The economic recession has hit Brooklyn theatre. Joe McCarthy of Cobble Hill is the Development Director of the Irondale Ensemble Project . He writes in to say that your contribution would go a long way toward helping the Irondale in tough times. The Independence Community Fund has announced a challenge grant: they will give one dollar for every four dollars raised by March 31, 2009.

Here is a YouTube video about the Irondale.

And here are the next two shows, from Joe:

The first upcoming show, opening January 29th, is a play called “In This Place,” which was written and directed by Ain Gordon, and stars Brooklyn’s own Michelle Hurst in an one-woman tour-de-force performance. We are co-producing it with 651 Arts. It tells the true story of Daphney and Samuel Oldham who, in 1829, were the first free African-American couple to build their own house in Lexington, Kentucky.

M.U.G.A.B.E.E. – In February for two nights, the 27th and 28th, the brothers Maurice and Carlton Turner, musicians/story-tellers/creators from Mississippi who work under the name M.U.G.A.B.E.E., will join us. Their web site says, “Their name, which is an acronym meaning Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction, describes a group divinely guided to be musicians, singers, rappers, songwriters, producers, actors, poets and teachers, they do it all, and they do it all well.”

See the Irondale website to make a contribution and learn more.