As I mentioned, hinted, and alluded to it (mostly in this post), there is a crowdfunding campaign coming up: Itínera Theater, the natural-building / theater group I am involved with, wants to harness our seemingly extensive social networks, in order to raise some funds by means of kickstarter ... or actually it'll be most likely Indiegogo. We want to schedule our campaign to conclude at Christmas. This way we'll include that weird holiday that makes it okay to talk people into giving, by whatever means necessary. And for that to be possible, we'll have to launch the campaign in less than three weeks. (That's right, it's only 17 days now!)
November 20: A Highly Spectacular Launch Event
As all of you faithful followers will know, we have been conducting a pre-campaign of Zoom conferences, where we invited people we know who are involved in natural building or performing arts projects. We still have three encounters left, scheduled for the next three Sundays. But on the preceding Saturday of the last one, we want to have another major event: The Great Online Variety Show of November 20th. You are of course invited, as are all your friends, so by all means, please spread the word as much as you can!!! (Depending on the success, and mostly on the number of performers interested, we may also schedule a second similar event.) I'll post again once we have an event page up and running.
Without promising too much, our plan is to put on a show for several hours, where we want to offer artists we know the chance to give a brief performance. There will be music, puppet shows, shadow theater, story telling, poetry, and many other exciting things. Since our artists are literally from all corners of the world, just as our expected audience, we want to spread it out as much as possible, so people in many places will be able to enjoy it. We are focusing mostly on the time-zones of Europe through the Pacific coast of North America, so in a way it'll be similar to our Conferences, but much longer. In fact, I'm trying hard not to use the word marathon or anything ending with -thon to describe it.
Release of Our Campaign Video
Any self respecting campaign is bound to have a promotional video. In this regard we also tried to pull all stoppers, and put together something incredible. Many hours of hard work and meticulous details later, we have amassed so much material that we can promise not just one cool video, but probably at least one more, not counting special features, making of, etc. It is a humorous, cheeky introduction of our group, our project, and the goals of our campaign, using puppets (yeah!) So stay excited - I know I am!
What Are The Funds For Anyway?
Though I am going to elaborate more on this in a separate post, here I just want to give you guys a bit of a background of what we're campaigning for. Most of it should be old news (especially if you've been following me for a while), but I want to re-package it in something shiny:
Creating a Theater Where There Is None. This is something we have been doing since the day of our arrival. And certainly you don't need a building to conduct theatrical activities... but a nice smooth floor, a shady roof, and some cooling airflow make things a lot nicer. All of these things are already present, except for the floor. Also, in order to live and work on the site, we need a fairly protected kitchen, some shade to survive the daytime heat, and a way to keep our tents from flooding.
Finishing Our First Structure. And we're so close: an impressive tire wall, a massive berm, a reciprocal roof, covered with green vegetation... all that is already there! But in order to be able to close it off, some windows and a door are needed. On the inside, we would like to cover the exposed tires by a cob plaster, and to provide for the building's own electrical needs, we want to install a small solar system.
A Theater is More Than Just the Walls. We don't want to create the impression that our fundraising campaign is merely to complete the building, though that is the most important part, no doubt. However, we want to emphasize that our activities for the community, something we organize each year at least a few of, is just as essential, if not more. Even if our crowdfunding turns out to be less successful than anticipated, we will at least have an event to inaugurate the place, of course with some art, music, and certainly with the community. Otherwise, we would like to include some material to make tables and chairs in order to seat a larger group of people.
Regular Updates Are On the Way
I can imagine you having a good many questions about all this. And that's really great! I can't wait to respond to all of them (... though I think there may be some I don't have answers to myself). But to set your minds at ease, I can tell you, there will be many, many more updates as we go along, and they should hopefully explain all the details. So don't hold back, I am ready to receive all kinds of questions, suggestions, criticisms, advice, anecdotes, wishes, etc!