2008 Save La Mama Campaign

In 2007, La Mama was notified that the building we’d been renting for the past 42 years was being put on sale, giving our beloved theatre a small amount of time to raise a phenomenal amount of money. There was a scramble to begin fundraising immediately but Liz Jones was one of the few with high hopes for obtaining the money.

“When I first saw the amount of the money, I had to think that it was possible, otherwise my nerve would have failed. I was terribly nervous, and certainly some of my committee of management were very apprehensive… but I just thought that we have to make the amount, we have to get it.”

Artistic Director, La Mama, Liz Jones

The relationship between La Mama and the Del Monaco family had always been a friendly one, and Rose Del Monaco gave La Mama her last gift by allowing us first preference to buy.

“For 42 years we had rented, we had a very good, harmonious arrangement with the landlord, Michael Del Monaco” Says Jones “You might notice that the little road right next to La Mama is called Del Monaco lane, they owned the shop on the corner. One day Betty Burstall saw Michael Del Monaco hammering in a sign saying ‘To Let, $14 a week, for this property.’ She was looking for a little theatre, so she asked if she could have a look. He showed her in, and remarkably she said I’ll take it.”

Number 205-207 Faraday was built in 1883 and first owned by a Carlton printer. Since then it has been many things including a workshop, an electrical engineering business and a factory that produced both boots and silk underwear.

“When Michael died he said to his wife Rose, make sure you look after La Mama, and the people there. Rose certainly did, the rent was never too much for us to pay, and then when Rose died, she obviously had put something in her will to her sons that she wanted to give us an opportunity to buy the property. So we were given first option and we made an offer, and it was accepted. So in lots of ways, the very good relationship we’d had with the landlord over that 42 years was wonderful because it ended up with us getting first option on the building”

Artistic Director, La Mama, Liz Jones

The Save La Mama Campaign began shortly after the building had been put up for sale, so that we could raise the amount of $1,700,000.

Liz commented “I’d always wanted to buy La Mama, and I’d attempted to buy it on several occasions with government support, but, the government support was never big enough. We had been saving a bit of money so that when they offered us to the opportunity to buy La Mama, we had a trust set up already, and had a bit of money in it. So we quickly (on television and newspapers) launched a campaign asking people to donate, and people even came off the street donating, $50 or $20. Then we organized a little ringing up campaign and the people in the office rang up and asked everyone they knew if they could give us a thousand dollars. About 200 people gave it to us, and that meant that we could put in the deposit, within 4 days we had the deposit $17,000. And then all we had to do was to raise the rest of the money!”

Some of the major funders in their times of need were the philanthropists, Liz explained that the Pratt foundation was the first to donate money; in fact they donated a fantastic $350,000. This then triggered the other foundations and soon the money was flooding in. Although this had raised the figure, all of the little contributions were making everything count.

“I remember getting asked to do a shift and donating our pay to the campaign the amount was $50 or something at the time, and I remember feeling very excited by the possibility, to contribute to something I felt so passionate about. I think at that point and during those few months, I donated all my front of house shifts, which ended up being a few hundred dollars that in the scheme of things was a small amount, but lots of people having the chance to give small amounts, that was the strength of the campaign. There was so many people donating little bits of money and having the power of doing something that mattered felt really good, so a bunch of us front of house staff got the buckets for the save La Mama campaign and the Arts Centre allowed us, I think other venues did too, but I can remember going to the Arts Centre at the end of the shows putting the buckets out and just feeling overjoyed by the amount of people that came out and gave money, for some people it was just a few coins other people were putting 50 dollar notes in ……I just felt so encouraged and so part of the community.”

La Mama Company Manager/Creative Producer Caitlin Dullard

A number of philanthropists, private donors and state and federal government made more significant contributions and at the eleventh hour, the campaign raised its target and La Mama was able to buy the building outright. The community had spoken. La Mama was here to stay.