Venus & The Vixens by EnJoy Productions

A 35 year veteran of Puget Sound circus, theater, event and multi-disciplinary arts community, Vashon's Martha Enson has conceived and created a ground-breaking world-premier rock musical!

Right when our world needs it the most, here comes Venus & The Vixens: Games of Love, an epic love story with Broadway-quality tunes, interactive games and some of the finest musicians, designers, performers and production wizards anywhere.

Venus has it world premiere run May 30 - June 16, 2024 at Emerald City Trapeze Arts in SODO. The show is presented by EnJoy Productions, the creative agency run by Martha and Kevin Joyce. EnJoy is hiring 35+ artists, craftspeople and technicians, paying them a living wage, and doubling down on its inspiration to make a positive contribution to the revitalization of Seattle, and the the reinvigoration of the Performing Arts. At a time with audiences for live theater are dwindling, Martha and EnJoy is going out on a limb to make a gift of joy, love, humor and delight to our community. And in order to pull off this audacious feat, we NEED YOUR HELP!!

Venus is the most ambitious and expensive project we have ever attempted, and the budget reflects our intention to make is a complete and fabulous a production as possible. Through the fiscal sponsorship of Shunpike, who saw in Venus an authentic work of creative generosity, we have raised over $100K from individual donations! We have raised another $60K in a Kickstarter. But we still have a $25,000 funding gap that we need to fill! Ticket sales will only cover a small percentage of this production's budget (a venue to rent, 13 performers and stage managers to pay for rehearsal and performance, an amazing set, etc etc etc!), so we need to ask for our community's support. Business sponsorships are very rare these days, so in order to make this community dream come true, we all need to band together!

This is a labor-of-love project for EnJoy Productions, for which Enson is the Artistic Director. In EnJoy, she is joined by her 40 year partner in life and work Kevin Joyce, who seres as Executive Producer of Venus. The third member of the team is Mick Holsbeke, a world-renown clown and arts manager, who is EnJoy's Associate Producer. Enson and Joyce moved to Vashon 35 years ago as co-founders of UMO Ensemble. They both went on to serve as lead performers, Directors and off-site Producers for Teatro Zinzanni in Seattle and San Francisco. 

After creating EnJoy Productions in 2003, they have gone on to produce entertainment, hosting, event design and interactive experiences for over 1000 events. This work had included raising over $100Million for regional and national charities, creating original theater for special events with the region's largest corporations, and providing improvisation and theater-based trainings to organizations for team cohesion and problem-solving.

With Venus, Enson and EnJoy return to their non-profit theatrical roots. This project is an attempt to bring a novel approach to live entertainment - drawing the audience into games of chance and skill and cunning and silliness, and then giving them the opportunity (no obligation!) to actively participate in the show's action and plot. Enson's inspiration was to create a joyous antidote to isolation, and get audiences to come out and play!

Venus is a collaboration between Enson (Conceiver, Writer, Director and Co-Lyricist), Sari Breznau (Composer, Musical Director and Co-Lyricist, and Caela Bailey, Co-Lyricist, Co-Composer and play the role of Venus, Goddess of Love). The band features a stellar group of all-female musicians, with Sari leading Melissa Montalto, Marina Christopher, Teryn Kilgore, Leah Thomas and Baylee Harper. And leading the interactive components are our 5 remarkable and charismatic Game Runners: Kaleb Kerr as Dyonisus, Alanna Francis as Persephone, Shay Dixon as Athena, Patricia Charms as Artemis and Richard Peacock as Adonis. 

Venus represents EnJoy's strong commitment both to the revitalization of Seattle, and to paying artists and technicians a living wage. The show's ability to fully support all the artists, designers and technical staff is made possible by our community's support! It is also this collective effort, of which YOU can be a part, that will contribute something beautiful, playful and hopeful to our broader region. This is the performing arts doing its job: to provide people with the experience of wonder, beauty and awe!

Finally, EnJoy is providing free tickets to folks who might otherwise not be able to afford the ticket price. This is certainly an ask EnJoy, through the support of its fiscal sponsor, Shunpike, can make of our community: Help us bring joy, interactivity, play and wondrous original work to audiences who might be NEW to the experience of this kind of magic!

Your support is deeply appreciated! Now come see the show!

www.venusandthevixens.com