Oregon Children's Theatre to put programs on hold amid $1 million fundraising campaign
PORTLAND, Ore. () — The Oregon Children's Theatre is the latest organization to put its programming on hold due to economic problems.
The state's largest youth-focused nonprofit theater company announced that it will pause operations on Sept. 1, after its summer camp season concludes.
Forest Park conservationists challenge Portland's approval of PGE project
OCT reported that it would need $1 million to maintain its operations through the year, and to ensure its ability to reopen at a later date. Leaders said the upcoming hiatus will help the nonprofit as 'it begins an organizational restructuring.'
In a statement, Producing Artistic Director Jenn Hartmann Luck said the organization must be intentional in its next steps in order to ensure its long-term success.
'We have been facing these challenges for many years, and in order for us to create a way forward we must stop and assess who we are as an organization, what we need in order to continue producing shows and providing educational programming, and create a financial model that works so that we can come back stronger, ready to serve the youth and families in our community,' Hartmann Luck added.
The pause will impact all of OCT's productions and education programs, including its mentorship and training program for teens involved in theater.
The organization first revealed its financial issues last June, when it launched a to support its production of 'Cat Kid Comic Club: the Musical.' Although the campaign allowed the theatre nonprofit to hold sold-out shows at Portland'5 Centers for the Arts' Newmark Theater, leaders said the money was not enough to sustain future performances at the venue.
VIDEO: Portland's cherry blossoms peak, threatened by Wednesday's storms
OCT's most recent donation campaign is more dire, by the end of December. In addition to the fundraiser, the group is hoping to secure grants and additional sources of revenue through other organizations, partnerships and sponsorships.
According to the nonprofit, operations will not continue if the fundraising goal isn't reached.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Yahoo
Inside the ‘Hard Battle' of Bringing ‘The Children of October 7' Doc to Paramount+
For Shari Redstone, the president of National Amusements and the chairwoman of Paramount Global, 'The Children of October 7' is more than just another documentary airing within her media empire. It's part of a larger calling. 'I've been fighting racism and antisemitism for a long time, but after Oct. 7, it became my life,' Redstone said during a paneled discussion for the doc on Tuesday night. 'It became the most important thing that I can do with my time — that I can teach my children, that I can bring people together to not just watch this movie but to share this with people they know, to tell the truth, to tell the stories.' Hosted at the The Paley Center for Media, the premiere for the Paramount+ documentary saw several notable celebrities, including Jason Isaacs and his wife Emma Hewitt, singer Gloria Gaynor, producer Nancy Spielberg, 'My Unorthodox Life' star Miriam Haart, UJA-Federation CEO Eric Goldstein, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig. Noa Argamani, who was kidnapped by Hamas during the Re'im music festival massacre, was also in attendance. 'The Children of October 7' is simply that. It is a collection of testimonies from children who were impacted by the Hamas-led attack on Israel that took place on Oct. 7, 2023. The ages of the subjects range greatly from Yael Idan, who was only seven years old when her sister Maayan Idan was murdered by Hamas terrorists, to Rotem Matias, who was 16 when he hid from terrorists under his mother's body. Yet the sheer horror each of these children faced is disturbingly the same. Guided by social media activist Montana Tucker, the documentary gives these children a platform to tell their harrowing stories in their own words. The idea for 'The Children of October 7' came from A Town Shorts, director Asaf Becker and Kastina Communications, who approached Tucker about leading the project. After the doc was finished, the team wanted it to reach the biggest platform possible. That's where CBS vice president of communications Andrea Ballas came in. She and Tucker met at an event, and the VP quickly became a cheerleader for the project. That's how it eventually landed in Redstone's lap. Redstone emphasized that it was important to her that the documentary aired on Paramount+ given the platform's younger audience base. During a time when many in Hollywood are adverse to projects about the Oct. 7 attacks due to the hot button nature of the subject matter, Redstone was adamant about finding a place for the film in her media empire. Both Redstone and Tucker emphasized that the movie is 'not political.' 'My dad once said 'Content is king.' And what I've always said is content can lead to conversations that can lead to change. One of the most powerful forms of content — specifically, what we just saw — is film, is just watching something together,' Redstone said. 'This was easy. It might have been a hard battle, but it was easy to fight for.' Both Redstone and Tucker emphasized that the larger point of this project is to remember the stories of these victims and fight for these children. 