Help THE HALLOWEEN TREE Grow!

Dan Jones is organizing this fundraiser.

Donation protected

“You’ve got to jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.” -Ray Bradbury

As theater makers, we believe that young people and audiences of all ages deserve playful, transportive, and reflective experiences. Art can allow us both to dream and to grapple with meaningful ideas in a supportive setting. The Halloween Tree is a family show that explores our shared mortality, and our first childhood experiences with encountering this reality, all wrapped up in an exciting mixture of story theater and puppetry traditions from around the world.

Our dream of adapting Ray Bradbury’s classic novella for the stage began seven years ago. Through early readings, developmental workshops at both Ithaca College and the New Victory Theatre in Times Square, Covid delays, and the vagaries of arts-based careers, we have not let go of our vision for this story. Now, in 2024, we will premiere a full production of the piece through a partnership with Minneapolis’ Southern Theatre. While we have secured financing to assemble our cast and our most essential creative roles, additional funding will allow us to enhance the show specifically for our new home. Through shadow play, giant creatures, and other surprises, we are looking to fill this stunning space with wonder, style, and delight for its October bow.

This approach is an outlier in today’s landscape. Practical considerations such as tourability have radically shrunken the physical and imaginative scope of independent shows developed for young audiences. Increasingly, theatrical productions rely on video projections and other technical elements, which can send us back into the digitally dominated world that we can scarcely get away from in our daily lives. While these tools are very useful and can be used to great effect, we are more interested in sparking imaginations through handmade magic in a shared space. We want to present our audiences with a memorable live experience, and children with a heartfelt spectacle that speaks to them in the language of their own make-believe.

Your support will help us to make this show bigger, better, and more fully realized than we can make it alone. Our goals for production enhancement include executing immersive elements of our scenic and puppet design, paying for more studio time, finding additional crew support, and bringing live sonic accompaniment to the show. A reach goal is to offer an educational experience in conjunction with the show’s run in October, as a way of giving back to communities in the city where this show was first conceived.

Any contribution is useful! Some examples include:

A ten-dollar donation will buy us a new box of utility blades. We go through these fast making puppets!
A twenty-five-dollar donation could buy us an extra hour in a rehearsal space to polish a moment.
A three-hundred-dollar donation would buy us another manual overhead projector to expand the breadth of our shadow puppetry.
A five-hundred-dollar donation would allow us to create special costume pieces for a key moment in the show.
A thousand-dollar donation could completely underwrite a free make-and-take puppet building workshop for the community in celebration of the production.

Thank you for your support and joining us on this adventure! We’ll see you in October. All contributions of any amount will be acknowledged in our program.

co-producers

Dan Jones, playwright & designer

Chava Rey Curland, director

THE HALLOWEEN TREE (c) 1972 by Ray Bradbury. Performed and adapted with the permission of Ray Bradbury Literary Works, LLC and Don Congdon Associates, Inc. Developed as part of New Victory LabWorks at The New Victory

Theater in New York City.