10 Years and Flying High
We wish you a happy holiday season and a wonderful 2013! This coming New Year marks FCT’s 10-year anniversary and we’re more focused and committed than ever to deliver our unique brand of imaginative theatre. We've refreshed our mission in honor of this important milestone. Take a look.
Using inventive staging to conjure timeless stories, Flying Carpet Theatre Co. transports audiences to unexpected places, where they can see our modern world from a fresh vantage.
And as you read through this newsletter, you’ll see how every single one of our upcoming activities furthers this mission.
I'm writing to ask for your continued support. We need your help to launch our bold next phase of work. You've made our first 10 years an exhilarating ride! Every penny you donate helps us bring you more remarkable shows, vibrant experiences, and free community programming that open the door to fresh perspectives. Please help us reach our Winter Campaign goal of $50,000. We can’t do it without you.
See you at the theatre!
Adam Koplan, Artistic Director
Lift Off: The Medicine Showdown Launch in NYC
We'll be playing New York on a new scale. Our Atlanta hit,
The Medicine Showdown, will tour to several boroughs, mimicking the itinerant style of the turn-of-the-century theatrical genres that inspired it.
In March the play will be presented for free to student audiences in the Bronx and Queens. In June we'll have a ticketed run in Manhattan and anticipate sharing this innovative and entertaining show (“Henrik Ibsen meets Hee-Haw”) with over one thousand New Yorkers!
Our Community Outreach Soars
For a young company, Flying Carpet has one of the most robust and thoughtful commitments to community outreach. In 2013, we’ll lead
dozens of free symposia, talkbacks, and student workshops in conjunction with The Medicine Showdown. We've laid additional groundwork to bring folks who don’t ordinarily see theatre into our show by developing an
array of community partners (e.g. arts education organizations such as The Dreamyard Project and graduate schools like Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health). With further
donor support we will expand the reach of these vital initiatives and the positive impact they have on our city neighbors.
Runway 2013
We're thrilled to announce that we'll be working with the
Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, the nation's premier puppet venue, to create a new production of one of our early shows, 1001 Nights. This charming musical for families,
co-written by Tony winning composer/lyricist Robert Lopez and me, will open in Atlanta in March 2014. In addition to shows that we are actively prepping for production next year, we also continue to develop new material that we'll produce in 2014 and beyond. We've begun the process of turning PR guru Edward Bernays's life story into a play,
¡Propagandistas! We also continue work on
Caught Up, the tale of a heretical modern day evangelical preacher.
New Grants/New Opportunities
You've been investing in FCT's community outreach of educational workshops, symposia, talkbacks, and subsidized tickets all along. Starting this year, you are joined by the City of New York! We've been awarded our first government grants from the
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the
Queens Council on the Arts to help support
The Medicine Showdown run and its educational programming. This financial commitment will allow us to offer free performances for high-schoolers as well as give low-cost tickets to public health, nursing, and medical school students who are a target group for the show.
