Friends,
 
On Tuesday, May 11th, Cripple Creek Theatre Company opened its 37th production ‘The Taming of the Shrew' in partnership with the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane. After thirty-seven ‘Opening Nights’ there are some things that never change: the actors running lines backstage, costumes getting their last pins taken out, a missing prop finally found to everyone’s exaltation, but, for this production of Cripple Creek, something was very different: the audience.
 
On May 11th, we opened ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ in a cafeteria at Bridge House in New Orleans for the in-patient residents of their substance abuse program. Our intention: to bring a show about human dignity to new audiences. Bridge House doesn’t have a theater, so we performed in their bustling cafeteria. As actors prepared to share an old story told in a new way, 85 men entered a space they dine in transformed into a theater-in-the-round. When we arrived at the end of our story, and the men rose to their feet in a standing ovation, this stripped-down production accomplished a shared human transformation through the power of storytelling.
 
The road to that cafeteria started five years ago. In 2012, at a company retreat envisioning the future of Cripple Creek, Andrew Vaught ignited a dialogue about a theater company that he believed we should get to know better. The company is Ten Thousand Things, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ten Thousand Things is 26 years old, still led by its founding Artistic Director Michelle Hensley, and they premiere work before audiences that might not otherwise have access to theater. In 2016, I joined Ten Thousand Things for a six-week production-tour to homeless shelters, teen pregnancy centers, prisons, community centers, senior-care facilities, and a First Nation community college, and I finished the tour a changed artist. Different intentions make for different audiences, and different audiences make for different theater, and this kind of theater is alive, urgent, and connected in a way I yearn to see inside traditional theater houses - and so often do not.
 
Now, a year later, Cripple Creek is on its first tour in our company’s history.
 
To be honest: this tour to Bridge House, Grace House, Treme Community Center, New Orleans Women and Children’s Shelter, and DCI prison is fundamentally changing the way we are thinking about theater and audience. The power of laughter, the aliveness of call-and-response, the visibility of audience with all the lights on, creates an exquisite sharing of humanity between audience and performer. And when our performers’ bows are met with standing ovations and long handshakes with deeply personal exchanges ignited by storytelling, Cripple Creek Theatre Company sees a model that confronts access, privilege, and how audiences impact the future of the stories we tell.
 
Next Friday, June 2nd we open this production of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ at The New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane. While we are performing in a traditional theater, the house-lights will be on, the audience will be seated in the round, the actors will speak directly to the audience, and a 430 year old story of human dignity will sound alive in a new way.
 
Join us. We would love to speak with you afterward to answer any questions and hear your thoughts. This is important work about access, storytelling, audience impact, and it’s just beginning. We’d like your voice to be a part of it.
 
Yours,
Emilie Whelan
Co-Artistic Director of Cripple Creek Theatre Company

​Dear Archon,
 
Archon is an ancient Athenian title given to the individual who took it upon themselves to provide theatre to their city. Once a year in the month of April, the citizens of Athens would celebrate the god Dionysus through the civic communion of theatre and the Archons were the citizens who made sure the work of Sophocles and Aristophanes received a proper production. We address you because we hope that you will become an Archon for us, and for this city.
 
On April 22 Cripple Creek is holding a celebration of bountiful (free) theatre and we would be honored if you would join us. The Symposium of Secrets offers the music of Helen Gillet, Luke Brechtelsbauer, complimentary libations and sustenance, an original work written by Andrew Vaught, and an art auction that features work from some of the finest visual artists in the city.
 
For ten years, Cripple Creek has employed theatre as a tool for our audiences to explore, discuss, and contribute to the world in which they live. Our successes as a theatre company are due entirely to individuals like you. Our city deserves theatre that is accessible to everyone and theatre that constantly seeks to create work that mirrors reality. As what we consider reality begins to change at an alarming rate, we ask your aid in mirroring it.
 
