Support the Arts in Tompkins County!

Okay, well, since you're (probably) a GrassRoots Festival patron, you already DO support the arts in Tompkins County, so give yourself a pat on the back. Tompkins County is a pretty unique place. Our population is less than 100,000, but we have 3 independent movie houses, 5 local theatres (the kind that have plays and music), a ton of local clubs and nighttime music venues, several orchestras, dozens of galleries and museums, and tons of unique and amazing festivals. However, it's not necessarily easy to stay afloat as a non-profit arts organization in these here parts. Because there are only a couple of large corporations in Tompkins County, there's not a lot of corporate funding to go into the arts, so many of the local non-profits count on a lot of individual donations to help them make ends meet.

As is often the case with the arts, though, instead of just straight-out begging for money, these local arts organizations have come up with fun and interesting ways to make donations benefit both the gifter and the giftee.

Case in point: The Kitchen Theatre. It's is one of our favorite theatres in the whole world. It's intimate as all get-out (only 73 seats! You really do feel like the plays are happening right in your kitchen!), but they both create and import outstanding works - plays, musicals, avant-garde performance pieces - all with unbelievably talented actors, singers and dancers. It's Broadway-quality theatre, right in Downtown Ithaca. And what's really wonderful about it is that they manage to keep ticket prices at a totally affordable level (unlike theatre in big cities, where decent seats can run you in the hundreds of dollars). Part of the reason that the Kitchen is able to keep ticket prices so low is because of their creative fundraising.

The Kitchen's biggest annual fundraising event is their super-fun Online Auction. Basically, lots of businesses and artisans around town donate goods and services, and you get to bid on them. If you are the highest bidder, the Kitchen gets the money, and you get something awesome to take home. We really do mean awesome. Some of the items up for bid this year are an oil painting by Annie Campbell (who does the artwork for the cover of the GrassRoots program book each year), a pair of tickets to the Light in Winter Festival (a great festival of science and the arts that takes place in Ithaca in January and employs some of the GrassRoots staff during our "off-season"), a 30-minute massage from Peter Sayet (father of Gregor Sayet-Bone, member of GrassRoots Favorites "The Talktomes"), and, yes, a pair of GrassRoots Festival tickets. Dozens of other awesome local stuff, as well.

So please consider helping out with this worthwhile endeavor and heading on over there to bid on something. And hey, maybe we'll see you in the Kitchen soon!

Kitchen Theatre Auction Website