Arts Activities Support

We believe we are off to a great second step on our way to building a secure and exciting future for our company. Moving to Minneapolis to expand our audience, and reaching out to new audiences in new place in Minneapolis and increase the reach of our productions. Also, discovering a great of artists who are passionate about Hope Theater Company. Recent Experiences" represents the second project of our company, Hope Theater Company. Producing "Recent Experiences" was a pivotal second step toward achieving our goals, second and foremost of which is achieving closeness with our community, and opening the lines of communication and discussion with our new audience. Some Outcomes: The story was lovely story from Canadian Play writer Nadia Ross and Jacob Wren. They are well known writers in Canada. Story was about an African American man in 1900 that he was fell in love with White lady. They get together without going to church and without telling to anybody that they married. We are following this story from 1900 to 2007, and listening to four generations stories. We were lucky because our audiences were positively impacted, and enjoyed the show almost unanimously. Our artistic process began in February 21, 2016. After securing our venue, Phoenix Theater, Which is located in Minneapolis, we started our rehearsal. During first part of rehearsal time we have met many actors and artists who love to be part of this project. Finally, we have found our all 6 actors. The Rehearsal process included extensive research with the actors on the setting, story, and characters in the script for two and half months. "Recent Experiences" garnered amazing results as the debut production for Hope Theater Company. In addition to production a socially and politically relevant piece which was well-received by its audience, we were successful in the following goals: A. Introducing our second production and Hope Theater Company to the Twin Cities. B. Hosting a successful fundraiser, where we raised funds for our project and more than that, made more new and valuable friends within our new community. C. Discovering a great of artists who are passionate about Hope Theater Company and its goals, and who we hope to collaborate with in the future. (We have two new members in our company now which we are so excited about them.) D. Reaching out to new audiences in new place in Minneapolis and increase the reach of our productions. E. Obtaining the attention of local media, by garnering some reviews, a write-up in the Minnesota playlist, MNartist website, and an interview piece with Persian media, all of which can be found below. F. Engaging in meaningful conversations with our audience. We facilitated multiple post-show discussions, where we received feedback from our audience, answered their questions, and engaged in extremely meaningful conversation between the company and the audience. G. We had two weeks venue and 10 shows in Phoenix Theater, and during this time, we found almost two hundred eighty audiences. Also more than 15 artists came and see our play. I. We had one night ASL for our play and we had some people at that night who need ASL and it was great to have ASL signer for them. We believe we are off to a great second step on our way to building a secure and exciting future for our company. We started with: Amy Danielson, our communications director, introduce Second project of Hope Theater Company and promoted "Recent experiences" on social media, Minnesota Playlist, the MNDaily, City Page and MNartist. She also helped us develop and improving our website and our page in Face Book too. It was instrumental in promoting "Recent Experiences" in the community at-large. One of wonderful point for us was working with Rich Ryan local photographer. I invited him to join with us and collaborated with me during the project and results were amazing photos which we published in our website and our Facebook page. After these amazing jobs, we have gotten verity of people who involved in our project and our venue. We believe that moving to Minneapolis help us to find more new generation audience and also we have gotten more people who were interested about Hope Theater Company's goals and plan for future. In fact, after this project; two of our actors, Kimberly Willow, and Philip Matthews were excited to involve to Hope Theater Company, and they are part of our company now. In addition, we were lucky to have some students from University of Minnesota who came to see our play and it was first time for us to attract new generation. We hope that if we will continue our productions, we are going to be more popular in twin Cities and we can involve more and more audience with different culture and ages. Engaging in meaningful conversations with our audience. We facilitated multiple post-show discussions, where we received feedback from our audience, answered their questions, and engaged in extremely meaningful conversation between the company and the audience. Also, we were so lucky to have some great artists who came and see our play. Dipankar Mukherjee, Artistic Director of Pangea World Theater, and Meena Natarajan; founder and Executive Director of Panga World Thetaer attended in our venue. Dipamkar put this note after he watched "Recent Experiences": "Please go see this amazing and complex piece of theater. Kiomars Moradi's director and Narmin's specific and complex set brings this poignant piece of theater to life! Actors with understated craft spoke eloquence in this intimate setting! It was an honor!"