In May, we team with the Shakespeare Festival at Tulane for William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. This darkly comic tale will tour throughout the community to our partners at the New Orleans Bridge House, Grace House, the New Orleans Women’s and Children’s Shelter the NORDC Treme Community Center, and DCI Prison. In August, we take over One Eyed Jack’s for Albert Camus’ Caligula. This eerily relevant tale of an Emperor gone mad is offered completely free to the public.
 
Below is a list of the ways you can be a part of this cultural necessity.
 
Initiate $35 - Access to the Symposium of Secrets and the benefits found therein.

Acolyte $85 – Access to the Symposium of Secrets, entry to Patron Party and 2 reserved seats to CCTC’s summer time spectacle, Caligula by Albert Camus
 
Proto Deacon $250 – 2 passes to Symposium of Secrets, entry to Patron Party, 4 reserved seats to CCTC’s summer time spectacle, and a collector’s edition poster of CCTC’s Caligula.
 
Fire Keeper $500 – 4 passes to the Symposium of Secrets, entry to Patron Party, 6 reserved seats to CCTC’s summer time spectacle, a collector’s edition poster of CCTC’s Caligula, and dinner with CCTC.
 
High Priestess $1000 - 6 passes to the Symposium of Secrets, entry to Patron Party, 8 reserved seats to CCTC’s summer time spectacle, a collector’s edition poster of CCTC’s Caligula, and dinner with CCTC, and audience chairs named in your honor.
 
Oracle $2500 – 8 passes to the Symposium of Secrets, entry to Patron Party, 10 reserved seats to CCTC’s summer time spectacle, a collector’s edition poster of CCTC’s Caligula, dinner with CCTC, audience chairs named in your honor, and a private occult production from the CCTC.
 
Please celebrate with us; celebrate the gifts of poetry and spectacle, celebrate the moments when our entire community can sit together in thought, celebrate our ability to provide this for the people around us.  We hope to see you in April.
 
 Yours,
 
  CCTC

​Comrades,

​Today our nation crosses over into uncertain terrain. Our civic landscape begins to shift towards a new topography. For many of us, this company included, this new land appears ominous. We look through pessimistic telescopes and shiver when we allow ourselves to linger too long. While we as company speak often of our fears for the future, we take great heart in knowing that this is why Cripple Creek exists. For ten years, we have explored the causes and consequences of greed, hate, and mistrust. We have evolved as a company always seeking the best avenue for the full fulfillment of our mission of encouraging our audience to change the world around them, to adapt to the moment and create a new reality. We have evolved as a company to better serve that change. In 2017 we progress again and believe firmly that you should join us.
 
In April, we begin rehearsals for our co-production of the Taming of the Shrew with the Tulane Shakespeare Festival. We are beyond thrilled to partner with our friends at Tulane to create a truly unique exploration of one of Shakespeare’s most infamous works. Both organizations share an intense desire to bring art and the civic benefits that derive from it to those who might not receive it. In May, we will tour this production to shelters, community centers, and prisons before a two week stand at Tulane University. This raw performance, devoid of lights and set, relies on poetry, physicality, and the audience to create a world almost too close to our own. CCTC could not be more honored to be partnering with the Tulane Shakespeare Festival who have done so much to bring Shakespeare to the citizens of New Orleans.
 
Two years ago, CCTC began producing a free summer show because we believe simply that art is a civic utility that needs to be shared, protected, and promoted for everyone. We continue our form of civilian theatre in August with Albert Camus’ Caligula. Our country and much of the world it seems is now flirting dangerously with the destructive impulses of dictatorship. While we claim to make advances in our humanity and how we treat our fellow man, it is impossible not to see the present state of affairs as one where the drive for destruction has overtaken that of creation. What is it inside of us that encourages this urge to power? Caligula is an intimate and terrifyingly comic exploration of the darkest urges in our souls.
 
Our final evolution in 2017, and perhaps the most exciting, is that Emilie Whelan now serves as Co-Artistic Director of CCTC. Emilie’s mind, ethic, and passion have long propelled this company to the most exciting of heights. As she sets her sights on two extremely vital works of theatre, we as a company cannot hide our excitement. Her vision is expansive, her craft is formidable, and her heart seeks the truth. It is our hope that you will join us in that search.
 
