Tane's #GiveAtHomeMN 4The Theater of Public Policy

I co-founded The Theater of Public Policy with my friend and improv partner Brandon Boat in 2011.  For nine years our cast have helped "make good things fun" by combing conversations with experts on serious issues with improv comedy by some of the sharpest performers in the country.

With the outbreak of COVID-19 and subsequent guidelines for social distancing, our theater show was hit incredibly hard. Virtually overnight, all of our paying work, whether ticket sales or bookings to perform at conferences and events, disappeared. 

Being improvisers, we have said "Yes, and..." to this new reality and moved all our shows and workshops online. We are continuing to bring substantive conversations around public policy along with hilarious improv comedy to people, now through the magic of Zoom.

With virtually no earned revenue, we have had to completely change how we keep this theater going and continue to pay our performers for their time and talent. 

We need YOU and your support. 

We have a goal to raise $7,500 during the #GiveAtHomeMN statewide campaign. Your support during this week will help ensure this uniquely thing we call The Theater of Public Policy is able to continue providing laughs and learns well into the future.

This project has been my life's work up to this point. I sincerely believe the world needs more ways for people to engage with big issues and ideas in ways that are fun and accessible. 

I refuse to let a pandemic kill off what we've built over these past nine year.

But I need your help. 

Use this page to make a donation for The Theater of Public Policy between May 1 and May 8. Because it's #GiveAtHomeMN week, every donation has the chance to trigger a random "Golden Ticket" bonus from the Bush Foundation or others. 

So give early and give often if you can.

I normally hesitate to ask people for money for my own projects, but right now if we don't ask for your help, we probably won't be around six months from now to do what we really love: giving you interesting things to think and laugh about. 

Give and share! Help me reach my personal goal of $1000.

Thank you and stay well.

–Tane

👉 NOTE: This page reads that donations go to Springboard for the Arts. Springboard is a statewide arts organization serves as our nonprofit fiscal agent for charitable donations. Basically, when people donate toward The Theater of Public Policy, Springboard takes on the fiduciary responsibility of ensuring we spend it for our arts mission (and not vacations or jet skis).
Long story short, your donation here WILL go to The Theater of Public Policy and is tax-deductible.👈 

BACKGROUND ABOUT T2P2

Since 2011, The Theater of Public Policy (T2P2 for short) has done more than 500 live performances all across Minnesota and the country. We do a variety of things, but our primary show features an on-stage interview with an expert on some issue. That conversation then inspires our cast of improvisers who do improv comedy scenes about the topic. My favorite description was in the Star Tribune which said, "It's like C-SPAN being swarmed by the cast of SNL."

We have done shows on virtually any topic you can imagine, no matter how seemingly dry or difficult: educational equity to highway funding, the Farm Bill to longterm healthcare. 

Along the way, we have had some of the sharpest, funniest improvisers in the universe as part of our cast. We pride ourselves on having one of the most diverse casts in the region in regard to age, race, gender, LGBTQ and other markers of diversity. We also believe that diversity makes us a better, stronger artistic company.

We have made paying those performers for their tremendous time and talent a priority. We do not ask our cast to work for free, and as obvious as that may sound, it is not the norm in the improv world. Since 2012, we have paid our performers over $402,000. 

Our theater company has largely been able to sustain itself and grow through ticket sales and people hiring us to perform at conferences and events. But all that changed with the outbreak of COVID-19. 

We are continuing to produce programing: we've done a half dozen of our shows online now, along with online workshops and even virtual art museum tours. But we are depending on charitable giving unlike ever before. It is now the largest portion of our budget and what is keeping us going.