A dependable haven for artists in isolation, Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is celebrating its fifth year of non-stop weekly Community Gatherings, having offered to date over 250 conversations and unlimited camaraderie since April 17, 2020. TRU hosts these Community Gatherings every Friday at 5pm ET via Zoom, originally presented to explore the creation of art and theater in the time of COVID-19, and now to ensure that these crucial conversations continue going forward.

Register here to receive a Zoom link. These gatherings are a service for the theater community and are offered free for TRU members; non-members may also attend for free, but we ask that non-members help keep us running by buying a ticket, making a donation or joining as a member.

10/3 – What’s Happening to Free Speech? And Can Art Survive in the Shadow of Censorship? In the room:Ralph Sevush, Executive Director of Business Affairs & General Counsel at Dramatists Guild of America; andCheryl Davis, playwright, TRU co-founder and vice president, and General Counsel for the Authors Guild. Stephen Colbert was cancelled. Under pressure from the FCC Chairman, Disney suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s nightly show. Before that the NEA was pressured to limit or eliminate funding to organizations that applied for support for programs that focus on amplifying Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. A Trump Executive Order declares that sexual identity is exclusively determined by birth, effectively nullifying the spectrum of human identity we have grown to understand. Women’s rights to their own bodies have already been uprooted, and gay marriage seems next on the hit list. What are the ramifications for artists, particularly the writers of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild and even TRU? Are there effective ways for us to keep making art, and retain our artistic integrity and our lives as we know them? We’ll be looking at all this a few days before Banned Books Week. Yes, really. Is it possible for us to fight back against these attacks on the First Amendment — and if so, how? Click here to register and receive the zoom link.

UPCOMING:

10/10 – Putting the Ladies in the Spotlight: Organizations That Focus on Professional Theater Women. In the room: Lynnie Godfrey, president and Cynthia Straus, board member of the League of Professional Theatre Women; Shellen Lubin, co-president of Women in Arts & Media Coalition; Lauren Yarger of Gracewell Productions, co-founder of the new Connecticut Theatre Women Network. Meet these three passionate organizations and hear about their histories, their missions and the services and support they offer. All three are sister organizations with TRU and we offer reciprocal memberships and support. Is the need for these niche organizations as necessary as it once was? Are there still inequities in the way women are perceived and treated in our business? What progress has been made? What are their goals for the future, and have current politics affected those goals? Click here to register and receive the zoom link.

More information about upcoming interviews is available at: truonline.org/tru-community-gathering.

To receive the Zoom invitation for weekly meetings, email TRUnltd@aol.com with “Zoom Me” in the subject header. These gatherings are free for TRU members, non-members are asked to make an optional tax-deductible donation or consider joining TRU at truonline.org/membership to support the organization’s ongoing service to the community.

Videos of past Community Gatherings may be viewed on TRU’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/channel/UC43rsChi4fA23dNLeloaF_A/. And a podcast series, TRU Talks About Theater, featuring 2023 Community Gathering conversations, is now available wherever you get your podcasts; or tune in at ElectraCast: https://electracast.com/?s=Theater+Resources

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is the leading network for developing theater professionals, a thirty-two-year-old 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization created to help producers produce, emerging theater companies to emerge healthily and all theater professionals to understand and navigate the business of the arts. Membership includes self-producing artists as well as career producers and theater companies.

TRU publishes an email community newsletter of services, opportunities and productions; presents weekly Community Gatherings about the arts, and monthly Town Halls about current social issues; offers a Producer Development & Mentorship Program taught by prominent producers and general managers in New York theater, and also presents Producer Boot Camp workshops to help aspirants develop business skills. TRU serves writers through the TRU Voices Play Reading Series, TRUSpeak: Hear Our Voices (adapting short plays into films), Writer-Producer Speed Date, a Practical Playwriting Workshop, How to Write a Musical That Works and a Director-Writer Communications Lab.

Programs of Theater Resources Unlimited are supported in part by the Leibowitz Greenway Foundation; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

For more information about TRU membership and programs, visit www.truonline.org.

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