The Odyssey on Angel Island State Park – SOLD OUT

We are honored that tickets have gone so quickly, and we are sorry for all the folks who want to see this production and cannot.

Please join our mailing list for advance notice when ticket sales open for future shows, and remember to buy your tickets early.

If folks want to comment on this thread and link up with one another, we hope folks with conflicts will be able to pass off their tickets to others who want to join the adventure.

best of luck to all!
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2011 reflection from the directors

What a year.

Last winter WE announced that 2011 would be a year dedicated to organizational development.  We Players is now incorporated! We have a Board of Directors; we’re working on our strategic plan; and we are awaiting the IRS’ decision for our non-profit status (we expect confirmation this winter). 

You might think that’s a lot for a small arts organization (especially one mostly run on volunteer labor) to do in a year’s time.  But we can’t help being inspired by the landscapes and stories of our region and our world, nor stop the flow of creativity.  So… we also did much much more.

We Players fulfilled the mission of our three year residency on Alcatraz (i.e. provoking thought and stimulating conversation about justice, incarceration, isolation and redemption), with a series of four art exhibitions, a youth conference, and our culminating event – the weekend-long Alcatraz Symposium on Justice & Freedom.  We created and presented a new performance in the Cell House, hosted inspirational panel discussions, presented new visual art by our collaborators, held meaningful ceremony, taught workshops at the San Francisco Juvenile Justice Center, and presented a fabulous collection of inmate-produced visual artwork in collaboration with the William James Association.

We had a remarkably successful run of The Odyssey aboard Alma this fall.  It was an honor to play on such a gorgeous vessel and a blessing to build friendships with her stellar crew.  

To those of you who sailed with us on Alma or joined us on Alcatraz in 2011 – please send us your photos! We’d love to see ourselves in golden suits, rowing the air, or drapped over cell house railings! The actors request that you do not post your photos or videos on public sites. Thank you for honoring this request.  

Most heartening of all, our volunteer support is stronger than ever.  We have lists of superstars, willing to help with everything from registration, to hospitality, to technical design, errands, cooking, and more!  And several project collaborators from recent years are stepping up and signing on to help with company operations, taking tasks off our plates and improving the strength of our company, while supportting everyone’s creativity.

We look forward to 2012 with enhanced capacity for making innovative, site specific art, in partnership with the stewards of our local park resources and this ever-expanding creative community.  Our island-wide Odysseyon Angel Island in the spring and Macbeth at Fort Point next fall will bring innumerable opportunities and challenges; visit any of the pages under our support tab to get involved and play your part.

Onward! 

*

Ava & Lauren

thank you all

As I return to my laptop this morning, after an awesome overnight on Angel Island with some really engaging and creative and nature-aware teenagers, I am moved to write a note of thanks. 

We have almost 60 people (including many new names I don’t recognize) reserved for our opening of Images from the Inside on Alcatraz this Saturday.  We’ve enjoyed an inspiring collaboration with the William James Association, and I’m really looking forward to seeing such an extensive collection of inmate-created masterpieces in the Alcatraz Cell House, and hearing so many brilliant mentors talk about role of art in rehabilitation.  And I’m so thankful and humbled to be presenting art that brings many communities together and stimulates conversation on current issues and timeless human themes.

Floored with gratitude again to look at our ticket sales for The Odyssey on Alma. We opened reservations for the first half of our fall run on Monday, and we are already more than 1/2 filled to capacity.  Ava and I were a little nervous charging $160 a ticket (since this is the first time we’ve ever “charged” for a We Players show), but I’ve run the numbers multiple times, and this is what we need to charge to cover costs for this limited run, in this transition year for We Players.  For our major productions, we can accommodate thousands of audience over dozens of shows; your generosity well supports our free reservation/ suggested donation model when everyone gives as close to the suggested donation as they can.  WE love that model.  And:

• we’re not doing a full-scale production this year (2011 is our year for bolstering our organizational infrastructure in preparation for a very full 2012 and beyond as our own non-profit!);
• we have real costs that we need to cover for ourselves and our park partners; and 
• we have committed to paying our performers a decent wage for creating this inspiring art. 

For those who have already purchased tickets, I cannot that you enough for filling our sails so swiftly and surely.  

For those to whom $160 is unquestionably out of budget, consider volunteering.  We also have some tickets for each show in reserve, some of which will be raffled off as part of our 2011 Kickstarter campaign (that we plan to launch within a week), and some of which will be offered at reduced price closer to performance date; be sure you’re on our mailing list to receive first notice of reduced-price ticket releases.

deep gratitude

*

lauren

p.s. – I know Ava and I really stink at keeping in touch via this blog… know we’re committing to remedying that soon!

WE won a Best of the Bay editor’s pick!

We are honored to have received a Best of the Bay award!
We Players are your BEST SITE-SPECIFIC CLASSICISTS
It turns out the editor’s picks are extra special – the Guardian wrote a full paragraph about us:

This year marks the end of We Players’ three-year collaboration with the National Parks Service on Alcatraz Island. The project showcased the island’s scenic isolation in a number of artistic and community-building endeavors. The stage company’s 2010 marathon production of Hamlet was a tour de force of site-specificity, taking actors and audiences all over the island, including areas normally off-limits to the public. In their imaginative stagings of Macbeth, Hamlet, and Iphigenia, as well as their ongoing art exhibitions for, by, and about incarcerated juveniles and adults, the Players highlight themes of isolation, incarceration, justice, and redemption. They wield their art as a catalyst rather than as nostalgic revival. Their Alcatraz residency ends in the fall. In 2012, it partners with the California Parks Service to stage The Odyssey on Angel Island.

hello world!

Thank you Tracy, for making us such a gorgeous new website! It’s been quite a journey pulling content together from various musings, exchanges between Ava and me, programs and grant proposals… What a journey WE’ve shared!

We hope you enjoy the site. We hope this platform allows for more fluid communication and creativity and community building over the interwebs. Please engage and comment in our forum!

We will be making some additional tweaks in the coming weeks, and this site is designed to be pretty flexible, so write your comments below if you have suggestions for how to make We Players website even more accessible and supportive of our collaboration.