Finally, some good news
In the midst of what feels like an ever-increasing sense of dread about the economy in general and the local theater ecosytem in particular, we want to highlight some positive, optimistic good news:
Ten Thousand Things has initiated a capital campaign to raise the salary of their actors to a level that really does matter. Graydon Royce summarizes the story for the Star Tribune in Ten Thousand Things raises money for actors, not buildings.
Speaking of paying actors, the incredibly adventurous and brave small theater company Off-Leash Area, who often produce work in their own converted garage, just received a National Endowment for the Arts grant that will allow them to triple the amount they pay the actors in their next production, Ivan the Drunk and His Terrible Tale of Woe, opening at Open Eye Figure Theatre on June 3.
We wouldn’t normally announce every grant that every organization gets in this town. There are lots, including a huge grant from the Mellon Foundation that the Playwrights Center just got a few months back that you should know about. Please don’t send us every press release. We don’t have the staff.
However, we wanted to remind people that even as we start hoarding and saving to survive the coming economic tsunami there are also, always, some positive developments too. Paul Herwig, co-artistic director of Off-Leash Area, expressed the feeling best in his email to me:
It certainly is encouraging for us to get this much funding relative to our size in this economic climate. And what's more is that it's all been for the work, the art. Who'd'o'thought?!
