When it rains, it pours. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has given us many challenges, but we never took our focus off providing our students with a quality education. Our online classes and productions have explored new spaces and projects that give students the foundations for their professional careers.

Using our rainy day fund, this past semester we have been able to provide microphones for students participating in the Pandemic Podcast coming later this winter, support the playwrights and activists for Visionary Futures, and invite professionals to lead workshops on podcasts and devised theater — the latter offered to the companies of COVEN-19 and Café Subterrain. 

Looking forward, in the spring semester we would love to continue to provide great educational and artistic opportunities and we need your help to do it! We plan to have a full digital production of Visionary Futures as well as a spring festival. The Rites/Rights of Spring: A Festival of Unity, conceived by Professor Judyie Al-Bilali, is the Department of Theater’s artistic response to the need for beauty, solidarity, meaning and healing on the UMass campus and in the broader Valley community. It is scheduled to be live and over zoom, and we will use our funds to support both students’ learning and the equipment they will need to make these productions as good as they can possibly be.

We are grateful for our past donors whose contributions have made all of our accomplishments this semester possible. Any contribution you can give for our future projects is greatly appreciated! Your donations provide us the opportunity to grow as a department and community.