There has never been a theater company devoted to the plays of Kirk Wood Bromley. Not one, anywhere, outside his own. Until now. I'm Joshua Spafford, and after nearly thirty years working alongside Kirk, I started Social Animal Theater to do the one thing no one has done: build a home for his work, season after season, alongside Shakespeare, for the next five years. We launch on July 25 in downtown Raleigh with a free staged reading of Bromley's verse play The American Revolution. Free, because the work should be a gift. James Urbaniak, the OBIE winning actor of stage and screen, is playing George Washington, traveling in from Los Angeles to do it. Kirk himself will be in the room. A full company is already coming together. The date is set. The room is booked. This is happening.

Every dollar goes to the work, and I am taking no fee for directing or producing. Here is where it goes. We are covering Urbaniak's travel, lodging, and artist fee. Fifteen company members each receive a modest honorarium, because people who give their craft should be paid even when the show is offered free. We are paying a production manager, a stage manager, and security. The largest remaining costs are renting tiered seating for the room and building the art, costumes, and photography that give the production its world. The reading stays free to everyone who comes. Your gift is what makes that gift possible. And this is not a one-off. It is the launch of a company. Next season we move to a full run of Bromley's Want's Unwisht Work, with more to follow across five years. Giving now does not fund one night. It plants the thing.

Here is the part I mean most. Everyone who gives before we open on July 25 is named, permanently, as a Founder of Social Animal Theater. Not a donor. A Founder. You were there before there was anything to be there for. That is the only tier, and it closes the night the lights come up. Starting a theater to perform the work of one living poet for five years is either slightly insane or exactly right. I think it's both. Come help us find out. Whatever you give, give it early. A company is just a group of people who showed up first. With love and nerve, Josh