Your Three Dollars is Four Months of My Writing

Dear Friends,

As I near the end of my time as the Resident Writer of the ArtsEdge Residency (which I have totally loved), I am full of ideas on how to continue finding support for my creative work. Because I am determined to stay committed to my writing (and to the time necessary to write as much as possible), I am not above asking for help.

So I am.

I am asking you for THREE DANG DOLLARS.

I am asking you to reach into your pocket, or your change bag, or your milk jar, and pull out three crispy (or crumpled) bills, three bucks worth of coins, three dang dollars.

Why Three?

Because three…is the magic number (yes, it is).

And because I have done the Math, and if everyone I ask throws down three dollars, I will have enough support to get me from September (when my residency ends) through the end of December.

Therefore, Three Dang Dollars = Four Dang Months.

Together we can be an awesome, grassroots Patron Collective.

But for the Math to work, I need help from everybody (and feel free to give more, just in case!).

So why should you give me three dang dollars?

1. Because it’s a generous gift, without being burdensome. Those three dollars will probably come back to you next time you have a beer with me.

2. Because your three dollars will allow me time and space to work on the following awesome projects:

A: The Most Beautiful Lullaby You’ve Ever Heard. I am collaborating with Austin-based composer Mike Vernusky in a slammin’ new production featuring his electronic music composition (which sounds INCREDIBLE). Our target date for production is the 2010 Philly Fringe Festival.

B: Completion of the first draft of The Babel Project. “Babel” is another collaboration with Vernusky—an “electro-theater” event that is cracking open our understanding of language and sound (audible and non). It is our biggest, most ambitious project to date. Our early work on it has us ridiculously excited. We are creating the project for full production in the Fall of 2011.

C: Continued work and production of Zombie Heart Salad Sandwich. I am developing this 15-20 minute piece for production with two additional Zombie-themed plays written by Philadelphia artists. We are targeting a brain-eating, Fall/Winter 2009 or early 2010 production.

D: Fall/Winter production of The Milky Way Cabaret. This full-length play is going into a November production with the cool cats of Dallas-based group, Audacity Theatre Lab. I am working on the script in preparation for what is its second production (it premiered in the 2007 Philly Fringe Festival).

E: Continued work on The Travel Plays: An American Potlatch Roadtrip. Many of you have already helped on this project (and thank you!). I am in conversation with a New York theater company about a potential Fall/Winter workshop in the Apple (we are going to bust it open!).

F: International, multi-city staging of The Marco Polo Project. I am organizing a worldwide event, which will perform this site-specific piece about cowboys, clowns, world explorers, and loss, in bathrooms all over the globe.

G: The live project, Thirty-Three, which will be performed on January 1, 2010 (01/01/10 = 3). This public performance will be based completely on your response to THIS fundraising letter. (Yes, you read that right...you are participating in a performance possibility at this very moment.)

And that should be enough work to do for the next four months. :)

BUT!!—to make all of this work come to life, I need your THREE DANG DOLLARS (or more!) for the necessary time and space to create and complete these projects.

Very simply, without your help this work cannot be done.

And to thank you for your support, I offer these gifts in return:

I will acknowledge you on my website on the page “Awesome People”. I am happy to hyper-link your name to your personal, business, or favorite web address. In every script I create from now until the end of December 2009, I will include your name under the heading, “The following work was made possible by the support and awesomeness of the following Awesome People”. A beer or coffee (or cupcake) when you and I hang out again. For gifts larger than $ 33 (2 dang 3s, plus that's how old I am), I will perform ANYTHING you ask me to, for up to three minutes. Send me a piece of writing, a challenge, a piece of music, a dream, an object, a demand, a question, an impossible task, and I will perform it, somehow, on January 1, 2010. For serious. Make it something awesome. Dare me. I will perform anything and everything asked of me as part of the performance, Thirty-Three. (I will archive these offerings here). So let’s do it!!! THREE DANG DOLLARS!!! And if you are feeling more generous (and want me to perform something for up to three minutes!): 36 dang dollars gets me through a day 250 dang dollars gets me through a week 1,000 dang dollars gets me through a month 4,000 dang dollars gets me through the end of the year The best, quickest way to send your gift is to PayPal me at the email address: gregoryromero@yahoo.com Otherwise, you can mail your gifts to: Greg Romero 322 N 39th St Philadelphia PA 19104 THANK YOU for helping me create live performance!! Have an awesome dang day!! Sincerely, ROMERO