Dear Catastrophic Patrons,
‘Tis the season. This is a fundraising letter. It is also a personal letter and I hope you won’t mind if I share some difficult things with you. I’m a shy person but I’m also an artist and that requires a measure of bravery so here are some things about me you may not know.
First, I believe that art can change the world. I believe the audience members that approach me after a show and tell me a play they’ve experienced at our theatre has changed their lives. I believe it because it happened to me.
When I was 12 years old my house burned to the ground, when I was 13 my best friend took his life, and when I was 14 years old I read Waiting for Godot. Had I not, I’d be someone else entirely and I wouldn’t be writing to you today.
It took me a long time to understand why Godot got through to me the way it did then. In rehearsals for our 2023 production, 40 years after I’d first read it, it finally came clear.
In the play, Didi and Gogo return each day to a barren road to wait for something that may never come. I suddenly thought, it isn’t that they have to return to that road; it’s that, for all its difficulties, they choose to return to that barren road to be together–even on an otherwise barren road.
I’d been a Gogo who had lost my Didi when I read that play and Beckett had helped me feel less alone. Having lost my childhood home, I’d later learn that that road contained the path to my forever one.
Each Houston theatre is special in its own way. The most special thing about our theatre is its ensemble.
Not long ago, ensembles were a powerful force in world theatre. They seem profoundly gone today but the one we formed in the early 90s lives on. People leave and come back, they leave and don’t come back, sometimes they die and too many of ours did that too soon, but there are always new ones, young ones stopping in and forgetting ever to leave.
The thing about an ensemble like ours is that its members wind up dedicating their entire lives and artistic careers to a common cause that turns out to be the most challenging, most favorite thing they know, forever. It is exceedingly rare today and what a loss. I was one of the ones that left and came back so I know what it was to leave and I know what it was to come back.
Playwright Lisa D’Amour wrote a lot of last season’s Frozen Section for Catastrophic in the rehearsal room. In an interview with American Theatre, she was asked what it was like to work with Catastrophic. She said “What I love about their ensemble is that it’s people of a lot of different ages and shapes and sizes and races and genders. Everyone is very committed to the health of the theatre company. So I see people taking care of each other in a crazy world.”
Even if we’ve yet to meet in person, we gather in a black box in an increasingly crazy world, we choose that, and the loneliest among us is surrounded on all sides, engaged in common cause.
Without you there is no Catastrophic Theatre, nor should there be. You are the why and you are the how.
Anyone that’s written a plea for funds has said this, but it’s never been truer because in today’s crazy world none of us is immune and none can make it alone: we really do need you and your financial support more than ever.
On the opening night of Frozen Section, walking out of our small lobby, an audience member pronounced “That play said everything I needed to hear right now and I hadn’t even known I needed to hear it. It felt like I was being hugged and I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed to be hugged.”
That’s what families do. At their best, that’s what they can do. And that is how art can change the world.
Thank you for your continued support in that.
Truly,
Jason Nodler
Founding Artistic Director
Your financial support, available as a one-time amount or recurring monthly amount, is greatly appreciated.