2024-2025 Annual Fund Fall Appeal
Dear friends,
As Kitchen Theatre Company’s 34th season gets underway, generous supporters like you keep important conversations going! Through the Annual Fund Fall Appeal, you can help us stay laser-focused on sustaining this great work–telling powerful stories that resonate deeply and connect our community.
You are part of a community—of audiences and artists—that loves theater. Thanks to you, KTC can produce bold, timely, and diverse productions by a mix of seasoned professionals and emerging artists. With your support, aspiring arts leaders gain invaluable mentorship and opportunities to grow. And because you help ensure a range of voices and perspectives are part of the work, every production is enriched and sparks conversations that continue in our living rooms, classrooms, sidewalks, and beyond.
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Below, you’ll read reflections from artists whose careers have been shaped by your contributions. Your gift to the Annual Fund Fall Appeal supports our mission to sustain excellence on stage, nurture the artists who bring these stories to life, and share them with an ever-growing audience. Thanks to you, KTC will remain a place where important conversations thrive—both onstage and throughout our community.
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Thank you for making this possible.
See you at the theater,
Emily Jackson, Producing Artistic Director
Rachel Lampert, Board of Directors, Development Committee Chair
Reflections from KTC Artists
LaShawn Keyser
Production Stage Manager: 2009-2012
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"When you work for a small theater company surrounded by the natural beauty and small town feel of Ithaca, you're compelled even more to the WHY in the work. Stories should be told well all over the country. The Kitchen has historically done a great job of that, treating their artists well, and giving them another home in which they feel like their art is seen, heard, felt, and respected."​
Alexander Thomas
Playwright and Actor: Since 2002
"I was cast in the role of Carl, a classical cellist in Michael Hollinger's play Opus. At that time, I had never been cast in a role like that and it opened me up to the possibilities of roles I have landed since then."
Karl Gregory
Actor: Since 2001 (over 30 productions)
"KTC has been doing high-caliber work for decades, and you can see that in the artists who keep returning to work there. There’s a reason we keep coming back. It’s a small but mighty company!"
Adam Bock
Playwright, Swimming in the Shallows
"The commission of The Drunken City came at just the right time to encourage me - it was great to have a theater in Ithaca which believed in me."
Holly Golden
Intern: 1999
Assistant to Artistic Director: 2000-2002
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I loved my time at the KTC -- I'll always remember it as a place of creative freedom, and where I was always challenged to be my best artistic self. I always appreciated the theater's efforts to be as inclusive and diverse as possible!
Will Gfeller
Management & Administration Fellow: 2017-2018
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"My experience as the Management & Administration Fellow at the Kitchen Theater provided the perfect foundation for my professional career. Being so involved in the day-to-day operations of a small regional theater exposed me to a variety of best practices that I maintain to this day, including relationship management with donors, database administration, and budgeting. It set me up with a wide variety of practical skills that I have leveraged as I pursued my M.F.A. in Performing Arts Administration at Brooklyn College and in my career as a fundraiser at a variety of NYC theaters, including La MaMa, SITI Company, and New York City Center."
David Arsenault
Designer: Since 2010
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"The Kitchen, in my opinion, is a prime place to learn the type of creative problem-solving that helps to sustain a career in the regional circuit. I’m not talking about the budget, but more the venue itself. It forces you into creative problem solving because you just can’t do things the same way you can elsewhere. It’s truly off-broadway upstate. I have found throughout my career that the type of thinking I developed working at the Kitchen has saved me a lot of stress in other tricky venues and processes."
Ally Poole
Arts Administration Intern: 2012-2013
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"The Kitchen was the first theater I had been to that championed new work and it has always been so. That dedication is an incredible gift to the broader picture of regional theater when so often it is the easier financial decision to back known work. Additionally, the Kitchen has consistently been a theater to return to for artists and that is such a gift."
Hannah Avery
Marketing Fellow: 2021-2022
Marketing Associate: 2022-2023
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As a Fellow, I spent much of my time pushing my creative limits in regards to graphic design, video editing, photography, and even some design work as well. Since KTC, I've gone on to work for the O'Neill Center and the National Theater Institute and have embraced my emerging playwriting career with much success in the past year. I also act on the side and freelance as an accessibility consultant for theatre.