SUPPORT THE ARTS

Dear Friends,

Whether this is your first year with the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities or you're coming into your 15th year with the company, our journey together has been remarkable. It has given me some of the finest moments of my life and at other times has taken the life right out of me.

When we opened our doors in 1991, cell phones were something found on the wall in a jail, if you said fax, it meant information, CD was a banking term, Amazon was a river, a dot was a candy and com was a state of being. In 1991, I stated that we were going to build a professional musical theatre company to rival the Music Center and Broadway, and do all of it in my old high school auditorium of former Aviation High School which closed in 1983. Well, today I will tell you the truth: I had no takers. Everybody thought I had bumped my head and that I was not a well person. Ha Ha!

The point is that nobody believed me and it seemed as if everyone had angrily dismissed my vision of creating a first-class venue even
though I saw it so clearly! Today it's all done. The shows are top notch and the building we are in is perfect thanks to The City of Redondo Beach!

Along the way the obstacles were bone crushing but we did get it done, and now we are about to turn 15 years old!

In the beginning we built everything we needed like the make-up mirrors and wardrobe racks, bars and ticket stations. We had to purchase and acquire portable restrooms, lighting systems, sound equipment, generators, and running cable. We installed carpeting, a costume department wing with sewing machines, in-house hair/wig salon, flashlights, computers and our own rehearsal hall. This took four months and cost hundreds of thousand of dollars.

As you know we are now one of the largest nationally recognized professional companies. We're taking awards away from New York's Broadway and the Music Center. We are all the talk in LA Stage Magazine. Your support has elevated us to the National Registry of Who's Who in America in the 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 editions.

Although, in the last few years we have been hitting in the black, we are still carrying the early year's bills of creating this company. Everyone from Mobil to GTE (when they were called that) or Edison (and they had lots of money back then) declined to help us. They said, "We'd love to help you, but you are a new organization. We like to wait and see if you make it or not." (Well, they didn't really say that out loud but you get the picture.)

We're here now and so are the first year start-up costs. Now, here is the clincher, we are now eligible because of the awards we've won and of our time of being open (over 14 years now). We would be getting grant money from The National Endowment for the Arts in Washington D.C. but they're broke, The State of California Arts Council but they're broke, or The Los Angeles County Arts Commission but they're broke. So after working our behinds off to get to the "funding finish line" they took away our prize. We've made it to 2005 and we've been left standing at the altar. In private I screamed and cried "this is not fair." There is hopefully, something you can do to help. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the Civic Light Opera.

To help us get rid of our old debt and to help us to have something to really celebrate, please consider generously giving an Anniversary Gift to help make our 15th Birthday celebration the best of all. As a fun idea, we would like to read all of the names and the cities of everyone that sends in gifts from stage every night!

Sincerely,
James A. Blackman III
Executive Director/Producer

Send your Anniversary Gift to:
Civic Light Opera
of South Bay Cities
P.O. Box 1157
Redondo Beach, California 90278
(310) 372-4477
Thank you!