Tuesday, May 1, 2012

TMTC’s partnership with More Gardens!




4 Sustenance marks TMTC’s 4th GO GREEN event, and we’re excited to share it with The Planet Connections Theatre Festivity this year.  GO GREEN Originally started as a paper free reading series in a theatre and has grown into an annual outdoor theatrical event. Last year’s event was held at La Plaza Cultural Community Garden on the Lower East Side, and involved over 30 playwrights, directors and performers who worked in teams to write and perform a series of original short plays in 24hours. Rather than printing scripts and using disposable utensils and dishes for our mealtime, we used mobile electronic devices to send scripts to each other and brought dishes, cups and reusable water bottles to the garden with us for the day.

This year, we are excited to be back in a theatre as part of the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, but we also wanted to find a way to keep GO GREEN connected to a community garden. So, in the spirit of our community garden roots we will be partnering with a fabulous organization called More Gardens!

More Gardens! is a group of community people, gardeners, and environmental and social justice activists who promote the development and preservation of community gardens as well as the cultivation of fallow land in New York City. They work throughout the city in East Harlem, The Lower East Side and The South Bronx, interfacing with other organizations and government agencies.

We at TMTC are excited to utilize our production of 4 Sustenance, to connect and encourage audience members to get involved with community gardens in their area.  We have even incorporated this concept into the show itself with our “Seeds 4 Sustenance” campaign! In the final moments of 4 Sustenance, each audience member will be given a small handful of seeds to plant, in their own homes or in a community garden nearby where they live. TMTC and More Gardens! will provide an online list and map of community gardens across the city that will participate in our “Seeds 4 Sustenance” campaign.

The 4 Sustenance creative team will also be joining the community garden movement, by spending time working with local youth from Children’s Magical Garden on garden maintenance, caring for plants, and planting new seeds as needed to create a lush summer garden for the Lower East Side community.

We hope that through our performance of 4 Sustenance and participation in Planet Connections, we will be able to bring the theatre and gardening communities in NYC a bit closer together. And we hope you’ll come join the fun! Visit the 4 Sustenance webpage for more info and to purchase tickets.