WHAT THP CAN DO FOR YOUR CHARITY
Welcome all good folk to our fantasy town of Good Measures!
Our Purpose
If you’re a local charity who would like to hold a fundraiser using a theatrical, fantasy entertainment designed to promote your cause, The Humanitarian Players can help you. THP wants to help improve quality of life for others. We believe that by improving the health and environment of the community, uplifting the vulnerable or disadvantaged, we help improve the quality of life for everyone in the community. We are especially interested in, though certainly not limited to, helping charities who promote self-sustainability rather than continued dependent outside aide.
Our Contribution
THP consists of a troupe of actors, stage crafters, and administrators who provide fundraising venues using a musical play series called Good Measures, a live-audience, interactive western melodrama centered on episodic stories about a specific set of stock characters. These theatrical events create an atmosphere of giving and communication in promoting local causes.
The first episode of Good Measures is titled The Lost Gold Mine of Avery Flatminor. Through use of imagination our players will transport your audience into the Old West of the 19th century. We bring our own portable and easily mounted stagecraft. Our crews will set up and clean up anything to do with the play itself.
Your Contribution
Your charity, on whose behalf the THP troupe will perform, will supply your own event workers including speakers who will promote your cause during short intermissions. THP play characters will assist in this promotion during the course of the play. THP will bring its program to you in whatever space you can provide: a theatre, a church hall, a school cafeteria, etc. Your event workers will handle the house management at the event. (See the “Station Keeper” and “Station Superintendent” below.) The house is the area where the audience sits. House management responsibilities include house setup (such as chairs, tables, restrooms, box office), refreshments (if any), sales of items specific to your charity (if any), cash box management, and the cleanup. Your event workers may also pretend to be Old West characters while interacting with the audience.
Please note: if your charity is short on volunteers or needs help finding a space for the event, we can help.
Booking an Event
Your charity may call (at the phone number below) to set up an appointment to create an event venue and date. THP receives ticket money, and your charity works at specific places throughout the show to solicit separate funds for your cause. You will supply our troupe with information on your charity, and at certain places in the show, the characters will discuss it through improvisation with each other and the “visitors” to their town—the audience. Smaller charities may choose to collaborate with each other to share the same costs and donations at a fundraising event.
How An Event Works
As the audience enters the theatre space, they will encounter your workers acting as “stagers,” station employees of a 19th century stage coach line who will sell them “stagecoach tickets” (performance tickets) to “travel to” (imagine) the town of Good Measures. “The Station Keeper” (Box-Office Manager) greets the customers and manages the stagers. The “coach drivers” (our actors) who go by the names of Whip, Charley, or Jehu, (traditional Old West slang for coach drivers) usher the “travelers to Good Measures” (audience) to their “stagecoaches” (tables with seating in the performance space). The “Station Superintendent” (House Manager) whose job is to purchase equipment (box-office equipment, refreshments, etc.) and hire stagers, supervises the running of the “Station” (the house).
If the charity so chooses, travelers may purchase refreshments of sarsaparilla, ginger or root beer, fruit juice, or milk, and other snacks, or in licensed venues, more mature audiences may purchase something stronger. Historically, audiences often ate food during 19th century melodrama performances, which sometimes ended up being thrown at actors they didn’t like. At our events audiences may purchase small bags of marshmallows to pelt their favorite characters as this is a cleaner and more fun substitute of this melodrama tradition.
If the charity usually sells specific clothing or other items for their cause, audiences may purchase them between acts; your charity may even choose to sell them in our pretend “Good Measures General Store” using our characters along side your event workers to act as store clerks. THP can also supply guessing games for a raffle involving the story that your charity may use to add to your fundraising, if your charity is legally eligible for “gaming.”
The Conductor of our stage coach train (all the tables in the house) is portrayed by one of our actors who also acts as the MC. Historically, a Conductor would lead the transport, sit on the “box” beside the driver, take care of passengers, collect fares, and took responsibility for the mail. Our fantasy Conductor named “MC” opens the show with a short description of both melodrama and the charity hosting the event. The Conductor then engages the audience to “travel” down the “Imagination Trail” to the town of “Good Measures” in “Eutopia County” where many of the stock characters have musical names, and the word “change” is forbidden. As the magic begins, the Conductor leads the audience into learning the town anthem of “Good Measures” (the theme song) so they may sing along with the actors when the opportunity arises.
The Conductor will introduce the colorful, 19th century stock characters at the beginning of the performance, as was done in old time melodrama theatres. The characters will form a tableau, which will be an allowed time for the audience to take pictures. Among the characters are Sam the Piano Player on a piano or keyboard who interacts musically with the townsfolk and visitors. The showgirls and showboys will perform a can-can dance, and a few audience members may be invited to participate. Upon completion of the dance, the picture taking ends.
As the story begins, in the middle of the first scene, the audience will learn that the characters can now “see” them as “visitors” riding into town in a train of stagecoaches. Characters might interact a little with a few of the visitors at appropriate times. Later in the story, the tables at which the audience sit become tables in the town’s Sonata Saloon, where the audience now engage their imaginations as saloon customers. Here, audiences may be served drinks of fruit juice, milk, and good-old-fashioned sarsaparilla.
In between certain scenes, as short intermissions allow your charity’s speaker to promote your cause, certain favorite characters will move around the audience. Some will engage in playful banter and discussions about your charity. Others may help collect more donations. Also, if your charity wishes to sponsor a game of chance to raise more money for your cause, characters will encourage “customers” to enter a guessing game involving the story being presented. Upon the end of the story, the visitors will be thanked for visiting our little town as they “leave in their stage coaches” at which time guessing game winners will be announced.
As THP develops, new episodes involving the same characters will be presented so that local donors can enjoy seeing their favorite characters again for another season’s fundraiser. In fact, a game that is FREE invites audiences to suggest future plot lines for Good Measures, or subplots for specific characters. Those who ideas get chosen to include in one of our episodes will receive one pair of free tickets to see it performed.
To contact The Humanitarian Players, call 434-221-5113 or email thehumanitarianplayers@gmail.com.
