Final Four Ridiculously Amazing or Just Ridiculous Facts!

It's your last chance to support The Civilians
in our tenth anniversary season,
which officially ends TOMORROW! 

And without further ado, the final four of our
TEN RIDICULOUSLY AMAZING OR
JUST RIDICULOUS THINGS
THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO THE CIVILIANS IN THE LAST TEN YEARS

4. While The Civilians are flying to Colorado Springs to conduct interviews for This Beautiful City  from varying airports on the East Coast, the news about Ted Haggard breaks.  
Timing = ridiculous.

3. We have a rehearsal for our very first show in front of a dumpster while a chorus practices “Jailhouse Rock” in a space down the hall. The Civilians will forever appreciate how ridiculously amazing it is to rehearse in actual studios.

2. Remember that time Caitlin Miller called all of the Jessica Lynch’s in the phone book for (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch? Amazing (and a little ridiculous).

1. Ten original shows, over 40 cities nationally and internationally, in the New York Times year-end “Best of” lists twice plus other equally exciting awards and accolades, eleven projects in our upcoming eleventh season ranging in subject matter from climate change to divorce to the adult entertainment industry.

We're just $1,015 away from meeting our $5,000 goal...

$10 (for 10 years) makes a big difference!
$20 gets you a signed copy of the script of our Best Of Concert which will be happening this summer!

If we get 500 people to give $20 or more,
we'll make a brand new, original video
for the website with some of
your favorite moments from shows and a few of our Associate Artists telling personal stories
about memorable interviews!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW!

10 Ridiculous or Ridiculously Amazing Facts

THE CIVILIANS HAS MADE IT THROUGH TEN YEARS -
HELP US MAKE IT TEN MORE!
 

We’re closing out our tenth anniversary season and we're trying to raise $5,000 to meet our goals for this year.

Any amount helps. How about $10 for 10 years?

Or $20: $10 for the first 10 and $10 for the next!

For a gift of $20 or more, you'll get a signed script from our upcoming Best Of Concert, which will include all of our favorite monologues!

PLUS, if we get 500 people to give us $10 (or more), we’ll make a brand new, original video for the website with some of your favorite moments from shows AND a few of our Associate Artists telling personal stories about memorable interviews!

 

And just for a little more fun, here are a few of the things that have happened in the last ten years that are either hilarious or amazing, and which have us very excited to get going on the next ten!

TEN RIDICULOUSLY AMAZING OR JUST RIDICULOUS 

THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO THE CIVILIANS 
IN THE PAST TEN YEARS

10. When The Civilians wins an Obie, Swoosie Kurtz presents the award and reads the lyrics to “The Civilians Theme Song”.

9. After In the Footprint, the following is overheard being said to Mayor Bloomberg at a meeting: “I saw a play about Atlantic Yards last night, and you were played by an empty suit!”
...followed by dead silence.   

8. We’ve made some ridiculously amazing friends. Check out videos HERE and HERE made by past interviewees with wonderfully kind words for our tenth anniversary!

7. When two Associate Artists stalk Anna Paquin in a stairwell in preparation for Canard, Canard, Goose?, she will not comment on the treatment of geese in Fly Away Home. She is portrayed in the show anyway, paving the way for Jay Z’s appearance in In the Footprint ten years later.

6. The Civilians outrages the super right wing by receiving support from the National Science Foundation. This one’s a twofer, since the support is ridiculously amazing, and the outrage was ridiculous.

5. We started an Education Program! Here’s a video of these ridiculously amazing high schoolers who made a short play from interviews!

Stay tuned for the final four in the top ten list... and click here to support our tenth anniversary season!

Jeff Daniels or Jeff Bridges?

Here's a video from LET ME ASCERTAIN YOU: CANARD, CANARD, GOOSE?, a concert version of our very first show ever that we recreated at Joe's Pub last Friday! Watch as The Civilians try to retell the plot of Fly Away Home (whose actual plot - and cast - can be found here!)

First Show Ever for our Tenth Anniversary!

We can hardly believe it's been ten years since that photo was taken, but since the calendar seems to think it has been, we've arranged a special treat (which is a critic's pick in The Village Voice!) for our 10 year anniversary: a one-night-only revival of Canard, Canard, Goose? at Joe's Pub, the very same venue where it premiered!

Canard tells the story of the original Civilians troupe's attempts to suss out the truth about alleged goose abuse by Disney during the filming of Fly Away Home. Though the investigation itself went nowhere some ways, we emerged with this wonderful play and a brand new process of "investigative theater". As Steve says in our anthology: "Canard certainly has its rough edges, but it’s the way—like Anna Paquin—we learned to fly."

This was The Civilians' first piece of investigative theater, and the methods were a little different back then. The artists didn't transcribe their interviews, as they did for This Beautiful City and In the Footprint, so the characters in the play are based on how the interviewers remembered them, and the dialogue comes from notes that the artists made immediately after the interviews. As the intro in the show states, "Everything that you're about to see is fact. Everything is exactly as it occurred, as we managed to remember it."

Additionally, we definitely want to shout out to the original Canard cast members who will be performing this Friday: Aysan Celik and Jennifer Morris (both in the picture above). And we're of course also excited to have Matthew Dellapina and Greg McFadden (of In the Footprint), Brandon Miller, Caitlin Miller, and Maria Elena Ramirez joining them!

Friday, June 10, 9:30 PM
Let Me Ascertain You: Canard, Canard, Goose?
at Joe's Pub
Buy tickets here!

Young Civilians at Work, Part II!

Last week, we posted the presentation from our new Education Program. Here is the Question and Answer session from after the performance with our two amazing students and their teacher and our Associate Artist Emily Ackerman! The students field questions about what they learned, how they conducted their interviews, taking on the personas of the different interviewees, and what it was like to talk to friends, family, and even strangers! They've got some great things to say about the investigative method, so check out this behind-the-scenes peak at how to craft a performance from an investigation.