We made it! As 2022 comes to a close, we want to reiterate our gratitude to the community who made this year possible. For the past few weeks we've been looking back at all we achieved this year. If you missed it, here are a few links:

• Budget Transparency Report 2022
• All the Organizations we supported in 2022
• Our favorite things from 2022
• Our 2023 plans and fundraiser

Below, find a review of all Theater in Asylum produced and accomplished this year. If you're in a position to do so, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to our dreams for 2023. Once again, thank you.

2022 was a busy and fruitful year for Theater in Asylum. We continued developing our show about the Federal Theatre Project, currently known as The FTP Show. We plan to premiere this piece next summer, and this year’s work brought invaluable growth to the project. We presented a 20-minute excerpt at The FTP Cabaret, alongside new work from 6 invited guest groups. A few months later, we convened for a week of dedicated development and generated both a solid script draft and ample photos and video which were useful in our grant applications this year. The piece will continue development with a public reading in January and finally a full production in August 2023. We are still deeply committed and beyond excited to share this story. Hallie Flanagan’s unsung legacy continues to reverberate in the American Theatre, but her mission remains unfinished. Why? Artists lack the support they deserve and audiences frequently cannot afford to experience the art they deserve. Public funding of the arts in the United States (the wealthiest country on Earth) is urgently needed, and we hope our show can provoke a conversation to this end.

Cold Readings continued to transform this year. For the first time, a curation team led the program and brought new variety to the plays we read. We are still in transition, slowly scaling back from the frequency of Cold Readings during the pandemic (every week at its height) to normal times (7-10 readings per year). While we initially thought we would fully transition back to in-person readings, our online gatherings have continued to excel with a community beyond New York. Looking ahead, we plan to continue a mix of in-person and online readings. Having fallen a little short this year, we also plan to redouble our efforts in curating at least 50% of plays by women and 50% of plays by BIPOC artists.

2022 also brought extensive internal reorganization to the company. This was our first year with an annual staff whose responsibilities carried throughout the year. This staff was paid bi-monthly for their work and did not receive project stipends. We found this model very helpful to the overall health of the company and we plan to continue it next year.

After reconsidering non-profit status for the millionth time, TIA leadership decided to follow our tax advisor’s recommendation and forgo it, instead beginning a reincorporation process to make Theater in Asylum a multi-member LLC. This will not only better-protect Paul from tax liability (we were previously a sole proprietorship) but this also opens doors to pay our artists more with the ability to issue 1099’s as a company.

Overall, 2022 was fast and bright, busy and productive. The FTP Show is beginning to spread its wings, Cold Readings continued to delight, the company’s internal workings and finances are solidifying into a more sustainable place, and Theater in Asylum continues to be a home for many. The community grew this year and we eagerly reach for 2023 and all the good work it will bring.

We are so grateful to the artists, audience, volunteers, donors, friends, and family who made Theater in Asylum's 2022 season possible. We are so lucky to have such a vibrant and supportive community.

As we turn the page on 2022, we look with hope to 2023. If you are in a position to do so, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to our 2023 season.

Happy New Year!

Theater in Asylum believes that transparency enables the sharing of power and responsibility. We commit to being open with how company decisions are made and money is spent. Below please find an overview of our finances in 2022. This is also on our website’s transparency page, a page we launched last year as a way to showcase our finances and decision-making.

Budgeted Expenses

• Personnel: $14,393
• Production Costs: $1,750
• Space: $2,085
• Administrative: $2,061
• Development: $600
• Contingencies: $871
• Total Budgeted Expenses: $21,760

Actual Expenses (as of 12/29/22)

• Personnel: $12,944
• Production Costs: $1,295
• Space: $1,274
• Administrative: $1,147
• Development: $210
• Contingencies: $1,085
• Total Actual Expenses: $18,849
  

Projected Net

• Projected Expenses: $21,760
• Projected Revenue: $15,050
• Projected Net: -$6,710 
• Note: We had surplus from previous years if needed. Our large discrepancy here was in anticipation of not winning as many grants as we did.
  

Actual Net

• Actual Expenses: $18,849
• Projected Revenues: $21,222
• Actual Net: $2,373
• Note: We were very successful with grants this year and able to add to our surplus fund, which we plan to spend on The FTP Show in 2023.
  

We are so appreciative of our community, who has helped us organize our company, our budgets, and our work. More of our transparency commitments, as well as previous years’ reports, maybe be found on our Transparency page. We also always invite feedback and contact info may be found on our Community page. Thank you all for making Theater in Asylum a vibrant community and fruitful for all involved.

Thank you,
Paul, Katie, and Kathryn
Theater in Asylum

Ps. We are currently fundraising for 2023! Please consider supporting us with a donation here.

Each year, Theater in Asylum releases a list of plays, books, movies, and more that delighted us, challenged us, and changed us. Below find a list, crowd-sourced from our community, of our favorite things from 2022.

Also, Theater in Asylum’s fundraiser is live! If you’re able, please consider helping us reach our goal with a donation. Thank you so much!!

Fiction

• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  
• Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
  
• Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles
  
• Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
  
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  
• Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
  
• Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel
  
• A Season in the Congo by Aime Césaire
  
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
  
• A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Keenan
  
• White Noise by Don Delillo
  
• Bewilderment by Richard Powers
  

Poetry

• Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros
  
• Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong 
  

Non-fiction

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer
  
• The Bright Ages by Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry
  
• At the Center of All Beauty by Fenton Johnson
  
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
  
• The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
  
• Delivered from Distraction by Edward Hallowell and John Ratey
  
• Eleanor and Hick by Susan Quinn
  
• On Freedom by Maggie Nelson
  
• Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman
  
• Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison
  
• The Nutmeg's Curse by Amitav Ghosh
  
• Traveling While Black by Nanjala Nyabola
  
• Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
  
• The Women’s House of Detention by Hugh Ryan
  

Movies

• Dead Pigs
  
• Don’t Worry Darling
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Fire Island
• Grizzly Man
• Judas and the Black Messiah
• EO
• The Lady Eve
• My Name Is Salt
• Singing in the Rain
• Sea Gypsies

TV

• The Bear
  
• Creamerie
  
• Only Murders in the Building
  
• Our Flag Means Death
• Fleabag 
• Heartstopper
• Perfect Life
• Reboot
• Severance
• Superstore
• Too Hot To Handle
  

Dearest Supporters,

Thank you for making Theater in Asylum a vibrant space for new, provocative, and joyful research- and ensemble-driven theater! We are so deeply grateful to our community that makes this all possible. We have big dreams for next year, and we hope you will consider donating to our 2023 season, our 13th year of work. You’ll be supporting a new production, increased artist pay, free tickets at every show, Cold Readings, and a more sustainable structure for the company.

Looking Back, Reaching ForwardLast year, your support made it possible for us to grow and develop in tremendous ways. In 2022, we:

• Produced a cabaret of new work, with 37 artists, 120 in-person attendees, and over 600 online streamers.
• Held a week-long workshop of The FTP Show, developing the script and getting high quality photos and videos.
• Implemented an annual staff, with 7 paid team members to keep TIA running between projects, allowing us to plan bigger and more sustainably for 2023.
• Paid 56 artists for their work, including Cabaret artists for the first time, as well as increasing production stipends.
• Held 18 Cold Readings, amplifying 18 organizations doing good work in the process.
• Won the most funding from grants in our Company’s history, making 2021’s mission and systems revision a smashing success!
• Maintained a free ticket option at every public event.
  

With your support, we can build on our growth in 2022 to reach new heights in 2023. For our 13th year, we’re looking to :

• Stage the premier of The FTP Show in a 3-week, 12 performance run, our longest ever!
• Host 9 Cold Readings, with a mix of online and in-person gatherings.
• Pay over 30 artists at increased levels, stepping up our business structure and issuing tax documents for the first time.
• Maintaining a free-ticket option at all public events, a commitment we have kept since 2016.
• Reincorporate the company as an LLC, solidifying our ability to pay higher stipends.
  

What’s it All About?
The FTP Show (working title) explores the story of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a New Deal program that allocated federal tax dollars to directly employ thousands of theater artists from 1953. Led by Hallie Flanagan, the project thrived across the country, and approximately one quarter of all Americans saw an FTP production.

Our show focuses on six artists, following them from the FTP’s inception in 1935 through its demise in 1939, with flashes forward to the fights at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the 60’s and 90’s to the COVID-19 pandemic and today. Our characters represent, in Hallie Flanagan's words, the "ten thousand anonymous men and women who did the work, the somebodies who believed" in the Federal Theatre Project and made it exist.

The piece will showcase the major theatrical successes of the FTP, the tougher internal moments, and the external pressures of congressional censorship and accusations of Communism. Our characters fracture in debate as the play jumps forward in time. Over 80 years later a group of artists on Zoom, some benefitting from Covid Relief grants, others not, wrestle with the same questions of public funding and art’s value in society.

We’ve been developing this show for over a year through research, readings of FTP plays, and a workshop this past summer. This production will be our biggest to date with a three-week run at the Jalopy Theater in Summer 2023. With this long of a run, we have the chance to have our work seen by more people and let the idea of what a present-day federally-funded theater could be catch fire.

Financially, we are prioritizing people with this production. Artists stipends will increase by over 300% from our past productions, allowing our artists to concentrate on the process and less on making ends meet. Visit the fundraising page to see a detailed chart of our expenses for 2023.

Since 2015, Theater in Asylum has gathered friends and fans to read and discuss great plays (152 so far!). Wednesday nights have become a cherished place not only for play reading but for processing these wild times. We plan to continue a combination of online and in-person readings, as well as invite guest facilitators to bring new plays and ideas to the group. Part theater-literacy, part social-event, Cold Readings continue to be a bright spot in Theater in Asylum’s work.

If you are in a position to donate, we humbly ask for your support of Theater in Asylum’s work in 2023. From $5 to $5000, any amount is helpful and will make a difference! Plus, as an extra thank you for donating, we have a number of lovely perks for you to choose from!

I can’t donate, but I want to help. What else can I do?
Have a talent you can lend us? Become a perk partner and donate your time and talents to our donors. Email [email protected]

Have social media or a blog? Write about us and encourage your friends to chip in to our fundraiser!

We are so grateful for all that’s been made possible these past 12 years, and we look ahead to 2023 with eagerness and hope.

We have ambitious plans for 2023. Thank you, thank you for your donations that make these plans possible.

We wish you and yours safety, good health, and a bright new year.

Paul, Katie, Kathryn, Charlotte, Al, Melissa, Brea, and Adin