Food is Love. Love is Action. Eat.

We are a group of emerging theatre artists from New York University working together to produce the first production of The Flitch, a new musical by writer/lyricist/composer Polly Pen. Wacky and disturbing, whimsical and grotesque, The Flitch is a dark fable that lulls us into a world where couples crave each other like food.

This production serves as the thesis project for director Julia Locascio and a showcase for a fiercely inventive 26-member creative team. We make Sensory Theatre: experiences that employ smell, flavor and physical sensation as well as sight and sound. We use this work to bring an expanded and specified living awareness to audience members: to highlight life's sensations so as to make them active, immediate and immersed in the present. The Flitch is the perfect story to experiment with these ideas. It is a play that declares love should be sustaining, nourishing, bodied and in the moment, just like the theatre we create.

When we enter the theatre, we smell old books and a crackling fire.  Ben, Mary and Celia have met in an ancient house to make a Dumb Cake - a delicacy that, when consumed in silence, reveals the eater's soul mate. The ingredients they gather in eggshells become a dessert layered with fearful possibility. Swept up in their desire to consume each other, young lovers Ben and Celia compete against older couple June and Leonard for the Flitch - half of a glowing, singing cured pig - as Mary and Ed (sometimes a mule, sometimes a man, but always madly in love with Mary) test the limits of the two couples' devotion. We fall in love, we judge, and we watch with bated breath, crusty bread, hot wine, and chocolate-covered bacon that falls from the ceiling.

To do this, we need supplies! Our production activates all the senses - so we not only need wood for sets and fabric for costumes, but food for the audience and oils/essences to fill the room with; in total, we are hoping to raise $1,000. We have a set date and a theatre confirmed for production so no matter what, the production will go up. Because of this we cannot delay our fundraising efforts - even if we don't reach our goal, the show must go on!

Please help us make our goal and this show the best it can be!