Dear Friend of Oobleck,

Last summer, at our annual company retreat in Gstaad, we came upon the most magnificent discovery.

As part of a team building exercise, we had decided to look each other up on “iWas”—you know, that new iPhone App that lets you find out who you were in a past life? Maybe it’s not out yet on the American market—we had to download it from some Swiss Illuminati vacationing in the adjacent yurt. Anyway—after we looked up everyone in the Artistic Ensemble and Board of Directors, and toasted our past incarnations with Marillenschnaps, we decided it would be fun to look up the past lives of all of you, our supporters. And this is when we discovered the astonishing thing: Each and every one of you was a wealthy patron of the arts in a past life. And we do mean wealthy. Not all of you were Medicis, of course, but that’s the ballpark we’re talking about. Really big players. If it wasn’t for you—or rather if it wasn’t for your past life selves—there would have been no Leonardo, no Mozart, no Murasaki, no Avicenna, no Li Po, no Marlowe. Wow.

Of course this revelation makes the writing of an annual appeal letter a little awkward. If you want to take some time to process this information, we DEFINITELY understand. If you needed to take a year off from charitable giving altogether, who could blame you?

But we do have some really stellar stuff planned for 2014, including two episodes of our ongoing cantastoria project Baudelaire In A Box, a workshop performance of our upcoming circus arts show (developed in collaboration with El Circo Nacional de Puerto Rico and funded in part by a grant from the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund), a multi-week residency at The Hideout in Chicago, and three new scripts in development by Jeff Dorchen, David Isaacson, and Mickle Maher.

We raise a glass of schnapps to you, friends, not just in thanks for the enduring artistic and intellectual legacy of Western Civilization, but also for all your past support in this lifetime of our humble theater company. This year we celebrated 25 years of original, free-if-you’re broke theater in Chicago, which you made possible. You can help inaugurate the next 25 years by sending your tax-deductible donation to
Theater Oobleck
PO Box 607666
Chicago, IL 60660-7666
or by making a secure payment through our website.

Thank you for all of your support, and we look forward to seeing you in 2014!