May the tidings of the Yule be upon ye!  To paraphrase T.S. Eliot – Between the idea and the Reality…falls the Cheddar…or is it the checkbook balance?  Either way, at holiday-time our thoughts turn to you, our Art Angels.  Alas, our resident scrivener, Lee, has absconded to the frozen tundra of Outer Hoonah Alaska to hunt unsuspecting endangered snow critters from the porthole of a prop plane in a most unsportsmanlike manner with a certain roguish former governor.  You may question the necessity of mentioning such a junket.  The point being, it falls to a ghostwriter to pen this epistle.  Hark!  But you Angels know from ghosts…

Forty years ago next month five artists brought forth an idea that was to become MABOU MINES. The most sustaining force over these 40 years has been you, the Art Angels. The first Seraph was Alanna Heiss who danced on the head of a pin and gave Ruth dictation.  The next Angel, Paula Cooper, agreed to host these complete unknowns at her Soho gallery.  They had only put together half of the RED HORSE ANIMATION but she showed it anyway.  At that performance the legendary Art Angel Ellen Stewart, known as La MaMa, materialized and made them a resident company and offered each 50 bucks a week.  A year later, after showing RED HORSE  at the Guggenheim, Clive Barnes reviewed the performance and said: They should go back to the mines they crawled out of… BAH HUMBUG!  No one cleaved to Clive’s jive and they weathered the storm. Two years later they landed at Theater for the New City with MABOU MINES PERFORMS SAMUEL BECKETT, and this time the Arch Art Angel Joe Papp appeared.  He told them to come on over to his house and there they stayed for 14 years.  When they collected all the spare change between the cushions of his couch, they went out on their own and they've been out there ever since.  Way out.  We’re talking Europe, Asia, North + South America, Australia – everywhere but Africa and Antarctica. Thanks to your support MABOU MINES has toured to these many lands and grown into an experimental theater company known around the world.  What’s it all about, you may ask? Who the hell knows.  But there’s no rest for the wicked, so here’s a look at what’s coming up …