I'm fortunate enough to be friends with a number of my fellow FringeNYC artists this year. I've performed in shows with the actor/producers behind For Now, Little Mother, and Coming: A Rock Musical of Biblical Proportions. My brilliant graphic designer, Ariel Estrada (the man who designed the website you're reading now), is both performing in The Imbible and serving as the company manager for No Homo. And as I talk with them and follow along with their own adventures as they put together their shows, it's clear that all of us are taking the same journey here. We're experiencing the same things, and we're all being driven crazy in the same ways by the same aggravating obstacles.
Namely, fundraising.
We're all artists, so none of us are rich. Even the most adept of us are frustrated by the labyrinthine procedures needed to apply for grants - and since our shows are one-time events coming up within two months, most grants aren't open to us anyway. That effectively leaves one source - crowdfunding. And in practical terms, that means constantly pestering our friends for money.
I hate this. My friends hate this. How could we not? It feels like we're badgering our friends. (Frankly, we ARE badgering our friends. At least I'm badgering mine, although they're too polite to mention it.) And as we spend our days counting off which of our friends have donated and how many people we have left to whom we can reach out, it reduces our artistic lives to what feels like an incredibly neurotic, high-stakes popularity contest.
But at this point, there's no other alternative. Producing Dragon's Breath is an expensive proposition, no matter how diligent we are about pinching pennies (and trust me, we're being diligent.) We still have a lot of ground to cover.
So, misgivings aside, I'll go ahead and say it. Please give us some money. This website links up with our IndieGogo campaign - please check it out and donate what you can if you can. And if you can't, please tell others to check it out themselves - both the campaign, and the show in whose service we're doing all of this. And while you're all at it, be sure to check out the other Fringe shows I've mentioned above.
Because here's the other thing about crowdfunding - it's not just me begging you for money. It's an invitation to you to join our community. I'm not sure if we're best described as a group of talented artists or a ragtag bunch of misfits, but we all have visions of shows that can actually make a difference to people, and we're putting everything we have on the line to try and make them reality. We'd love for you to join us on our journey.
But hurry. There's just three days left to go.