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.

Another year (our 14th!) in the books. We are so grateful to the people and organizations who helped Theater in Asylum thrive in 2024. We accomplished a lot this year, and we’ll chronicle it below for our Year in Review. 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 2025. Once again, thank you!

Research & Artistic
After every Theater in Asylum project, and perhaps after every artist’s process, there is an inevitable moment of panic: “What if I never have anything to say or make again?!” There’s an emptiness, an exhaustion, that takes hold after finishing a project. When The Nobodies Who Were Everybody finally premiered in 2023, we were jubilant and proud of the culmination of years of work. We were also a bit depleted and without an obvious next step for the next production. We would have loved to have mounted The Nobodies again, but without major funding or institutional support, we didn’t know how to proceed. In the meantime, artistic impatience and curiosity crept back into our lives.

As we recently wrote about on our blog, we’ve turned our research to FAUST. Paul and Katie’s private research became a book club (Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark, Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, and myriad adaptations of the Faust myth). The research ballooned, spurring Cold Readings, a workshop in August, and most recently the beginnings of a production that we experimented with at our cabaret in November.

That experiment, FAUST: Brooklyn, 2024, performed at The How to Survive the End of the World Cabaret, a night of new performance we produced in November. Alongside new work by the incredible Anthropologists, Adin Lenahan, Melissa Mowry, and Ali Dineen exploring end-times and how to survive them, Theater in Asylum’s 25-minute piece posited Faust as a burnt-out activist who succumbs to the bartender Mephistopheles’ forget-your-troubles mocktail. The night was electrifying and the feedback we received propelled even more questions to take this incubating show forward. Now that the election is over, and with myriad world-enders still raging, we see this work as essential to surviving the siren’s call to nihilism. Say “No!” to Mephistopheles and “Yes!” to your neighbor! Making this directive clear, compelling, and irresistible is our task for 2025.

Our research will continue next year with another book club (Ed Simon’s The Devil’s Contract), another workshop, more Cold Readings, and more frenzied text messages (“OMG did you know ______?!” and “What if _______?!” “Is ____ Faust? Is _____ Mephistopheles?” “Is this the bargain?” “Is this how we repent/escape?”). 

2024 began with the dreaded blank page. 2025 is beginning with more pages than can possibly fit in the next play. Let the sifting and throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall phase begin!

Organizational
Our big goal this year was to transition from fiscal sponsorship (under Fractured Atlas) to become a 501(c)3 (a non-profit) organization in our own right. It turns out this process is much more complicated than we initially anticipated. We’ve been working with the lawyers for six months, and we’re still at least a few months from this process being complete. But once it is, be sure we’ll sing it from the rooftops.

Here’s what we’ve done so far:

• Worked with The Lawyers Alliance to be matched with a firm that will guide us through this process.
• Worked with the firm Weil to create our bylaws and reincorporation documents.
• Found six 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!

Financial
The year is almost over, and overall we had a positive year financially! We are ending in the black, with some money saved up to support artistic developmental processes in 2025. Once we’ve had time to rectify and close 2024’s books, we’ll release our transparency report with the full budget (early January 2025).

Grants
Theater in Asylum received three grants this year, which truly made the work possible:

• Actors' Equity Foundation
• Brooklyn Arts Council
• IndieSpace's The Big Give: Pay Your People Grant

Indie Theaters Dismantling Supremacy / Anti-Racism
Theater in Asylum joined a coalition of other indie theater companies in August 2020 to learn, unpack, and make our companies more actively antiracist. In 2024 this group, Indie Theaters Dismantling Supremacy (ITDS), completed a consultancy with Nissy Aya, who guided us in writing our “Theory of Change” to map out who Theater in Asylum has been and where we are going. 2025 brings more work on these theories and continued peer-led education, feedback, and mutual accountability.

Looking Ahead
In 2025, we will continue exploring the Faust myth with the intention of mounting a full production in 2026. Cold Readings and our book club will explore different adaptations of the myth, and a closed-door workshop will put these ideas to the page/stage. In fall 2025, we aim to host another cabaret, continuing to showcase and be inspired by our brilliant, compassionate community. Administratively, we will finally complete the 501(c)3 process, which will involve an extensive switch-over of some accounting and administrative processes. We will launch our biggest fundraiser yet to celebrate our new status and prepare for our next production.

