Hope, Despair, Musical! Original Cast Recording

When we're through, they're gonna say, "They've never raised this much money before, this might be the most money ever raised in the history of money raising."

What you need to know is, my name is Sam Wurdemann. I'm an award-winning writer with several new musicals under my belt. Today, I'm creating this GoFundMe on behalf of Hope, Despair, Musical!

Conceived well over a year ago as a love letter to all things murder-bear, HDM is a non-profit, fan-based parody of Spike Chunsoft's "Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc," the first in a series of visual novels with over five million units sold. It has just wrapped up its world premiere at Ithaca College in Upstate New York.

Hope, Despair has blossomed past its source material and has amassed a fanbase of its own. On TikTok, the official account has nearly a million views and over 100k likes. These fans come from all four corners of the globe and rapidly exceed the house limit of our live performances. The demand for digital content is ravenous.

We've created this GoFundMe in hopes of answering those prayers: we ask for assistance from this community in aiding us broke college students with the assets we need to bring the music of Hope, Despair, Musical! to life. With your donation, we can afford the instrumentalists and technicians that can make big dreams a reality.

STRETCH GOALS

$1,500 - Our initial goal secures a comfortable budget for a quality cast album debuting sometime Spring of 2023.

$2,000 - We are able to record all 24 songs featured in the show, plus a selection of SIX extras our cast is fighting to have--cut songs, originals written for the TikTok like a solo for Hiro, a duet for Sayaka and Leon, and more!!

$3,000 - Everything listed prior, AND we can hire more instrumentalists to breathe life into our compositions! We make this feel like a PROFESSIONAL-QUALITY cast album!!!

$???? - Maybe even more cool stuff...?

This is a project all of us are super, super passionate about, and we hope you're just as excited to hear it come to life! It's an un-BEARABLY good time! Puhuhuhuhu!

-Sam ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