by Patrick Blake

As we start the new year,

I want to thank everyone

• who has donated to the company.
• who has posted or reposted social media content.
• who has worked on our shows.
• who has come to see our shows.

Please keep up the good work.

I want to update you on what I think is the most important thing we have to do going forward this year.

What am I going to see this weekend?

This is an important question if you are involved in theater and are not currently participating in your own show.

If you live in NYC, or can travel here easily, you can go to a Rhymes Over Beats production. Or if we do not have a production, there are NYC companies that have overlapping missions, and whose work we have seen and admired. National Black Theatre and the Classical Theatre of Harlem are two that come to mind, out of many here in NYC.

But not everyone lives here.

Research

In order to reach people who don’t live here, one of our goals is to tour our productions around the country.

To do this we want to create a network of similar companies, whose mission is in sync with ours, and are active in places outside NYC that would be receptive to the work we do.

So I began researching which companies have similar missions. I was excited to see how many there were, in how many different cities. The question is, which company should we approach to partner with on projects?

Since we are a community I’m reaching out to you for help.

Which companies?

Below is a list of six theater companies. Most of them have been around ten, twenty, thirty years. I looked for two companies in each section of the country – east, west, and midwest. I selected them based on what these companies have to say about themselves on their websites. From their information they sound like they would be a good fit with us. My most important goal for the new year is to make connections with each of these companies.

Please let us know if you have a connection with any of these companies, but also and more importantly, let us know if there are other companies we should be reaching out to.

Where?

Washington DC – Theater Alliance. Their mission is “to develop, produce, and present socially conscious, thought-provoking work that fully engages our community in active dialogue.”

This sounds exactly like us.

Atlanta – Alliance Theatre. A Regional Theater Tony award winner in downtown Atlanta. Their focus seems to be on new plays. They have a competition where the winner is awarded a production.

Kansas City – Kansas City Black Rep. Their mission says in part, “Each production will be tasked to give life to the neglected stories, virtually untold in American theaters”.

This is exactly what we are trying to do.

Minneapolis – Mixed Blood Theatre Company. This company’s predictably unpredictable work addresses injustices, inequities, and cultural collisions, providing a voice for the unheard. Again, just the sort of thing we are trying to do.

Los Angeles – The Robey Theatre Company. The first thing you see when you google them is the simple statement “Celebrating over twenty years of excellence in black theater.” Something we would like to be saying in twenty years.

San Francisco – Lorraine Hansberry. Since she wrote Raisin while living in San Francisco. I had to include this. I’ve also seen some of their productions and was impressed.

If you know anyone at any of these theaters have them contact us. We’d love to work with them.

This year’s goal

So this is job one for the new year: expand what we are doing to the rest of the country. But we can’t do it without you.

• Help us make connections with people you know.
• Bring us your work.
• Follow us on social media and encourage your friends to do it.

And Donate, Donate, Donate.