Steal This Idea: The Only Winter Theater Pitch You’ll Ever Need

Sometimes its not the information you consume, it’s how you use it:

Fertile Ground Festival Project Lear’s Follies did a clever thing recently. They snagged a link that was much shared around #2amt circles (the Marie Claire article about theatre being behind only sex and exercise for creating happiness)and turned it into an irrefutable, ingenious pitch to attend theatre, ANY theatre, as a cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Here’s their pitch, which arrived in my inbox as part of their email promotion for their festival project:

Scientific Proof- Theatre Makes You Happier!

Are the depths of the dark Pacific Northwest winter getting you down? Forget sunlamps and vitamins.
Try cheering yourself up by going to the theatre!

It is not just our opinion that theatre is a great way to make us feel better. It turns out there is science to back us up.

According to a new UK study involving Apple and the London School of Economics – reported by Hannah Thomas at Marie Claire – people are happiest when they are having sex, exercising, and visiting the theatre!

Why? Well it is not surprising when you consider that curiosity, social interaction, and creativity are known to increase happiness. And it turns out our brains have circuits called that are specifically designed to engage our empathy and make us feel better when we are around others who are engaged in creativity, curiosity and social interactions and feeling happy about it. These circuts are called Mirror Neurons and what we do in the theatre seems particularly designed to light them up.

So if you want to beat the Portland Winter Blues, “get thyself to a theatre!”

We invite you to get out, be social, enrich your lives and take part in the creativity that makes our region such a great place to live.

They continue on with a pitch to participate in the Festival, conveniently timed in the darkest days of Portland winter. But there’s absolutely no reason not to STEAL THIS IDEA and use it to tout your own ability to combat the winter doldrums in your area.

It’s not marketing, its SCIENCE.