Dear Friend,

As 2024 comes to a close, we feel immense gratitude for the community that makes Theater in Asylum’s work possible. Thank you for propelling our spaces to be vibrant springboards for new research- and ensemble-driven theater!

Last year, your support made so much possible.

In 2024, we:

• Presented The How to Survive the End of the World Cabaret for two nights in November at our beloved Jalopy Theater (and shared it via livestream!)
• Hosted 9 Cold Readings, and highlighted 9 organizations doing good work in the process.
• Paid 31 artist, continuing our commitment to prioritize our collaborators.
• Paid our admin team a monthly stipend for their hard work throughout the year.
• Maintained FREE tickets at all our events, including at the Cabaret.
• Worked. And worked. And worked… on becoming a 501(c)(3).
  

Becoming a 501(c)(3)
As you may remember, this was the major project we fundraised for last year, and the support you generated for this goal has been invaluable. Although the process is not yet complete, we hope it will be soon. Here’s what we’ve done so far:

• Worked with The Lawyers Alliance to be matched with a firm to guide our reincorporation process.
• Worked with the firm Weil to create our bylaws and reincorporation documents.
• Found 6 fabulous almost-board members that we cannot wait to introduce to you.

Once the documents are all complete, Weil will submit them to the IRS. Once approved, we will sign them and refile with the state, our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas, and our bank. Finally, we will have our first board meeting where we will induct our board and begin the nonprofit adventure!

Once the 501(c)(3) process is complete, we plan to properly launch our fundraiser (complete with Rick’s famous chocolate rye cookies). This will coincide with 2025 being our 15th anniversary!

Looking to 2025As we enter a new year, we hope you’ll support Theater in Asylum, either once or as a monthly donor. With your support, 2025 will include:

• A cabaret, hiring dozens of artists and welcoming 200 audience members to share in their work.
• A workshop for our next show (details on that below).
• 9 Cold Readings with a mix of online and in-person gatherings.
• Paying over 30 artists and our 5 admin staff members
• Maintaining a free ticket option at all public events, a commitment we have kept since 2016.
• Completing the 501(c)(3) process.
  
  

Our focus in 2025: FAUST
The journey to create our next show began this year with an investigation of hope and where it comes from. How does someone remain hopeful when global leadership fails us and the siren call to nihilism sings all around? To us, the siren call began to look like a Mephistophelean offer once we read Goethe’s Faust, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and Ed Simon’s The Devil’s Contract. We now see Faustian bargains are all around us as we continually encounter human suffering, and are asked to ignore it. ‘Fill your car and heat your home with fossil fuel.’ ‘Scroll here, click accept.’ ‘Walk past that unhoused person.’ ‘The world’s gone wrong, so just worry about yourself.’ Is it possible to survive these bargains with our moral compass and empathy intact?


Faust is the story we need right now. The story follows a man who chooses to worry only about himself, making a deal with the devil, Mephistopheles, wherein his one and only soul is traded for power. But for how long can Faust—and we—escape payment? Can we repent, as Faust does in the Goethe version during his descent to Hell? With payment deferred in many bargains—most glaringly: climate change—what would repentance and repair even look like? How do we survive and make a better world when Mephistopheles is all around, tempting us with false power and the illusion of the “self-made man”?

Who is Faust today? We posit that all of us are. We are all susceptible to the damnation that comes with the American worship of individualism. Yet, we assert, we are also all capable of repentance, reparation, and revolution. We, as a community and as a society, are bound to each other for worse and for better. We are each other’s best hope for survival, for thriving. That’s become the focus of Theater in Asylum’s next play.

We presented the first experiment of this piece at The How to Survive the End of the World Cabaret. In 2025, we will explore the Faust myth even further, reading adaptations by Thomas Mann, Gertude Stein, and Vaclav Havel, among others. We will present a new short piece at our 2025 cabaret and also share a developmental workshop at the end of the year. We look towards premiering the full piece in 2026.

We are so grateful for all that’s been made possible these past 14 years, and we look ahead to 2025 with eagerness and hope.

Thank you so, so much. Peace, power, and love to you,

Paul, Katie, Kathryn, and Theater in Asylum

Each year, Theater in Asylum releases a list of plays, books, movies, and more that delighted us, challenged us, and changed us. Below is our first list, a crowd-sourced list of films and television shows our community loved in 2024.


Thank you to the community who made and loved art this year! Please consider donating to Theater in Asylum so we can keep it going in 2025.

