This week is the first BOM show since June that doesn’t feature Astronauts (can you be-lieve it?). If this makes you sad, you can always ask us to bring it back after the holidays. In the meantime, we’ve added even more seasonal joy with “Monica’s Special Christmas Eve”.
In the spirit of valuing education, we’re also adding an untitled story about wanting to be a teacher—the first story we’ve added from our collaboration with the A.G. Bell Association last year.
As always, you can buy your tickets online in advance, or call 312-409-1954 to make a reservation.
Special reminder: We will not have a regular Monday performance on December 22nd. Instead, we will have a special holiday matinee on Saturday, December 20th at 2:00pm.
As a nonprofit professional, I spend a fair amount of my time at the office asking people and organizations for support. One of the great things about this is that a big part of my job is explaining why Barrel of Monkeys is such a worthwhile organization. I get to talk about our mission, the kids we work with, and the art we create. Increasingly, I do a lot of this over the internet as fundraising tools and mechanisms become more readily available online and people choose online interactions above more traditional communications.
One of the most interesting, in my opinion, developments (hee) in online fundraising is the many ways to raise money passively. Tools like igive and goodshop give a percentage of online shopping or search revenue to the charity you designate. Obviously we encourage you all to sign up with BOM as your charity of choice, but my larger point is that the internet has made it easier for people to support their favorite organizations even when they can not make a direct contribution. Instead a portion of the ad revenue or corporate profit goes to charity instead of to (for example) the search engines. Some of the ways you can support BOM passively are listed on the support page.
Today, for example, I ran across a new site called Everywun. You can choose from one of 46 charities (mostly national in scope) and display a badge on your facebook page or blog demonstrating your support of a specific charity or type of organization. My badge, not surprisingly in support of arts education, is after the jump. The principle of the site is that it can cost nothing to make the world a better place, and the site has a forum that anyone can participate in to discuss causes and ways to support them. The site just launched a few days ago, so it’s hard to tell yet if it will be successful, but I’m optimistic.
Of course, none of this can supplant or replace cash contributions entirely, but every little bit helps. Barrel of Monkeys, for example, has raised a couple hundred dollars from people using goodsearch.com instead of other popular search engines. While this doesn’t change our annual fundraising goals particularly dramatically, all the contributions add up over time. Ultimately I look forward to seeing how online initiatives like these grow and develop in the next few years.
In the meantime, if you are in a position to make a year-end donation to Barrel of Monkeys you may do so online. Every little bit helps, and we are continually grateful for the support of our community and fans.
On behalf of Barrel of Monkeys, the core group of sports fans IN Barrel of Monkeys, and pretty much anyone who enjoys encouraging anyone anywhere, I want to send out a huge shoutout to 16-year-old Eri Yoshida. That girl just became the first female professional baseball player ever. And I think that is totally rad.
Speaking of rad and baseball, there’s a pretty rad baseball story in That’s Weird, Grandma right now (see how I tied those together? That’s a college degree at work there, friends) about a kid going to see a White Sox game and meeting the players. We’re always in a sticky situation when we have to present actual well-known celebrities on stage, but I think we did a pretty good job with this one.
For instance, the kid met Jermaine Dye (played by Donnell):
He met Bobby Jenks (played by Curtis):
and he also met Frank Thomas (naturally, played by Tai):
Hey, Monkeys? Next year, when all the kids are writing about her, I’m calling all the Eri Yoshida parts RIGHT NOW.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of good cheer!
It’s December now, which means TWG is getting into full holiday mode. We’ve added two stories this week, both holiday favorites. First, of course, the song “The Time I At a Christmas Ball” which we trust is more dramatic than any of your holidays. We’ve also put in “A House”—you’ll want to keep track of all those elves!!
. . . I posted about the Cleveland Show since this afternoon, I’ll be performing in the third Monkey show of the school year, at our own Loyola Park after-school program. More on that later.
In the early days of November, Chicago was caught up in election fever. That whole week was kind of a blur, as are most of the photos from Cleveland. Rest assured, blurry times did not keep us from rocking the show.
This school has always given us a warm welcome . . .
It’s one of the schools featured in Collin Souter’sMeet the Monkeys documentary. At the end of this clip, former Principal Rockland says his famous words, “Is it wrong for a man . . . to love . . . a monkey?”
We even rehearsed at this school once upon a time, so we have a long tradition there.
