Help Us Bring ELEMENTARY to Life

After successful performances at MoMA we now have the extraordinary opportunity to spend two weeks in residence at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), developing ELEMENTARY further with designer Deb O before performances at La MaMa and beyond.

And we need your help to make this next chapter possible!

As artists and mothers, we believe that very young children deserve extraordinary art.

Theater for little ones is sometimes treated as smaller or simpler than theater for adults. We believe exactly the opposite. Babies are astonishing audiences- curious, alert, unpredictable, deeply present, and constantly discovering the world around them. When we really pay attention to them, they remind us how to pay attention too.

ELEMENTARY creates a sensory-rich world of movement, sound, objects, color, and play where babies can explore and caregivers can exhale—a place for families to relax, connect, and experience something beautiful together.

The BAM residency gives us something artists rarely get enough of: time and space to experiment, deepen the work, and build its long life.

What your support makes possible

Half of the money we raise will support the artistic development of ELEMENTARY at BAM- strengthening its visual and sonic worlds and giving our artists the resources to experiment.

The other half will help pay the performers and technical artists bringing the work to La MaMa in October.

Your contribution goes directly toward artists, materials, and the time it takes to make something beautiful.

We believe babies deserve to encounter art before anyone has told them what art is supposed to be- and that their caregivers deserve spaces to experience wonder alongside them. If we're willing to follow our youngest audiences and notice what captivates, surprises, and moves them, they might lead all of us somewhere unexpected.

Will you help us make ELEMENTARY possible?

Every contribution matters, and sharing this campaign helps enormously too. Supporters who contribute $250 or more are invited to join us at at a special private showing at BAM.

And if you'd like to help by volunteering, donating services, or spreading the word, we'd love to hear from you through Paper Canoe's website or Tami's Instagram.

Thank you for believing in this work, these artists, and the idea that art really is for everyone—even the very newest among us.

Creativity is contagious. Let's start early!

Tami and Denisa

Elementary

Co-created by Denisa Musilova & Tami Stronach for Paper Canoe

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