Let us turn our fear to action, let us change our dread to joy, let us bring the defiance of theatre to our community. Will you join us in speaking free and creatively? Will you join us in facing hard truths? Will you join us in using your muscles, your voices, and your minds in continuing to fight for the world we know is possible? We hope you will; Far more than Cripple Creek needs you now.
 
                                                                                                The Cripple Creek Theatre Co.  

​A joke amongst Cripple Creek company members is that sometimes we produce shows that are way more relevant than we intended.  The Madwoman of Chaillot, a play about the lust for oil, premiered five months after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Clybourne Park played to sold out houses in what was the Shadowbox Theatre, right across the street from what is now the controversial St. Roch Market in one of the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the city. CCTC has an uncanny way of hitting the pulse of what is happening in Louisiana. Ragtime is no different.

​Ragtime is about the American experience at the turn of the century. It explores what it means to truly be American, embracing all the diverse narratives that make this country so heart wrenchingly beautiful. Don’t get me started on the music; our talented, beautiful cast will tug at your heartstrings as they dish out some cake walks, gospel, and of course ragtime. All open and at no ticket cost to the public.

I always struggle with “why do theatre?” In my early 20s I tried doing other things: I was a farmer, an educator, an ice cream scooper (shout out to Creole Creamery and the 10 lbs I gained in the two months I worked for you!). I always came back to theatre; I wasn’t being true to myself if I wasn’t telling stories. This question, “why do theatre?” is the bedrock of Cripple Creek’s work. This question is what inspired our engagement work for audiences and cast members. We want to delve deeply into the issues our plays explore and truly spark social action to make the world a better, more humane place. The activism work we do goes hand in hand with our artistry and we are proud of our mission.

America is an ailing nation. Our neighbors in Baton Rouge and across the country are in pain; not just black people, systematic racism makes victims of us all. Alton Sterling is one of the thousands of black deaths we have seen in the history of this country due to police brutality, already over 100 in this year alone. Our society has dehumanized black people to the point where public employees are executing them on the street.

Say what you will about his history, but when a police officer killed him, Alton Sterling was selling music CDs in order to provide for his family. Everyone loves music. The music in Ragtime is beautiful. Ragtime follows the life and death of Coalhouse Walker III, a talented ragtime pianist who is beloved as long as he plays beautifully and keeps his mouth shut. Once he fights for justice, he learns that his access to privilege is conditional because he is black. Sounds familiar? We still love black music today. I’ve played “Lemonade” on repeat ever since it came out. The way white America loves black culture is very different than how it loves black people. As the journalist Shaun King said, “Racial terror is real in this country. The deadliest hate crime against African Americans in the past 85 years didn't happen in 1955, 1965, or 1975, but happened LAST YEAR in Charleston. LAST YEAR.”

As a first generation Filipina American I can’t truly express what it means to be black in this country. My responsibility as an ally is to listen and stand by black Americans who, along with our indigenous population, are one of the most marginalized, oppressed and brutalized group of people in the history of this country.

Cripple Creek believes black lives matter.  We as an organization of white/Asian/Latina/Greek American allies stand with you. We recognize that your anger is a consequence of deep sadness and pain that comes from centuries of systemic violence against your people. We witness that pain. We are affected by it in our own different ways. We are listening. We are speaking up. We are making space. We are ready to mobilize.

I just completed my first year as a M.F.A. Acting Candidate at the Yale School of Drama. This is a picture of my class, Aren’t they gorgeous? We’re like a United Colors of Benetton ad.​

​Comrades,
 
We call to you. We call to you, from the Mississippi River to the Lake known as Pontchartrain, from the East to the West, from the upside to the down. We humbly call to you and request your company in celebrating Cripple Creek’s achievement of ten years as a non-profit theatre dedicated to producing rigorous work aimed at provoking social action.
 