Cold Readings
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 9 plays, including 1 musical. 3 readings were guest-facilitated, with 6 by TIA staff. 55% of our playwrights were women, 13% were of color. Our oldest play was from 1897 and our newest was from 2019.
• When | Roughly monthly. 9 Cold Readings total.
• Where | Most plays were online, but the Episcopal Actors’ Guild has become our new home for in-person/hybrid readings.
• Who | Our Cold Readings averages 10 attendees per reading this year. After collaborating with us on The Nobodies and participating in many Cold Readings, Marcella Adams came on board as our curator this year.
• What We Read | Much of the year looked at apocalyptic settings, as we investigated how hope is cultivated in what feels like the end of the world. Toward the end of the year, we shifted to Faustian stories. Next year, we’ll continue our investigation of Faust, with more readings and ways for our Cold Readers to engage in our larger show development process.
• 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 | Separate from our avid play-reading, we also read books together as a means of bringing more people into our research process. Our book club gathered three times this year, reading: Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, and multiple adaptations of the Faust myth.
• Who | Our book club fluctuated from 5-10 people each gathering.
• Where | We met on Zoom.

​

• January 12 - TIA Holiday Party
• January 17 - Cold Reading
• January 31 - Book Club: Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
• February 21 - Cold Reading
• March 27 - Cold Reading
• April 24 - Cold Reading
• May 2 - TIA Happy Hour
• May 15 - Book Club: Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
• May 22 - Cold Reading
• June 12 - Cold Reading
• July 10 - Book Club: Multiple Faust adaptations
• August 9-17 - Faust/Hope Workshop
• August 18 - TIA Picnic
• September 18 - Cold Reading
• October 16 - Cold Reading
• October 23 - TIA Happy Hour
• November 1-2 - The How to Survive the End of the World Cabaret
• December 18 - Cold Reading

​

• Event attendees: approximately 600
• 2024 Season Donors: 83
• Paid artists: 31
• Paid full-year staff: 5
• Admin meetings: 48
• Cold Readings: 9 (6 online, 3 in-person)
• Rehearsal Hours: 24
• Live performances: 3 (one was a closed workshop presentation)

​

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

​

We are so grateful to the artists, audience, volunteers, donors, friends, and family who made Theater in Asylum's 2024 possible. We are so lucky to have such a vibrant and supportive community.

As we turn the page on 2024, we look with determined hope to 2025. If you are in a position to do so, please consider making a year-end donation to support our work in 2025. Thank you and happy New Year!

TIA Book Club Explores a Classic Myth

Book Club Discussion: Faust
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
7pm ET on Zoom
RSVP

For the next meeting of the TIA Book Club, we will gather to discuss the myth of Faust. We encourage folks to pick an adaptation to bring to the discussion, knowing that not everyone will have read it. Please read it in advance of the discussion and be prepared to describe it, knowing that not everyone will have read it.


Other notable takes on the myth include:

• The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
• Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Faustus by David Mamet
• Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights by Gertrude Stein
• Faust and Marguerite (1900 short film)
• Damn Yankees, book by George Abbott and Douglas Wallop, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross

RSVP to join us on July 10th! If you'd like to purchase a copy of one of the book or play adaptations of Faust, we encourage you to do so through our Bookshop.org page, which will help support the company (and independent bookstores!). Happy reading (or viewing or listening)!

Celebrate Summer with Us this August!

Theater in Asylum Summer Picnic
Sunday, August 18, 2024 @ 2 PM
Gantry State Park
Long Island City, NY
RSVP

Summer is here and there's plenty to celebrate! Join us for a picnic at Gantry State Park in Long Island City on Sunday, August 18th at 2pm. Gantry State Park is easily accessible via the 7 and G trains and the ferry to Hunters Point South. Bring a snack or beverage to share, your favorite people and animals, and enjoy an afternoon on the water with us! RSVP here for more information as we get closer to the date.

Happy New Year!

As 2024 begins, we invite you to join us in a book club as we develop our next production.

We are interested in exploring how hope functions, and how it’s sustained by people who don’t know if they’ll ever see victory. In dark times, it seems as though reality tells us to flee, to ignore the problem, or to focus on only small-scaled solutions. Yet we see throughout history that our greatest victories were won after many tireless individuals and movements sustained their hope and kept working despite the dark circumstances. How did they do it? How did they have the stamina to carry on when self-interest, opposing movements, and conspiracy theories / misinformation provided easy outs? Theater in Asylum is embarking on something of a character study, of a character who has repeated throughout history. Who is this person who hopes in the darkness, who works in the darkness, and who keeps at it when all seems lost? We know that person is alive and working today. How do we help them, and in doing so, help ourselves and everyone?

Join us for a book club to explore these ideas, starting with…

Hope in the Dark
By Rebecca Solnit
Book club discussion Wednesday, January 31
7pm ET on Zoom