December 2020
Dear friend,
First and foremost, thank you. If you are reading this letter, you are a part of our Colt Coeur family, and without your help and support, we could not have made the incredible headway we did in this pandemic year.
Through it all, we have kept making and performing theater - albeit virtually. In May, we re-assembled the cast from our 2019 world premiere of Eureka Day, by Jonathan Spector, with nearly 500 viewers live on Play-Per-View. We produced a 4-show fall season, kicked off with a celebrity cast reading of Steven Levenson’s Seven Minutes in Heaven in honor of the play’s 10th anniversary. The cast of our 2019 world premiere of Rehana Lew Mirza’s Hatef**k reunited in October, and viewers all over the world tuned in. Director Logan Vaughn and playwright Stacey Rose brought together the team from their 2019 world premiere of America V. 2.1: the Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negro a few weeks back and over 700 people watched. Over the course of these 6 months of programming - we have paid 42 artists, 64% of whom identify as Black, Latinx, and/or Asian, and 57% of whom identify as women+.
We have also continued to nurture the next generation of theatre artists: serving 31 students in 13 states and employing 16 professional theatre artists in our annual free Education Initiative (online for the first time). This summer, we launched our Mentorship program, pairing 7 BIPOC alumni with Colt Coeur artists for continued support.
We welcomed a new class of Colt Coeur Resident Artists, as well as extending the residency of 4 of last year’s artists. The current cohort consists of playwrights Bleu Beckford-Burrell, Adrienne Dawes, Emma Goidel and Noelle Viñas, and directors Tara Elliott, J. Mehr Kaur, and Portia Krieger. A newly launched Working Artists Group, led by Kelcey Anyá and Portia Krieger offers artists in our community a monthly playground experience to share work, deepen engagement with collaborators and have fun in a communal setting. We also expanded our Community, welcoming Bailey Williams as our new Managing Director, Amy Ashton and Sendhil Ramamurthy to the Board, and Kelcey Anya, Portia Krieger, and Vanessa Peréda-Felix to our Company. And we celebrated our 10 year anniversary and feted Founding Board member Celia Keenan-Bolger, gathering for a special evening in a packed loft in NoHo last February- little suspecting the seismic shifts in our lives around the corner!
As a “tiny but excellent” company – your gift goes a long way. With a part-time staff of 2, our overhead is low, but our programming remains ambitious. These tremendous milestones would not have been possible without your support. Please join me by making a tax-deductible gift to Colt Coeur’s Annual Fund. If you prefer to donate via check, please use our Brooklyn mailing address below. Your donation today is an investment in our community, our stories, and our future!
Thank you in advance for your generosity. I wish you and your loved ones a joyous holiday season!
Sincerely,
Adrienne Campbell-Holt
Artistic Director
138 South Oxford Street #4E // Brooklyn, NY 11217
Artistic Director: Adrienne Campbell-Holt // Managing Director: Bailey Williams
Board of Directors
Amy Ashton × Rachel DeMatteo × Amy Groeschel × Julia Jones × Celia Keenan-Bolger × Roberta Kelly × Ray Levin × Alex Marrs × Vanessa Peréda × Sendhil Ramamurthy × Erica Rotstein × AJ Strasser
Colt Coeur Company
Amy Altadonna × Kelcey Anyá × Molly Carden × Ato Essandoh × Amy Groeschel
Adam Harrington × Justice Hehir × MJ Kaufman × Steven Levenson × Lynne Lipton × Natalie Margolin × Eden Marryshow × John McDermott × Ana Nogueira × Vanessa Peréda × Kate Roberts × Matt Stadelmann × Brian Wiles × Grant Yeager
www.ColtCoeur.org