To The Reader’s Forum:

A recent post from the Jamestown Lucille Ball Little Theater has created a lot of buzz regarding the use of AI in the theater’s promotion and marketing.

While the post was meant to explain the “minimal use” of AI in its content, it feels quite tone deaf coming from a community that supposedly promotes local artistic expression.

To be fair to the theater, it can be difficult to find volunteers, but rather than use AI as a solution, perhaps the board should look internally at why they cannot find people to give their time to the local arts.

Many years ago, the Little Theater was bustling with volunteers. However, over the years, assistance has been much more difficult to come by.

I have loved ones who have tried to volunteer their time over the years with the theater and quickly disengaged due to lack of support from the board. Instead, it felt as if they were pushed back at possible opportunity.

I’ve also heard of talented community members with deep theater knowledge who tried giving their time to our local arts, only to be run out of the theater altogether, likely due to certain board members who felt their position as a big fish in a little pond was being threatened. From everything I have heard of the current administration, the Little Theater does not truly want the help it cries for. If it did, the members would not micromanage their volunteers and create bottlenecks to success.

It is easy to put your name and photo on a program, Mr. Russell, and claim the theater’s success as your own. It’s another thing entirely to actually put in the work that comes with managing a non profit. As they say, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Perhaps if Mr. Russell and his vice president cannot handle the responsibility of managing the Little Theater, they should put their ego in check, step aside, and allow someone more competent to take the helm.

The theater is not what it once was. Can we really blame our community members for that, or continued incompetence from within?

Beth Johnson

Jamestown.