Thank you to everyone who made our 15th year a success! We accomplished great deal and could not have done it without this  community. Below, we will review some of our activities of the year. You can also catch up on our crowd-sourced lists of art we loved this year (film & television, music, books, theater). If you're in a position to do so, please consider making a year-end donation to support our work in 2026. Once again, thank you!

Reflections
Research & Artistic
2025 was a busy year of development. Faust continues to be our obsession. A year ago, the piece honed in on a binary between heaven as solidarity and hell as being alone. The piece has continued to evolve to focus on violence, arrogance, and hubris. When war, genocide, and empire continue despite all our peaceful efforts to end them, what other tactics might one turn to? What spurs the resistance fighter? What spurs the violent oppressor? How does someone move to take brutal action, even if it is toward a noble cause? These questions are troubling, and continue to drive our research and development.

2025 began with the first full-length reading of the then untitled Faust project. Come summer, we dug deeper into the material with two workshops: one focused on the script, one focused on staging that incorporated puppets. Towards the end of summer, a title emerged: Faust Syndrome. We believe Faust isn’t a singular phenomenon, but a syndrome that has afflicted people and societies for millenia. Throughout the year, our Cold Readings series continued to be a lively source of inspiration. We read nine plays throughout the year, mostly based on the Faust myth.

In November, we presented a 20-minute excerpt of the piece at The 7 Deadly Sins Cabaret, alongside four other new pieces by artists in our community. TIA’s piece featured John, the first of multiple Fausts in Faust Syndrome. After having agreed to Mephistopheles's deal, John wakes from his first good night of sleep ever and is led by Mephistopheles on a tour of the original seven deadly sins, along with three newer sins. The scene ends with John encountering the new sin Callousness, which will make possible the violence John will later commit in the play. The excerpt featured beautiful puppets by Sean Devare, operated by Francine Pinheiro, and was our first foray into the medium. We are toying with the idea that people in Faustian bargains transform into puppets for the Devil (progressively more susceptible to the manipulation). The Cabaret was a great success, not just for TIA but for all the artists presenting. The feedback from the audience was thrilling, and we look forward to implementing the feedback and getting this story closer to production in 2026.

Organizational
As you surely know at this point, Theater in Asylum is moving to become a nonprofit 501(c)3. On June 29, 2025, we submitted our “1023” documentation to the IRS to make this change. Unfortunately, the IRS website has stated for five months: “If you submitted after Feb. 26, 2025: Your application has not yet been assigned. Please check back later. Don’t contact us at this time because we can’t provide a status of your application.” We are at a loss. Can it be true that no new nonprofits have been approved in almost a year? We continue to operate in our current structure and prepare for the eventual day we become a 501-c-3.

Financial
The year is almost over, and overall we had a positive year financially. We are ending in the black, with money saved up to fund next year’s production year. For Theater in Asylum, production years typically cost three to four times more than non-production years. Early next month, we will close the books on 2025 and will publish our annual transparency report. 

Looking Ahead
2026 will be a big  year for us, with our largest production yet: Faust Syndrome. We are very close to securing a venue for a Fall 2026 premiere, and plan to perform the show ,for three weeks. At some point in the year, we hope to officially become a nonprofit,  which in turn will necessitate a large administrative reorganization. There’s a lot on our plate, but we’re eager to dig in!

2025’s Major Events and Projects
FAUST SYNDROME

Another great year for Cold Readings! 

• What | This program, which gathers our community to read and discuss a published play cold (without rehearsal), aims to spur theater literacy and a confidence in speaking about theater. This year we read 7 plays, including 5 adaptations of Faust, and 1 musical. 1 reading was guest-facilitated, with 6 by TIA staff. Our oldest play was written in 1592 and our newest was from 2018.
• When | We read in January, February, March, April, May, September, and October 2025.
• Where | Most were at the Episcopal Actors’ Guild with an option to attend via Zoom.
• Who | Our Cold Readings averaged 10 attendees per reading this year.
• What We Read | This year, we continued looking at adaptations of the Faust myth with a few general plays on religious themes towards the end of the year.
• Amplifying Good Work | As always, we used our Cold Readings program to amplify the good work of other organizations. You can see all these organizations in our Giving Tuesday post here.

Book Club

• What | This year we gathered to read Ed Simon’s Devil’s Contract: The History of The Faustian Bargain as part of our larger investigation into the Faust myth. The book chronicles society’s relationship to devil’s bargains, from the first century’s Simon Magus through today’s dilemma over artificial intelligence.
• Who | We had about 10 people join us at this book club.
• When | January 8, 2025
• Where | We met on Zoom.

2025 Timeline

• January 8 - Book Club: The Devil’s Contract by Ed Simon
• January 11 - TIA Holiday Party
• January 22 - Cold Reading
• February 19 - Cold Reading
• March 19 - Cold Reading
• March 29 - First full reading of our Faust project
• April 16 - Cold Reading
• May 14 - Cold Reading
• June 17-18 - Faust script workshop
• August 4-8 - Faust staging workshop
• August 18 - Fundraiser launch
• September 24 - Cold Reading
• October 29 - Cold Reading
• November 5-16 - Faust cabaret rehearsals
• November 20 - The 7 Deadly Sins Cabaret

2025 by the Numbers

• Event attendees: approximately 320
• 2025 Donors: 118
• Paid artists: 41
• Paid full-year staff: 4
• Admin meetings: 41
• Cold Readings: 7
• Rehearsal Hours: 35
• Live performances: 1

Previous Years in Review

• 2024
• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• A review of our first 10 years (2010-2019)
• More about Theater in Asylum

​Thank you!

Dear Friends, 

Today is a day that will be filled with complicated emotions. Some of us will be compulsively tuned in to the news, while others will be studiously avoiding it. Whatever your tactic is, we hope you’ll keep your chin up and your heart open. Today will surely influence the future, but it will not be the future’s sole determinant. We, too, have the potential to influence the future. 

From our Faust research, a quote from Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark: “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When we recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes—you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can known beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.” 

Stay strong. Say no to Mephistopheles and yes to your neighbors. 

We’ve got work to do. 

— Theater in Asylum

Ps. Huge thanks to everyone who came out to our holiday party earlier this month (yes, in January)! We had a great time catching up with our friends in the TIA community, chatting about life updates and upcoming projects, and looking ahead to the new year.