Learning to Fly, by Thom Stanley and Amber Bradshaw, was originally created for the 2014 production of Xperimental Puppetry Theater as a World Premiere at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia. It received extremely positive feedback, audiences were deeply touched by the content, and we were deeply touched by the powerful response to the play. Now we have the amazing opportunity to workshop and further develop it this September in Trois Rivieres, Canada. Les Sages Fous is an incredible puppet theater company doing innovative work and we are thrilled to be accepted to their festival. We cannot wait to make Learning to Fly a longer, more inventive and complex production.
What We Need & What You Get
In order to do this, we need your help! Travel to Quebec adds up when you have six performers to take with you (four puppeteers and two actors)! Travel alone will run us $4200. We also need a budget for production costs, rehearsal space, script translation and other miscellaneous expenses we incur in the process. Estimate budget needs for all those things will run about $1200. We then would like a slush fund for things we have not considered (what if something breaks?) for $600. We have no plans to pay ourselves, we are all volunteers doing this for the love of the project.
If you decide to help us and donate, please leave a comment! We'd love to hear from you and it helps our campaign!
The Impact
Our main goal in taking LTF to this festival is to make a twelve minute short into a full-length One Act (thirty minutes!). The festival is designed to workshop our play with fellow professional development artists that will offer us feedback and great ideas! We intend to focus on the visuals in the play, how to expand and deepen them, as well as getting an international reaction to the story. Making the play longer will give us the opportunity to submit it to other festivals, most of which accept thirty minute plays or longer.
We would love to continue sharing this story with audiences.
Because we wrote this piece in honor of the victims of 9/11 and for every person who lost a loved one, a percentage of every donation will be donated to the 9/11 Tribute Center in NYC. Whatever amount you can donate will be appreciated, gratefully accepted, and shared with those whose lives were changed forever that day.
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Wes and Emily get close.
Here’s a blurb about the play:
“When you dream of flying, life is good.” - Wes, Learning to Fly
The play came about from our responses to the iconic ‘falling man’ photo of the man falling from the Tower on 9/11. Haunted by the images from that day and armed with endless research from the 911 calls, documentaries, footage of the disaster and personal accounts; we set out to tell the story of two intertwined people faced with the hardest decision of their lives; to perish by fire and smoke, or to fly. Our most pertinent concern at all stages of this process was to honor the memories of the victims who perished that day, but also to put to rest any distress related to the idea of the falling man and what he represents.
THANK YOU FOR READING! We hope you'll consider donating to help us get to Quebec. Thank you Thank you Thank you!
Please leave a comment! We would love to hear from you and it boosts our campaign!