Films

• All of Us Strangers (Hulu)
  
• But I’m a Cheerleader
  
• City Lights (Prime, Max, Criterion)
  
• Challengers (Prime)
  
• Conclave
  
• ENO
  
• Genius:MLK/X (Disney)
  
• Ghostlight
  
• The Great Dictator (Max, Criterion)
  
• The Holdovers (Prime)
  
• House of Gods
  
• Israelism
• May December (Netflix)
• So Long Marianne
  
• Past Lives (Paramount)
  
• Wicked
  
• Where Olive Trees Weep
• Women Talking (Prime)
• Young Woman and the Sea (Disney)
  
• The Zone of Interest (Max)
  

Television

• My Brilliant Friend (TV, Max)
  
• Cross (Prime)
  
• Disclaimer (Apple)
  
• Fantasmas (Max)
  
• Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (Hulu)
  
• So Help Me Todd (Paramount)
  
• Interior Chinatown (Hulu)
  
• Matlock (Paramount)
  
• Maestro in Blue (Netflix)
  
• Origin (Hulu)
  
• Say Nothing (Hulu)
  
• Shogun (Hulu)
  
• Slow Horses (Apple)
  

Dear friends,

Each year on Giving Tuesday, we look back at the organizations who have helped and/or inspired us. We are blessed to have such great companies working tirelessly for a better, more just, and more beautiful world. Below is our list of organizations that we uplifted in Cold Readings, as well as organizations who have helped us this year.

This Giving Tuesday, we ask you to consider supporting one (or more!) of the organizations we highlighted this year. Below, see a loosely categorized list of heroes who are:

• Making and spreading theater
• Providing direct relief to those in need
• Advocating for a Better World

Thank you so much. Please take care of yourselves and each other.

Peace, power, and love to you,
Theater in Asylum

Making and spreading theater

• The Anthropologists is dedicated to the collaborative creation of investigative theatre that inspires action. Rooted in research and community engagement and shaped by physical theatre techniques, they’re committed to exploring current social topics from an anthropological perspective in order to break down and unleash cultural discoveries. Donate here.
• Arte y Maña is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to provide Puerto Rican communities with tools of the arts that promote social well-being, solidarity, leadership, and working as a collective. Donate here.
• The Jalopy Theatre and School of Music is a multi-faceted arts space showcasing folk and traditional music and art from New York City, the Americas, and the world. Their programming supports artists, fosters community, and provides enrichment and education about our shared musical heritage. Donate here.

Providing direct relief to those in need

• Direct Relief. Direct Relief is a humanitarian aid organization, active in all 50 states and more than 80 countries, with a mission to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergencies – without regard to politics, religion, or ability to pay. Donate here. 
• Episcopal Actors’ Guild. The mission of the Episcopal Actors' Guild is to provide emergency aid and support to professional performers of all faiths and none who are undergoing financial crisis. We are also dedicated to helping emerging artists advance their careers through scholarships, awards, and performance opportunities. Founded in 1923, EAG is not only a nonsectarian charitable organization, we are also a membership organization and we welcome the participation of all those who are interested in celebrating the talent and dedication needed to sustain a career in the performing arts. We hold several events each month with all proceeds being used to support performers in need. Donate here.
• International Rescue Committee. Everyone deserves the safety and security of home. But right now, in places like Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, conflict and disaster have left millions of families living in temporary shelters, lacking basic supplies and in urgent need of emergency aid.  The IRC is there, working in over 40 countries to provide rapid relief like food, water and medical care where it’s needed most, along with the critical long-term support families need to survive, recover and rebuild their lives. Donate here.
• Sanctuary for Families is New York’s leading service provider and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking and related forms of gender violence. Every year, we empower thousands of adults and children to move from fear and abuse to safety and stability, transforming lives through a range of comprehensive services and advocacy. Donate here.

Advocating for a Better World

• Jewish Voices for Peace is the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world. We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews into solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle, guided by a vision of justice, equality, and dignity for all people. Donate here.
• The Urban League of Greater Cleveland is a community-based organization focused on eliminating the racial, economic, and societal barriers that prevent Black Americans and other underrepresented/underserved communities of color from achieving their full potential. Ultimately, our imperative is to ensure that EVERY member of our community has equitable civil rights, access to education, workforce development, and economic empowerment. Donate here.
  

Thank you to everyone who came out to our latest cabaret. Check out photos of the event here.