'You're getting it told by the children. The Holocaust survivors, we didn't get any survivors as children sharing their stories. You got them later on in life,' Tucker said during Tuesday night's panel. 'This is still currently happening. Everything in this film is still currently happening.' Redstone also sees the documentary as part of a larger battle against misinformation. 'I spent some time with the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], and one of the things that they're really concerned about is AI,' she said. 'They're so afraid that as AI evolves, years from now the content is going to come from the web and the content is going to come from all these stories that are false … That's one of the reasons why this film is so important, why the testimonials are so important.' Ultimately, the hope is that this film will encourage more people to fight against antisemitism and terrorism. 'When you leave here tonight, you need to have those conversations, and you need to fight to create the world that we want for our grandchildren,' Redstone said. 'The Children of October 7' is currently available to stream on Paramount+. It will air Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on MTV. The post Inside the 'Hard Battle' of Bringing 'The Children of October 7' Doc to Paramount+ appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Yahoo
Oregon Children's Theatre to put programs on hold amid $1 million fundraising campaign
PORTLAND, Ore. () — The Oregon Children's Theatre is the latest organization to put its programming on hold due to economic problems. The state's largest youth-focused nonprofit theater company announced that it will pause operations on Sept. 1, after its summer camp season concludes. Forest Park conservationists challenge Portland's approval of PGE project OCT reported that it would need $1 million to maintain its operations through the year, and to ensure its ability to reopen at a later date. Leaders said the upcoming hiatus will help the nonprofit as 'it begins an organizational restructuring.' In a statement, Producing Artistic Director Jenn Hartmann Luck said the organization must be intentional in its next steps in order to ensure its long-term success. 'We have been facing these challenges for many years, and in order for us to create a way forward we must stop and assess who we are as an organization, what we need in order to continue producing shows and providing educational programming, and create a financial model that works so that we can come back stronger, ready to serve the youth and families in our community,' Hartmann Luck added. The pause will impact all of OCT's productions and education programs, including its mentorship and training program for teens involved in theater. The organization first revealed its financial issues last June, when it launched a to support its production of 'Cat Kid Comic Club: the Musical.' Although the campaign allowed the theatre nonprofit to hold sold-out shows at Portland'5 Centers for the Arts' Newmark Theater, leaders said the money was not enough to sustain future performances at the venue. VIDEO: Portland's cherry blossoms peak, threatened by Wednesday's storms OCT's most recent donation campaign is more dire, by the end of December. In addition to the fundraiser, the group is hoping to secure grants and additional sources of revenue through other organizations, partnerships and sponsorships. According to the nonprofit, operations will not continue if the fundraising goal isn't reached. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Yahoo
Tom Shoval's ‘A Letter to David' Cunio, a Hamas Hostage, Explores the Connection Between Life and Cinema
The victims and survivors of the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 are not forgotten, and filmmaker Tom Shoval wants to make sure it stays that way. In A Letter to David (Michtav Le'David), which counts Nancy Spielberg, sister of Steven Spielberg, among its producers and which gets its world premiere in the Berlinale Special program on Friday, he shares a personal cinematic note to David Cunio, who has been held hostage by Hamas since being taken from the Nir Oz kibbutz that day. 'Ten years ago, David and his twin brother Eitan starred in Shoval's award-winning debut feature film Youth (Berlinale 2013), which focused on the powerful bond between brothers and, in a tragic and unimaginable twist of fate, revolved around a kidnapping,' explains a summary of the film that world premieres at the 75th edition of the Berlin Film Festival. 'Through unedited behind-the-scenes footage and audition tapes from that film, Shoval creates a multi-layered documentary that explores profound questions about the inexplicable connections between life and cinema, memory and reality, and the catastrophic consequences of war.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Is the International Film Industry Starting to Embrace AI? Korea's Finecut Inks Deals for Animated 'Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning,' Horror Film 'Noise' How Berlin Shaped Festival Legend Tom Tykwer Produced by Israel's Green Productions and Playmount Productions in New York, Shoval wrote and directed the film. The producers are Alona Refua, Maya Fischer, Roy Bareket and Spielberg. 