Kickstarter

OUR HISTORY:    In 2010, minutelovestories (www.minutelovestories.tumblr.com) began from a desktop in Venice, California. In 2011, minutelovestories’ writer and creator, Rebecca Cox, teamed up with Los Angeles director and actress, Julie Civiello, and created The 13 Most Beautiful Stories, a live performance featuring 13 Los Angeles actors and 13 minutelovestory monologues, performed at William Turner Gallery in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. There was standing-room only in the 5,000-square-foot gallery. There were tears, there was laughter, there was a lot of love.

And now, there’s First Love/Worst Love.

OUR FIRST LOVE/WORST LOVE PROJECT: First Love/Worst Love is an experience of love and its mutability, as expressed through five Los Angeles-based actors, embodying twelve vignettes composed specifically for this staged performance. These stories embody love’s shapes and spectres both, breathing love’s disappointments, fervor, fear, indolence, loss, and, the lynchpin of Pandora’s proverbial box, hope. Each First Love/Worst Love live performance will be 45-minutes long, with each actor taking on the challenging task of varying voices of characters in the lapses, statis, or earliest leaps of love.

For the last year, we’ve been contemplating the concept of first and worst loves, and only in the last six months has our project gained serious velocity and energy. We’ve been toiling with love over this production of First Love/Worst Love, speaking with friends and lovers about their own travails and delights in love, gathering intimate material, envisioning the contours of this non-linear telling of contemporary love stories, shared in separate, albeit integrated and aligned, voices.

The First Love/Worst Love premiere is Friday June 8th at 6:30 p.m. at the Open Fist Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., in Hollywood, California. Our show has a total of four performances throughout the entire month of June: Friday, June 8th at 6:30 p.m., Saturday, June 16th at 8:30 p.m., Wednesday, June 20th at 5:30 p.m., and a final performance on Saturday, June 23rd at 2:30 p.m..

This First Love/Worst Love fundraising campaign runs for a total of 35 days, closing on June 1st. Please know that your donations to this Kickstarter campaign will bring this project to the level at which it’s destined to be, for all people so passionately involved.

THE KICKSTARTER KICKER: Your valuable and generous donation is not processed until we reach our goal of $5500. If we don't reach our campaign goal, you retain your donation amount and First Love/Worst Love receives no funding whatsoever. Please help us get there and bring First Love/Worst Love to life. 

WHERE YOUR MONEY GOES AND WHY: We are incredibly resourceful women, both of us extremely fortunate to be connected with incredibly gifted and creative souls who are willing to work with us and support our mission and, with these relationships, are able to keep our costs down considerably. That being said, having worked with artists of varying sorts (writers, visual artists, graphic designers, actors, et cetera) for close to ten years, there can be a pernicious tendency to de-value creative work in asking artists to “donate” their labor. We’d like to pay all of these creative players in this labor of love, for their greatness and willingness to make something out of nothing.

* We’re looking to you for your love and generous financial support of this project. Yes, we need YOU! And here’s where your fantastic funding for First Love/Worst Love will go:

Pre- and post- production costs for the four-performance show, which include:

1.     Theatre rental fees for four-performance run of First Love/Worst Love

2.     Artist fees for five Los Angeles actors in four 45-minute First Love/Worst Love performances

3.     Rehearsal space rental

4.     Props

5.     Graphic designer

6.     Printing of flyers and marketing materials/advertising

7.     Videographer

8.     Film editor

With YOUR LOVE and financial help, we will be able to honor and respect the artists who give their magnificent talents, time, efforts, devotion, and artistry with this production’s promised financial incentives. With YOUR LOVE and financial help, you will be an integral part of helping to launch First Love/Worst Love into the world in the best possible way.

YOUR EXCEPTIONALLY WELL-DESERVED REWARDS: By supporting this project, in addition to receiving our endless love and affection, which should go without saying, you’ll be getting your mitts on some especially exquisite rewards – outstanding art from the left and right coasts, vintage ephemera, personalized minutelovestories, exclusive DVDs, and complimentary First/Worst performances.

SPECIAL THANK YOU:
Artists
Samuel C. Frost : samfroststudio.com
Cydney Puro : cydneypuro.com
Stephanie Vovas : stephanievovas.com
Reka Nyari : rekanyari.com
Michael Winters : michaelwintersphotography.com
Shannon Rankin : artistshannonrankin.com
Christine Elfman : christineelfman.com
Abbie Chislett
Interviewees
Dustin Boyd
Jenné Claiborne
Billy Criswell
Ned Evans
Raul Gasteazoro
Steve Olson
Eileen O'Sullivan
Marcie Polier
Michael Polier
Kat Primeau
Deborah Stambler
Music"Tie Another Heap"
Joshua Loring : joshualoring.com

With ceaseless love and respect,
Rebecca + Julie.