked to a teacher yesterday who's thrilled about fly guy coming to the van when he's all and then we also  poetry for something that addresses contemporary issues alvin ailey is coming and that will be one that i'm sure will sell out very quickly with everything going to drakes and they have been here before and they are fantastic with kids and they are of course the premier black troupe and dance troupe and they're just an amazing people already just sending out our bookmark had teachers ask pacifically about that show so we're really looking forward to bringing them back to our school time audience twenty five thousand kids come every year yes and one of the nice things is through our families our foundation we're able to provide free bussing for all of the public school kids that would normally be able to congress every time i talk to a principled adminis is people at the school district they're thrilled they're excited these shows that are important to their curriculum and they just say their first question is well what about transportation and because of that we've had teachers say without this bus reimbursement we won't be able to  thousand dollars of a younger and that's one of the major roles is to raise money for the education department they also contribute other amounts large amounts of money to the education program and we're extremely grateful to the work they do for that because i think you know education is so important because without it i know i had arts education when i went to school i'm a lot older than you but it was still there and i have to say our school district has done a phenomenal job of keeping the arts fair is a new rule may have made it a priority they recognize the brings students here and you know there's a lot of arts education thank heavens and support in the schools as well through our professional development program so in addition to the students who have coming we work with teachers to learn the best of arts integration strategy is so that they can better teach their performances they can better teach math concepts science concepts through art space strategy because they have some really does i mean it's how the best way i always remembered anything was through the arts when i growing up and of course you know you have kennedy center teaching artists but you also have found ways of teaching artists that are long we've started working with a lot of the local teaching artists we piloted programs through our classroom connections program where we had two schools from economically different areas work together and have a teaching artist's work with them as well as our special students with special needs which is programmable program it's just been wonderful and we're expanding it to include those students and include our traditional classroom so that teachers in addition development we have family we have total access which is really for families that are financially challenged where they get to come to see the main stage never be able to see the shows without the total  and we just hear i mean we hear from parents that say that their students work harder in school because they don't want to miss the chance of coming to see our shows that it brings the family together because the parents work two jobs would never ever get to dance to have a dinner together let alone see a  mothers fingers that there is coming in as well it's really a wonderful program i just got a letter from one of the parents talking about what this program means and how she knows that her sons will value the arts and will want to be arts go when she want to cry it doesn't really does i mean it's why we work as hard as we do of seeing the community really value the arts and value what we what we try and then we have a similar program for disenfranchised seniors and now and then last year we started military access which is continuing which you know  in this time frame when you know memorial day is so fresh in our minds to help our veterans and also active duty military they're telling them a room we had over two hundred people participate in military access and first year which was just amazing and they were able to see shows me artists attend talkbacks and we're thrilled i'm already getting people asking about next season's military access program so you know we have you know a whole range of education programs that you may or may not know about some are for the public are specific to schools and some are specific to teachers but kelly what i have to give you credit for is you know there's a lot of people out there that talk the talk but kelly is so fantastic with kids bringing kelly  charged fire extinguisher a whistle or airborne a visual distress signal flare gun or handheld flare and be sure to check their expiration dates are required radio can be one of the most important pieces of inattention to do so as well these basic help you get waterways safely see on the water i don't know i think it would be hilarious i think we'd get out to dick clark yeah dick clark did he did of course oh wow i know we do bloopers but anyway back to this is the tenth anniversary of friday fest which is something that the community really loves i will be honest our stamp hates it they hate friday because we're always on pins and needles isn't going to rain you know when it rains because we go rain or shine when it rains you know we bring the friday fest into the main stage we used to try to do it in the grand foyer but we've grown so large it's impossible and we bring in the vendors underneath the port  share in everything but the best days of all are outside at the on the lawn with that beautiful bay in the sunset and last year we were so lucky we had four of our events with no rain with zero rain so you know in your honor i think that's what's going to happen again this year i'm saying that would be lovely so anyway our first one is with the band that has been there every year i think that you and i have been here for friday fest we've been there what seventy seven  you know later this summer when you're no longer working for me when you're back with your daughter and grandchildren you know i'll give you a call and you could come up and yet so lonely you could do as much work as you normally do and julie and i walk around and say hello to everybody and such a gorgeous sunset it is but our text does a lot but you know the end we have is our favorite band it's yesterday yesterday's and they play all sorts of oldies music and the audience gets up and they're dancing and having the best time we have great food trucks that well you know like can i make mention so yes sure doubt like baja voice grill because they're famous for their fish tacos y beer and which raises money for me and ways we well i i pour a beer and i will not say her name but we've had one commissioner that has tried very hard to poor beer but you know she just doesn't have the things for her to marlon brown is always going to beat the other beer stand i know there have been contests that they are but it's a great fun evening for families seniors young people everybody everybody has a pal and yesterday's is  is fantastic now our big sponsors are two fantastic companies hahn powerboat yeah they have some of these gorgeous power going to out there on the bay and you know i think there would and they're just stunning and they're really made very specially we have the gentlemen on for upon last year and they do an amazing job with these boats and then we have metro p c s which metro p c s brings out game so you can win different things and stuff like that and a lot of different sponsors i mean a b c seven has been i couldn't name them all well last year they did the weather actually from friday fest and thank god he was in uniform weather and so we want beautiful weather john scalzi please in fact i think we have one of our cameraman is related to who so that's really kind of colts so that's really special but the band with a foundation supports this and we have a lot of great volunteers that are out there helping people from the city people from the rotary it's a really great community event as much as we're like oh no friday fest because we're afraid about the rain is that it's fun even inside it's still in our favorite is outside but please come down our first one is on friday june twenty are coaster solar coaster coasters just kind of a variety of popular music and actually they'll play anything you want but play a lot of the stuff that yesterday's plays also so if you like that and a lot of r and b and it's a nice mix it's a nice artists that play hear them on the main stage well we've had chris botti in k g and dave cause and i'm sure we'll see them here again but i thought you know let's be fair let's have all kinds of different so that you know not think that's one of the best things to do was change that  i think it's great because we do a lot of there's a lot of jazz on the green type concerts in this way and we'll do jazz shows the times that we've done and all sorts of different things but it's really fantastic and i hear you have a special don't learn that part you know me either i know what they are how you look you know somebody was saying the other day if you're over forty five you didn't grow up with all of this you know and you know i do my best but i am very happy that our social media director at the hall is under thirty because he's right up on top of all of yesterday and he keeps us on track because i will tell you you know i can still remember the day when they said that they were going to try to sell tickets to broadway shows on the internet and i'm like never happen fun who would have thought course you know i was around before there were a fax machine so yeah you know i got off that covered wagon oh my gosh well julie when i came to florida i came from philadelphia down to florida and julie was my marketing director at another venue at the  here at the van ways we've met a lot of them today you've had the chance over these years to meet my friend coworker julia mays and we're just going to wish you a lot of success but we're really really back really really angry at