Fall 2024 Appeal!
Oddfellows Playhouse Celebrates 50 Years!!
Dear Oddfriends,
This is a big year for the Playhouse - our 50th season of offering performing arts opportunities to kids in and around Middletown!
When the Playhouse’s founders gathered that first group of kids for theater workshops in the summer of 1975, Gerald Ford was President, the Vietnam War had just ended, Still Crazy After All These Years was album of the year,
Jaws was the blockbuster film of the summer, and a first class stamp cost 10 cents.
A lot has happened since then (and that stamp now costs 73 cents!), and at our 50th Birthday Party on July 5, 2025 we will be celebrating 50 amazing years of continuity and growth.
It’s kind of a miracle. 50 years of commitment to making theater, circus and dance available to every kid who wants it. 50 years of consciously, as our mission states, “promoting the development of a genuinely multiracial, multicultural society.”
We have not always been totally successful. There have been hits and misses, but these 50 years have been marked by a consistency of commitment to the community over multiple generations of leadership and participants. We have always kept our eyes on the prize.
Right now, we need our community MORE THAN EVER! Since 2020 we have kept the budget balanced by hustling for Relief Funding - from CT Cultural Relief Grants, New England Resilience Grants, American Rescue Plan Act - but that funding has all gone away. Our 2023-2024 season was the first year since before the pandemic that we did not balance our budget, and the current year is running in the red as well. We hope this is just a temporary blip, but YOUR SUPPORT will help keep the wheels turning.
Please consider a one-time donation in 2024, or (even better) enroll as a SUSTAINING SUPPORTER - your monthly or quarterly contribution helps us to plan with imagination and confidence to keep serving the needs of local young people.
From then, till now, into the future - still crazy after all these years!
Thanks!
Dic and the Oddfellows Staff and Board
Check out what we're looking forward to this season:
Fall Classes have been so much fun with 20 classes offered six days per week for ages 1 - 20, plus weekly classes for clients of MARC Community Services, Neighborhood Troupes at Traverse Square and Maplewood Terrace, and outreach programs at local schools. The Winter session kicks off January 6th with a whole new set of classes! Registration opens soon!
Circophony Teen Circus will premiere a new mainstage touring production January 30th - February 1st.
Junior Repertory Auditions for the March mainstage production of Coraline will be held on December 16th and 19th.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a mini production directed by Maegan Fuller and Lauren McCarthy, based on the original story How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss, will take place on December 12th and 13th with our 7-14 year old theater students!
Our gratitude is overflowing for all of you who have supported us through the last FIVE decades! None of this would be possible without you! PLEASE, find it in your hearts again this year to help us reach our fundraising goal before December 31st! Please, donate what you can today!
Gratefully,
Dic, Liz, Susan, Maritza, Dan, Allie, & Myke
