Doesn’t it seem like each year passes more quickly than the last? That was especially so in 2011 which was another year of growth for Plays for Living (PFL) as we brought the unspoken into the open for over 10,000 seniors, teachers, students and others.

If you, like many other PFL supporters, are caught up in the fast pace of yet another year end, please feel free to forego the reading of this years appeal letter (for now) take a tour of our newly re-designed website and make a donation in support of our work.

For those who want to hear a bit more about our year, we are proud to share some highlights from 2011:

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We conducted a 25 senior center, five borough tour of “The First Step,” a play about senior safety, sponsored by the NYC Departments of Transportation (DOT) and for the Aging. 10-week intensive theater workshops were conducted at three of the centers, which culminated in short plays performed as part of a DOT awards ceremony (the Selma Awards), held at the South Court Auditorium at the 42nd street New York Public Library. The tour reached several thousand NYC seniors who participated in facilitated conversations about senior safety. In 2012 we will tour an additional 25 centers, and will conduct intensive theater workshops at five of those centers.
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We partnered with Atria West 86th Street, a senior residence in Manhattan, to produce a performance of “Still Growing”, directed by Joan Vail Thorne and featuring Frances Sternhagen, Larry Pine, Kathryn Grody, Ana Reeder and Matthew Rauch. It was a wonderful performance and we are following up several new business prospects that have developed since the show.

• We collaborated with Sara Crosby and Rose Ann Kelly of the Dakota Academy of Performing Arts at the Pavilion (DAPA) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a PFL Affiliate, to produce two performances of our bullying play, “Where Does It End.” Teenagers who work with DAPA’s “Plays for Living” theatre company travelled to Washington DC to perform the play for the social workers from around the US attending the centennial conference of The Alliance for Children & Families. The teenage performers received rave reviews.

In 2012 (our 70th year!), we will build on these and other successes. For example, we are eager to grow our Affiliate Program. The purpose of PFL’s Affiliate Program is to build a national consortium that will make the transformative power of the PFL method available to communities throughout the country. We have met with groups in Portland, Maine; New London, Connecticut; Washington, DC; Atlanta, Georgia; and Oahu Hawaii who are already working for the good of their communities and who feel that PFL could provide a new tool for making a difference. We need your help to make this happen.

We understand you receive many appeals at this time of year. Your contribution to PFL of $1000 or more (Producer), $500 (Director), $250 (Actor) or $100 (Patron) means more theater workshops in schools and senior centers, and more performances and conversations for audiences struggling with some of the pressing social issues of our day. In 2012 we will be focusing on bullying amongst teenagers and issues facing seniors and their families. We so want to expand our reach!!

Thank you for your continued support. After 70 years, PFL intends to continue to bring the unspoken into the open. It is clearly more needed than ever.

All the best,

Keith E. McHenry

Executive Director

Happy New Year To The PFL Community:

First, I want to thank you for your past support of Plays For Living (PFL) and wish you and your family the best in 2011! ?

Second, I want to tell you a bit about 2010, highlight some areas of our work we hope merit your continued support, why I’m so excited about 2011, and ask you to make a tax deductible gift to help us continue our work!! Please take a moment to read on about how your past support has enabled us to have a wonderful year of building and rebuilding at PFL!!

We literally started 2010 underwater as a leak from an office above caused a flood worthy of Noah’s attention. We lost computers, files and some irreplaceable history as our space was turned into a moldy mess of paper, paint, plaster & PC’s that would take six months to rebuild. As I sat at what was left of my desk wondering when the other shoe would drop I received a phone call from Patti Lyons, founder of the Consuelo Foundation in Hawaii. I “googled” her as we spoke and confirmed what I sensed from our conversation, this is a person who gets things done…big things!

Patti had agreed to chair “A Century of Strength,” the centennial celebration of the Alliance for Children and Families (formerly Families Service Association of America), that was taking place in October 2010 in Milwaukee. She felt that any event designed to fully capture the history of the Alliance must include Plays for Living doing a workshop. PFL was affiliated with the Families Services Association for several decades, from the 1960s, and I thought, “it’ll be like a mother & child reunion!”

Patti and I decided PFL should perform “Rule of Thumb,” one of our domestic violence plays, at the conference. To do so we built a relationship with the theater department at Marquette University, which yielded a magnificent director and talented cast of “players”. The quote by Eleanor Roosevelt cited above appeared in the commemorative journal distributed to the nearly 1000 conference attendees. Just two statements from attendees who participated in our workshop:

“This was such a special workshop…Kudos for giving us this great gift. I hope you’re able to share with others many, many times over in all cities across America.”

“I was extremely touched by this play and would have otherwise spoke after but I felt too emotional… Plays for Living is really on to something…creating a space to be emotional & talk about such hard things. Fantastic!”

Patti will be chairing next year’s event in Washington, DC and wants us to perform for the entire conference. She’s trying to get FLOTUS Michele Obama as the keynote. I can’t wait!

Another significant development for PFL this year: Sara Crosby was a PFL actor, and subsequently founded the Dakota Academy of Performing Arts (DAPA) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. DAPA includes an affiliate PFL theater for young people. Sara visited New York in May, and shared her joy with the success she’s had in South Dakota for the past twenty years using PFL youth plays like “What Do I Say”, “What’s The Difference”, “Where Does It End” and “Anybody I Want to Be!” to build community awareness around issues such as staying in school, diversity, bullying & drug & alcohol abuse.

Recently Sara has given me some insight on how to take advantage of cost-effective marketing tools, such as social networking technology, to spread PFL’s message and build community. Sara will continue to be an important builder of PFL through 2011, helping to build our affiliate network across the country.

I would be remiss if I ended my “year in review” without mentioning our collaboration with Esther Farmer, community developer extraordinaire, and Dale Hamilton, founder of Toronto based Everybody’s Theater Company. We presented “Spicy Theatrical Stew: Community Development, Education and a Dash of Playful Chaos” at the Performing the World 2010 conference, which asked the question, “Can performance change the world?” In addition, PFL continues to get positive reviews on our “Stars From The Page To The Stage” program in the NYC public school system, in which students learn all aspects of theater while creating and performing a theatrical production exploring their own challenging life situations. Finally, we continually hear from teachers and school administrators that our innovative Interactive Theater Techniques program for teachers has improved their communication skills with parents, other teachers, administrators, and with their students.

One last piece that I am very excited about: we are beginning a new program in 2011 with the Safety Education Unit of the NYC Department of Transportation which will involve 25 performances of a revised version of our play, “A First Step,” at senior centers throughout New York City, and will include intensive theater residencies at 3 of those centers. The purpose of this program is to help seniors develop tools to simultaneously learn about safety education issues while building their communities. We first did a similar program with the DOT in 2000, and they are eager for more!

For me it’s all about building community.

You are part of the PFL community and I’m asking you to perform as such whether you donate (every dollar helps), serve as a human resource (I’m looking for blog contributors among other things) or think of who among your contacts I should meet with. It is all meaningful to what we’re trying to build, which are new spaces to play in and new ways to play in old spaces. Please support the effort to continue bringing the transformative power of theater to a world in desperate need of transformation.

I can’t do this work without you. I look forward to talking with you in the near future.

Best Regards,

Keith