Putting it Together – Die Laughing

I’m moving my Putting it Together blog to Sunday.  It used to be on Monday but I decided to switch things up.  If you are OCD, this is probably messing with you. Otherwise, you probably don’t care.

As I write this, we aren’t even halfway through Die Laughing.  I don’t know if we’ll manage to raise the funds we hope to raise with this insane idea.  I really hope we make it (looks like we will).  I’ll tell you one thing about this crazy show I already know – I want to do it again.

Running a theatre company is expensive.  And the more you want to do, the more expensive it gets.  I would love to tell you that everyone can raise all the funds they need from ticket sales but the truth is, there is hardly a company in existence that makes all of their money that way.  Fundraising is a reality that most companies will have to face.

So we have to raise money.  The idea, however, is to find ways to make the fundraising enjoyable.  Because nobody likes asking for money all the time.  And people get tired of being asked.

Making it enjoyable for the audience is obvious.  I’d like people to show up for some percentage of a fifty hour marathon.  I’d like to believe they will enjoy some of it.

But it also has to be enjoyable for the people putting on the event.  Any event that lasts fifty hours is a lot of work.  If you aren’t having any fun, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.

So I’m already pretty tired and sometimes discouraged by the number of people in the room and sometimes really concerned we’ll miss our fundraising goal but the good news is I am enjoying the process.

While things have been going extremely well, we’ve done a whole ton of things wrong in the last two days and we still have time to do more wrong.  What we did right, though, was come up with this idea in the first place.

I write a lot about the amazing collaborative nature of theatre.  Everyone wants to help other members of the community do better.  Die Laughing has been filled with amazing moments the exemplify that.  Comedy Suitcase debuted a new show.  Right now, as I type this, a new group is doing improv on stage for the first time.  The youngest member of their group is eight.  People have come in and done comedy at 7:00 in the morning for no more than three or four audience members just to make sure that we meet our goal of 50 straight hours of comedy.

Two new Fearless shows have debuted here this weekend.  All of these shows are successful because they are happening.  They are happening in an environment supported by other artists.

I genuinely hope we reach and exceed our fundraising goal because we have a lot of plans for the money we are trying to raise.  I’m excited about the possibilities for Fearless in the coming months (as I always am).

However, making money was never our only goal.  Our goal was to do something Fearless.  Our goal was to bring together an amazing community of artists, both experienced and inexperienced.

And our goal was to have fun doing all of it.

I can’t speak for anyone else but for me, when it comes to that last goal, Die Laughing has been an amazing success.