We have completed ten years of plays: some funny, some stirring, some sad, and some sung out loud. In ten years we have created musicals about chickens, dramas about the evaporating communities, operas about justice, poetic wakes in bars; and they were all done with the single intention of using art to serve our city. None of it, not a single light bulb or swirl of color, could have happened without your support and diligent guidance.
 
At ten years, we have a theatre that is free to all - because we believe that art is as vital to our city as clean drinking water and paved potholes. This civic utility requires the active patronage of citizens who see it as a necessity. Cripple Creek Theatre Company requires beacons to help it navigate the exciting waters it now sails.
 
And this is why we call to you.
 
Join us May 14th at Lighthouse NOLA for Cripple Creek’s "Port in a Storm" where we will gather together for music, libations, amateur theatricals, and free theatre. All proceeds from this event go to make our summer spectacle "RAGTIME" free and open to the public.
 
Formality requires us to include the exciting options offered to support this vital experiment in civic artistry. I ask that you draw your attention to the catalogue of Sea Monsters below you. Each one is a different stream of patronage you may choose to follow. If you, like us, believe in the power and necessity of free theatre, you also no doubt believe in the unifying power of mythical nautical terrors.
 
·  $50 - Moby Dick - Admittance to the main event at 8pm
·  $85 - Loch Ness Monster- Admittance to the patron party at 7pm and 1 primo reserved seat at "Ragtime"
·  $250 - Narwhal - Admittance to the patron party, a special "Ragtime" poster and two primo reserved seats
·  $500 - Leviathan- Admittance to the patron party and a poster and four primo reserved seats
·  $1,000 - Kraken- Admittance to the patron party and a poster and 8 primo reserved seats
 
We heartily wish to see you there.

10 Student Plays. 5 Theatre Companies.
Hilarity and Drama Ensue at the Play/Write Showcase on May 9th.

Come see Cripple Creek members launch the work of New Orleans' future playwrights!

NEW ORLEANS – On Monday, May 9th at 7:00 p.m., Goat in the Road Productions (GRP) and Dillard University present their annual event, the Play/Write Showcase at Dillard’s Samuel DuBois Cook Theatre located at 2601 Gentilly Blvd. The Showcase is comprised of 10 student plays written by 5th – 7th graders from New Orleans schools and presented by five local performance groups: Cripple Creek Theatre Co., Dancing Grounds, Dillard Theatre Ensemble, KM Dance Project, and Lux et Umbra. These companies’ adult performers will take the students’ words from the page to the stage, celebrating the work that all of the 215 students involved in the Play/Write program have done over the past year. Tickets are $10 at the door or can be purchased online at www.goatintheroadproductions.org.

This is GRP’s seventh year conducting Play/Write. The program consists of yearlong playwriting residencies conducted in six New Orleans schools: Renew Cultural Arts Academy, St. Mary’s Academy, Success Preparatory Academy, The International School of Louisiana, Young Audiences Charter School, and Warren Easton Charter High School. During these residencies, each student writes an original play, 10 of which are chosen for the Showcase. This event creates a direct relationship between writing dramatic scripts in the classroom and the real world application of that writing; a theatre production. In addition to the evening performance that is open to the public, the students will come to Dillard University’s Cook Theatre on the same day for a 10 a.m. matinee performance. Every student will receive a formatted and professionally printed copy of his/her play.
 
Since 1869, Dillard University has been committed to providing students with a quality four-year liberal arts education. Dillard is a fully accredited private, historically black university. In 2010, U.S. News & World Report ranked Dillard among the nation’s Top 10 HBCUs, based on comprehensive undergraduate studies. Dillard was also awarded a Top 10 Ranking in 2010 for liberal arts schools in the social mobility category by Washington Monthly.
 
Goat In the Road Productions is a New Orleans based performance ensemble, dedicated to the production of original and invigorating new works or theatre, dance, performance art, and educational programming. For more information visit
www.goatintheroadproductions.org.