November 23, 2020
Dear Friends,
We’re not gonna lie: this is a fundraising letter and we’ve sent it to you in hopes you might donate to our theatre.
There are so many charitable causes these days, more than ever before; those that feed hungry people, those that are in the fight for long overdue justice. We are not the only ones in need and we are not the ones in the greatest need, but we are in need. So, while we encourage you to follow your heart in your giving, we’d like to ask you to consider donating to our little theatre too. Here’s why.
Like any successful arts organization, our core values are at the center of everything we do. We favor questions over answers, we produce plays that can be interpreted in as many ways as there are people in the audience, because it is when theatre becomes personal that it reveals its true power: to reconsider and reflect on one’s inner life. We also take measures to get to know our audiences individually. And, ideally, conversations that might begin with the shared experience of a play become intimate and evolve into conversations about who we are as lonely people together. Because, in some way, we are each of us lonely.
And if one person can be made to feel a little less alone, if we can relieve that burden in any way, then this mission we’ve been on together for 27 years will have been so much more than worth it.
But how does one measure the value of such a thing? How does one put a price on it? Here, as ever, we find our answer in our core values. Because we know that everyone is living different lives, under different circumstances, our tickets are always Pay-What-You-Can. We want everyone to have access to this experience, not just those with expendable incomes. It is in that spirit that we humbly ask, what is that worth to you?
Lately, some other theatres might be asking, “Is a theatre that’s unable to produce theatre still a theatre?” When the world changed, we faced that question ourselves and it’s not an easy one. And some theatre companies, quite reasonably, just can’t make theatre right now. They just can’t. To produce theatre in today’s world comes with extraordinary challenges. But we are fortunate in this way because challenges are not new to us. They’re what we do, they’re who we are, they’re in our DNA.
We started out by performing in the humblest of circumstances, spirited forward by a group of artists that have always been, each of them, dripping with imagination. And those things that allowed us to become a moderately successful DIY theatre way back in 1993 have allowed us to continue making theatre—indeed to program our fullest, most ambitious season yet.
But we really can’t do it without your support. We’re not asking you to give a specific amount. As usual, we’re asking you to Pay-What-You-Can, to help us continue to fulfill our mission of bringing funny, sad, strange, intimate, emotional, and ultimately healing theatre to you and others like you and unlike you. We miss you more than words can say and we can’t wait to be with you again.
Your friends,
Tamarie and Jason