'I met David and his brother Eitan when I cast my first movie Youth. And I was drawn to this strong connection they have as brothers. You could just feel it,' Shoval tells THR. 'The brothers helped me get my start in film. I will forever be thankful for that. So when I heard that David and his brother Ariel were taken hostage, I wanted to do whatever I could to shine a light on this.' Spielberg was in Israel to visit her daughter when the horrors of Oct. 7 unfolded. 'As an American, you are not used to hearing 'Lock yourself into your safe room for a few days.' I just wanted to get out,' she recalls. 'What I experienced and saw is not something you forget. So I really wanted to get involved in an Oct. 7 film but one that focuses on a personal story, not the numbers and the politics.' After Jake Paltrow, Gwyneth Paltrow's brother, told her she should meet Shoval, whe discovered the two had the same vision for the film. 'Tom reminds me of my brother. He is very sensitive,' Spielberg tells THR. 'I couldn't ask for a better collaborator than Nancy,' adds Shoval. 'This was a bit of a dream come true, but the fact that she understood so vividly what I meant with staying humane and not getting into any other territories that people expected us to go into was what I needed to make this happen. This film would have never happened without her.' What they both envisioned was a human story that avoids much of the violence, conflict and rhetoric shown in newscasts. 'We didn't want to show the violence of the 7th of October mainly because what we are seeing in the news is taking away what is behind this violence. There are people, human beings, and they have characters, and they have motivations, and they have stuff that they love and stuff that they hate, and they are complex people,' explains Shoval. 'And if you just see the violence, and you just see the faces on the posters, you don't get the humanity, the human tragedy that is behind all of this. I wanted people to know some of these people as intimately as I know David, so that they understand that we are all human beings. We want to live a normal life as everybody else.' He adds: 'I would rather see beyond that very graphic violence and try, through cinema, to create a vision in your head and in your heart that will say: 'Oh, these are the people. This is where they were living. This is what they did.'' Spielberg loved the approach. 'When I was looking for an Oct. 7 story, because I was so consumed with it, I felt I couldn't spend three years in an editing room on this topic. I don't think I would be able to pull myself out and go live my life. I really thought it would just make me too sick because of the trauma,' she tells THR. 'But this was such a kind way [into the subject]. Film is an empathy machine, especially when you see these carefree young guys who were finding joy in an orange pulled off of the tree and you see where they hung out and barbecued. That was their utopia. And David is a person who couldn't even act violent in a movie, so you see that contrast of who this happened to, and it happened to so many people in the South of Israel who were peaceniks. These were the people that were hoping for a better life for everybody.' As much as the film talks about Oct. 7 and what happened to David, 'it's also about two brothers being torn apart,' making it a more universal story, Shoval emphasizes. 'This connection is so vivid in the film. This makes what happened more violent than any other thing. You feel how Eitan, the brother who stayed behind, is longing for the return of his brother.' Spielberg hopes the film will also encourage viewers to look for things they have in common. 'We need to find a way for humanity to get back on the same page, to stop all this divisiveness and hate everywhere in the world. It's just so polarized,' she says. 'I say this a lot, also about Holocaust films: don't look at the numbers, look at the individuals. Connect to somebody. Find something you have in common with that person. Find that empathy, listen to their voices and hopefully they will listen to yours and have some kind of dialog. I'm hoping that maybe there's a way to bring some light into this and find some healing.' Working on A Letter to David made Shoval see the role of cinema in a new light. 'The film taught me a lot about how I perceive cinema, and what cinema is to me,' he tells THR. 'In a way, I feel that reality and cinema are two twin brothers. They are connected. And as we see in the film, you can take them apart, but they belong to each other.' There is hope that David and Ariel Cunio will be freed in a new round of hostage releases as part of a ceasefire deal this weekend. 'But you never know,' Shoval notes. He ends our conversation with an appeal. 'Please return David and his brother Ariel so they can be together, and so the normality of life can return continue, and that cinema and reality live together side by side without separation.' Watch the trailer for A Letter to David below. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The Best Anti-Fascist Films of All Time Dinosaurs, Zombies and More 'Wicked': The Most Anticipated Movies of 2025 From 'A Complete Unknown' to 'Selena' to 'Ray': 33 Notable Music Biopics
