Oh, dear friends,

If there’s any satisfaction approaching that of working together, it’s looking back on having worked together successfully. Have you seen the video of those people forming a human chain to rescue a forlorn dog from a flood? Afterwards they all went out together for drinks and fries – just like a theater company might.

So in the afterglow of a cataract of a year, we toast you all for fording the white water of 2017 with us as we brought to shore Mickle Maher’s Jim Lehrer and The Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer’s Double, the marvelous sequel to his marvelous play, The Strangerer. Thank you for your help raising funds for immigrants’ rights through our Threat Level Orange . Merci beaucoup for sallying forth alongside us through all or part of the three-day marathon that was the massively majestic Closed Casket: The Complete, Final and Absolutely Last Baudelaire in a Box, spelunking the Martha Bayne-curated rust-gothic A Memory Palace of Fear with us to bring housing concerns from the darkness into the light, and mucking in with us in raising almost $6000 as we all weathered the Apocalypse Cabaret: A Benefit for Puerto Rican Artists. And most recently, bless you for being our art-appreciative comrades during the reading/performance mini-fest of author, gallery curator, and Oobleck sonic accomplice John Corbett’s new book, Just What I Needed.

Your support in body, spirit, word, coin, and deed gives us the strength to march forth into next year with a world premiere of Barrie Cole’s new play, Reality Is An Activity. We’ll be doing a four-week election-related residency series, sometime before the midterm election – and we are LONG overdue for an Oobleck election maceration, are we not? A new silent film cantastoria by Dave Buchen and a boatload of rescued Puerto Rican musicians is also in the works, along with other endeavors of a likewise mouthwatering nature.

So we’re counting on you riding the wave of the known and unknown with us into the future. By the way, the heinous new tax bill threatens to wreak havoc on deductions to not-for-profit groups such as ourselves in 2018, if it’s signed before the end of 2017, so if you’re moved to give fiscally on top of all you’ve given us and those in need this past year, you can do so by visiting our support page.

Sincere gratitude to you again, and auspicious wishes.

The Ooblecks

photo by Evan Hanover