Our New Theatre!

...almost. We just need to raise $10,000 this week, and every little bit will help.

Here's the whole story. About three weeks ago, we came across an existing small theatre in Sherman Oaks that was becoming available. The current lessee had been there for almost 10 years, and was moving out. He was ready to give up the responsibility of running his own space, and was downsizing to rent time at another theatre for his classes.

The property owner wanted him to find someone to lease it as a theatre or restore it to an empty space. In other words, tear all the theatre stuff out! Jack and I set up a time to meet him and see the space.

After viewing the space, we were very excited! It was a great location, the entire place was very well cared for and set up, the theatre could seat up to 75, and there was lots of free parking!

We cautiously began to explore our options. We knew that we did not have the cash to take theatre over at what was being asked, but we made a creative offer. The owner was out of town, and we were communicating through his agent. We went back and forth for over two weeks.

We made our final offer on Friday, an offer that we felt was the very best we could realistically commit to. The owner came back with a counter-offer that we had to say no to and assumed that was end of it. I emailed the agent, thanking him for his help and expressing my regret that we couldn't make it happen. The current lessee had already been holding off on destroying the interior for us and had plans to start on Monday.

On Saturday morning, I received an email reply from the owner to the agent, telling him to hold everything off until next Friday, because he would be back in town and wanted to meet with us to make a decision!

Our hope and belief now is that the owner wants to make it work with us, and now we need your help. This space is ready to go RIGHT NOW.  YST desperately needs to be back in our own space if we are going to survive. Being back in our own space will allow us to start producing more shows, giving more youth more opportunities to be involved in a positive activity for free.

We truly do our best not to be always asking for money, but right now we have no choice but to let you know the need. Any donation is tax deductible and much appreciated, but for those of you who donate a little more, we would like to offer some small tokens of appreciation:

$500 or more - Two season tickets to every production through the end of 2012, and your name on our new "Founders Plaque" specifically for people who donated to help YST get in this space.

$1000 or more - Four season tickets through the end of 2012, your name on our new "Founders Plaque" and your name on the producer plaque which can once again hang proudly in our lobby! (If your name is already there, we'll figure out something!)

Please, if you believe in what we do, if you want to help us keep doing more for more kids and keep working towards building our dream arts complex,

NOW IS THE TIME! WE NEED ALL THE HELP WE CAN GET!

Please make your secure, tax deductible donation on our site
through PayPal with credit/debit card, check or PayPal at this link:

YST Donations

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT!