Laurie Swigart
FUNDRAISER - CHARACTER BREAKFAST
If you do a musical that is popular with children, a character breakfast is a sure-seller---everyone, and I mean everyone, will bring their little kids to breakfast, and then to the show--this is something Disney is doing at the their resorts in Orlando, and it is very successful---I had my drama parents donate all the breakfast food, then took another $175 from our account to buy nonfood accessories at Sam's----the morning of the breakfast, in the cafeteria, we set up cooking stations with my drama parents and techies---scrambled eggs, pancakes, hash browns, toast---then had a buffet table of everything else---my leading roles were there in costume, and interacted with the kids---each table had a magic lamp and color
pages with crayons---we had the soundtrack playing in the background---and a picture corner with a few wooden camels and Aladdin; with a Polaroid camera, we took pictures of the kids with Aladdin or Jasmine and sold those for $3.00 a piece--We sold this event as a "breakfast theater"---one price for the breakfast and the show---had 400 people and cleared $2,000---the unexpected benefit of this was that people with kids waited until this show to bring them--so I did not have kids and babies crying and making noise during the Fri. and Sat. night performances--