Kickstarter

UPDATE: We have exceeded our funding goal, thanks to all of our amazing backers! We are thrilled and eternally grateful to each of you. If you are here considering making a pledge to support us, rest assured that we can still use every penny (see our expenses below). More money = better theater and the ability to pay our actors and production team.

A Festival of Fools theatre company is producing its second annual free verse play at the Prospect Park Music Pagoda. We are mounting a new translation of the Spanish epic "Life is a Dream" by Pedro Calderon de la Barca. It's a play depicting what can happen when a person is forced to determine whether their waking life is truly real or just another aspect of an elaborate dream.

Our venue:
Last summer, we were a bunch of kids in capes running around the pagoda in the rain. We put up our first show, a new version of Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," edited and with additional verse scenes written by Tim, our artistic director. While we were proud of our production, we learned many lessons - one of which is, provide rain cover for the audience, just in case, and another of which is, even free shows are expensive to produce, which is why we're asking for your support this time around.

Our goal as a company is to bring verse theatre back into popular esteem and to broaden awareness of verse by producing lesser-known works and our own original verse plays. We also want to expand people's knowledge of verse beyond the Bard. It wouldn't be summer in NYC without free outdoor Shakespeare, for sure, but we want to show people that the medium is alive and well in other texts.

Fight choreography in action!

"Life is a Dream" features an epic sword fight, much stage combat, elaborate costumes and inspired direction that makes use of the unique outdoor space. There's a climactic battle scene, lovers torn apart by power and deceit, cross-dressing, and servants flipped over balconies. It will be a fast-paced and immersive experience, surrounded by a piece of history (the pagoda) and nature (all the trees).

Producing free plays for the community is very important to us, but we do incur production costs. The $3000 we're seeking is for the following:

$300 - Director
$100 - Stage manager
$100 - Costume designer
$200 - Costume budget
$100- Poster/art design
$100 - Music composer
$300 - Postcard/poster printing
$500 - Fight choreography and swords
$200 - Props/set
$100 - Verse coaching
$1000 - Actor stipends ($100 each) Our actors are currently working for free, and they're wonderful! We want to pay them!

In addition to these costs, we also have:
- Additional costume items, laundry, dry cleaning and repair of costumes ($250)
- Sword rentals ($200)
- Additional musician for the performances ($100)
- Printing programs ($80)
- Verse coaching ($70)
- Supplies for the performance space (tape, ribbon, climbing rope, chalk, poster board) ($40)
- Printing posters for the performances ($30)
- Water and first aid supplies for the actors ($30)

That's an additional $800.

With your support, we can continue to produce theatre and introduce new audiences to the world of verse plays. For more information about our company and our past productions, please visit http://www.afestivaloffools.com.

Update: The Brooklyn Paper interviewed our artistic director! Check out the article: Shakespeare in the Park? Feh — we got Calderon’s ‘Dream’ play by Meredith Deliso.