Analog Theatre Level Up!

Hello and welcome to the Analog “Level Up!” Fundraiser!

Who are we?

We are Analog Theatre, a Bay Area-based, experimental theatre collective, specializing in transformational work, and you guessed it, analog theater techniques.

Our collective currently has three members: Jed Parsario, Rebecca Pingree, and Elissa Stebbins. The company was born in 2019, as an answer to the need for a developmental space for physical theatre, and we’re now in our second full season of the Mask Monday series.

What is Mask Monday?

Mask Monday is an ever-changing, entirely original, variety show performance series. Each Mask Monday features Commedia-inspired masked emcees (that would be us!), a roster of Bay Area local talent performing their own creations, and a wide range of disciplines including puppets, mask, clown, mime, musical theatre, drag, improvisation and more.

Mask Monday happens every two months, and 4-6 Guest Artists perform at each Mask Monday, bringing pieces anywhere on the development spectrum, from a kernel of an idea to the final layers of polish. We pay each Guest Artist $50 for approximately 5 minutes of their original work, and we provide them an ever-growing audience to help feedback on their work, and push it forward in their development process.

Mask Monday is, and always will be, free to the public.

What else do you do?

So glad you asked! In addition to being a structure for Guest Artist development, Mask Monday is also the vehicle for Analog Theatre devised work. The mask characters who host Mask Monday are honed and developed there, and then go on to longer form works, like 2022’s Under My Umbrella. LOAF, an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf,” is currently in development, as well as Moose & Tweety, a hilarious whodunit featuring a whirlwind of mask characters.

So what do we plan to do with your generosity?

We’re hoping to Level Up in three ways:

$1,000: Hire even more Guest Artists. If we meet our goals we’ll be able to hire 4 more guest artists each Mask Monday for the next year.

$1,000: Nurture the new work that Analog is building at Mask Monday, in this case LOAF, an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf.” LOAF started at a Mask Monday in 2022, and will show its most recent iteration at tonight’s show, featuring masks, and puppets. The current team for this piece includes Megan Cohen, Nikki Menez, Jed Parsario, Rebecca Pingree, and Elissa Stebbins. $1,000 will pay for 10 hours of development in the summer of 2023, a pivotal stop on the road to a full production in 2024.

$1,000: Pay for the producing support for these more robust and complicated Mask Mondays, along with our fiscal sponsor fees.*

STRETCH GOAL!!! $1,000: We are thrilled to be adding a workshop devising process in August for a new Analog long-form project (with Director/Deviser Julius Rea!) “What Even Is This?” It’s a genre-jumping, commedia-inspired existential crisis, featuring your favorite troupe of Mask Monday emcees Nicolas, Pat, Jake, Tabitha, Lily, and more, premiering this November at Potrero Stage. All additional donations beyond the original goal directly fund artist fees for the development of the November premiere!

Thank you so much for visiting our campaign and for considering a donation. All donations are tax-deductible (shoutout to our fiscal sponsor PlayGround! We appreciate you!)! And: we understand that donating isn’t in the budget for many folks, and if that includes you we hope you’ll consider supporting Analog and our Guest Artists in other ways - sharing this campaign, attending a Mask Monday, and/or interacting with us on social media (help us work that algorithm, so we can find our people all across the internet).

*What are Fiscal Sponsor Fees?

Analog is currently a Fiscal Sponsee of PlayGround, as part of the Innovator Incubator program. As our Fiscal Sponsor, PlayGround provides us with a lot of amazing benefits: Regular meetings chock full of information and resources, a network of other fiscal sponsees to grow and learn with and from, one-on-one guidance, performance opportunities as part of the Innovator Incubator Showcase, discounted rehearsal and performance space, and the ability to operate under the umbrella of their 501c3 status. In return, we pay them a percentage of our donations.

More information about PlayGround: PlayGround is the Bay Area's largest incubator for the next generation of playwrights and their work. The mission of PlayGround is to support the development of significant new local voices for the theatre. More than just another play development program, PlayGround focuses on the creation of a true theatre community by nurturing the collaborative process between first-time or early-career playwrights, and established, professional actors and directors.