Our troupes put themselves in harm's way every night - standing in front of dangerously rigged lighting (fresnels! Go ahead an out me as a theater dork - I had a quarter of stage design in high school) and risking skin diseases and lice from the cheap makeup and wigs that their underfunded productions can afford.
Think about what happens if we don't support our troupes. Just think about it.
Suppose we stop supporting them and our all-volunteer theater community disappears. It's gone. Forever. Then what? Do you want to live in a world where theater companies have to resort to a draft? Suppose you got drafted into the theater community. What would that be like? Torn from your family for several hours a night, thrown up in front of an applauding audience in costume and makeup, reciting lines and making gestures to get across feeling and subtext? Is that what you want? But say that you get lucky and you aren't drafted. Do you want to go see a bunch of useless amateurs put on a shoddy production of "Our Town" or "A Midsummer Night's Dream"? Of course not. This is why we have to support our troupes!
We have the most technologically advanced, best trained troupes in the the world. I am proud of America's theater community and you should be, too. If you aren't supporting our troupes, I hope you rot in hell - a hell that has no theater or, worse, one that has awkward, poorly funded theater with bad actors and uncomfortable seats.
