Artist Support

The Ruskin Group theatre has been active in Santa Monica, California for over fourteen years, creating at least one new work each year, and mounting a minimum of three to four fully produced plays each season. We provide an artists' home for the considerable amount of talent that lives and/or works on the west side of Los Angeles. We provide a space to take risks on new productions, new stories, and new visions of the human condition. In turn, the artists we work with create life altering moments on stage. Of course, our immediate audience benefits from the world class theatre that they experience in our very intimate 55 seat house, but more than that, our productions reach far beyond our Santa Monica home. In the past year alone we collaborated with Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, Paul Overstreet, and acclaimed screenwriter, Steve Mazur, to create a new musical, "Sneaky Ol' Time". It ran for over four months to absolutely sold-out audiences, and is now in development for future production in the southern states of the U.S. Following up on "Sneaky", we produced the U.S. premier of Gary McNair's "A Gambler's Guide to Dying" - where it was awarded a Scotsman Fringe First. Following that, we were proud to host Tony Award Nominee and Emmy Award winner Starletta Du Pois in the role of "Mama" in Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun". This production garnered several L.A. Times Critics picks, is in consideration for a grant to move to the Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre, and is being considered for several NAACP awards. Finally, we are currently in collaboration with a long time friend and associate, Paul Link, on his new one-man show, "Its Time". Paul won national accolades with his poignant one-man show, directed by Charles Nelson Reilly, "Time Flies When You're Alive".

Santa Monica, and the greater west side of Los Angeles in general, have become very expensive locations to live, yet most of the work in the entertainment field requires that performing artists live in proximity to it. Many of our artists (actors, designers, writers, etc.), support themselves through "moonlighting" in other professions, and struggle to make ends meet while they develop their talents and pursue their careers. Simple things, like gas or mass transit money to get to and from rehearsals, can become big obstacles to being able to perform in a live production in Los Angeles. Many of our artists cannot afford to live within a reasonable distance to Santa Monica, thus travel becomes an added expense. Equity waiver wages for small theatres in the Los Angeles area fall far below minimum wage, and simply represent a "token" payment to these artists. Given our small house, and the fact that ticket prices don't cover all our expenses, we must find supplemental means to supporting our artists. We are striving to offer them just a bit more so that they can see their way through a production. As well, we have been developing a Writer's Lab over the past three years, and wish to be able to pay our writers a "commission" for their completed work. This Lab has thus far generated two fully produced plays that have both gone on to further development on regional college campuses.

There are several levels of beneficiaries to our work. Certainly the artists themselves, if our grant request is approved, will benefit from increased stipends; but as well, it has become evident that the larger theatre world benefits from our activities as producers of story.