Dear Friend,
Congratulations on making it through another year! 2021 started in a social bubble and tentatively moved toward vaxxed and masked in-person gatherings with people you hadn’t seen in real life for far too long. The highlight of our year was once again getting to see you!
We started 2021 resolved to do two things: one, resume doing what we do best, namely develop new work; and two, do so on a platform other than Zoom! Which is how we found ourselves in February filming a reading of Kevin Kautzman’s timely and disturbing play, Moderation, which was viewed over 500 times on our YouTube channel. It felt great to be working in person with actors again, even if we didn’t yet have a live audience.
That changed when we produced a reading of an excerpt from Lizzie Donahue’s A Barn Play at Dyckman Farm House in June. As you may recall, the full production of the play was postponed in March 2020, and we were honored to welcome back the original actors and creative team for the readings. We played to two capacity houses and enjoyed robust talk-backs with members of Dyckman House’s education staff.
We amped up our live programming in the fall, when we presented a reading of Matt Schatz’s The Tallest Building in the World, a play about the creation of the World Trade Center, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. In October, on four consecutive Saturdays, we presented readings of new plays that had been canceled or indefinitely postponed because of Covid as part of our Renewal Reading Series. These events were hosted by familiar partners (Buunni!) and new friends (Cornerstone Center!).
And we also continued producing some of our favorite discoveries from our remote programming: Radio Plays! We produced four surreal Escape! episodes in the early spring, which have so far garnered a thousand listens on YouTube, and we recorded a special holiday episode of Richard Diamond, featuring many of your favorite characters, available now on the UP Theater Channel.
We cannot wait to continue this trajectory in 2022, when we bring you even more Renewal readings, when we finally give A Barn Play the full production that it deserves this spring, and when we celebrate at The Hudson at our Onward & UPward! Gala on May 19, 2022.
None of this would be possible without your support. This holiday season, if you are able to do so, please consider donating to UP Theater so we can continue bringing you the provocative, entertaining, boundary-pushing theater you have come to expect. Donations are tax deductible and can be made via our website or by mailing a check. Just click that big red button below for instructions.
We can’t wait to see you in 2022.
Sincerely,
Kirby Fields, Artistic Director