CATCO

Who We Are: As Central Ohio's leading professional theatre company, CATCO has been delighting, challenging, and transporting audiences for more than 35 years. Our productions for adults and young audiences include world premieres, contemporary comedies and dramas, musicals, and international productions. We aspire to create meaningful experiences by sharing stories that are contemporary and relevant for our times.

What We Do: CATCO connects with our audiences in variety of ways through mainstage productions, programming for youth, and educational initiatives in classrooms and across the community. In addition to our annual mainstage season, we facilitate acting classes, summer camps, and productions for young actors to learn and grow. Our team of professionally trained artist educators work in central Ohio classrooms to integrate academic subjects with the theatrical arts, while also teaching lessons in acting and playwriting.

Why We're Important: Through meaningful and relevant storytelling, we are essential for supporting the social and emotional wellness of Columbus residents. Additionally, we have a significant economic impact in Columbus because we regularly hire actors, designers, directors and technicians for every performance. We tell stories that represent, examine, and explore moments in everyday life. And, we make space for community conversations around important issues, such as racial equity. At the same time, we know it’s important to share stories that allow audiences to find joy, laughter and escape, whether virtually or live.

How We Impact The Community: Each year, CATCO serves more than 350 underserved students through our in-school residency program. Students learn to create, write, edit, rehearse, and produce their own play based on challenging core subjects chosen by the classroom teacher. Teachers tell us that the residencies reinforce important curricular lessons, help students learn to work cooperatively, and increase their overall engagement in learning.

Live theatre impacts adults by providing a lens to creatively solve complex challenges, connect with family and friends, and sometimes foster joy and escape. We hope our audiences find personal meaning and transformation through the stories we share.

How You Can Help: The best way to help CATCO is to make a charitable gift to support our artistic programs as well as our community-based and education programs. By making a gift to CATCO today, you are supporting our mission to produce transformational high-quality theatre, employ local artists, directors, designers and technicians, while engaging our community and facilitating educational programs for students of all ages across central Ohio.

You can also advocate for the arts at this critical time by supporting the Save Our Stages Act. This initiative is making its way through Congress at this moment. Learn more at https://www.saveourstages.com/take-action. This proposed legislation may help provide critical funding for our industry.

Connect with CATCO

55 East State Street Columbus, OH 43215 614-469-0939 www.catco.org

Executive Director: Christy Farnbauch

Email: cfarnbauch@catco.org Artistic Director: Leda Hoffmann Email: lhoffmann@catco.org