About this project

The Ahimsa Collective (www.ahimsacollective.com) strives to make challenging art readily accessible. So we’re doing away with lots of middlemen and bringing our work directly to the audience. Right onto their couch.

We’ll be mounting a brand new play and touring it through actual living rooms all throughout Los Angeles. Art costs too much—too much for the artists, too much for the audience. We want to cut around theatre rental fees, expensive rights issues, ticket mark-up in the name of profit, and all the other little bureaucratic traps new theatre faces. We’re making this because we love the art and we love bringing people together around it. We’ll visit living rooms of various size, shape, and socio-economic standing, and reach a diverse sampling of the local population. We believe that communities thrive through an abundance of art, so we’ll be going directly into these local communities and starting a dialogue.

Since every night's show is in a new house, every night is opening night! We want to celebrate our generous hosts house by throwing an opening night reception for each show, a chance for all involved to share our passion for accessible theatre and to discuss an exciting original work. There’ll be wine, cheese, friends, family, community and theatre (or, livingroom, as it were).

The play (“Epilogue” by Matthew Chester) has been completed and cast, and rehearsals are underway. The tour will run throughout the entire month of October, with a total of twelve performances. If this sounds daunting, fear not, the Ahimsa Collective has done this before (http://www.ahimsacollective.com/slowthrougheden.html). In early 2008, we brought a new play through fourteen living rooms in Orange County, creating fourteen unique artistic experiences and reaching at least 300 audience members. We are confident that we can execute this project with an efficiency and quality that will prove worthy of your contribution.

The funding raised here will help cover the costs of the props and costumes, the food and drinks for these receptions, and the general travel costs of our roving band of players. Every dollar will help. Our fundraising goals are small: we want to ensure that this work doesn’t bankrupt any of our artists and that any one who wants to see it can afford to- Help us out! Thank you sincerely for even considering; you have our deep respect and admiration for your willingness to support affordable art!

http://www.ahimsacollective.com/livingroomtour.html