HERE'S TO LIFE FOUNDATION

As we look back on our lives, both Gene and I are extremely touched by the love and support our projects have been awarded and grateful for the lives they have touched so deeply. We are especially thrilled with the letters from the hundreds of teens who shared how "Pepper Street" reached into their souls and changed their whole outlook on life.

We are grateful for being part of all that has been created in these past fifteen years. Gene Bua has helped thousands of acting students polish their craft and get in touch with their unique God-given talent place. The play "Pepper Street" and the phenomenal "dialogues" we experienced, took on a life of its own, becoming the catalyst to create Youth Suicide Awareness Week, Youth Suicide Awareness Month, honored by Mayor Bradley and the Los Angeles Board of Education with "Pepper Street Day in Los Angeles." And for all the benefits that we have been asked to perform, for causes dear to our hearts, we are grateful for being given the opportunity to share our journey.

In reviewing these events, we realize that everything we have done was in preparation to create the Here's To Life Foundation…and we feel we've only just begun.

Thank you from the very bottom of my heart, for giving me the opportunity to be involved in your newest project. Before I opened the script to SECOND WIND, I took a moment to remember the first project we were able to share. THE PERFECT PEOPLE OF PEPPER STREET introduced the possibility of hope to countless children who saw themselves as hopeless. Penny Lane's involvement over the years with Pepper Street made everyone involved, believers in the power of great theatre. Each time the Penny Lane residents participated, barriers were broken, therapy advanced and the shared experience of a dynamic presentation repeatedly changed lives. This response was consistent from every other childcare agency that took advantage of the production.

When the children of Penny Lane were invited to participate in your 6 week workshops with professional actors at Penny Lane, I knew it would be (and it definitely was ) a wonderful experience for the kids involved. To whatever degree that workshop advanced the project of Second Wind, I can only say, once again, God Bless You Gene and Toni! Second Wind is so urgently needed here and now. The issues addressed in Second Wind are the very issues we, as a community, must not only face, but address full force. In Los Angeles County, forty five percent of our students are dropping out of school before high school graduation. Violence has become an open option for acting out. Self mutilation is common and almost accepted as passion.

The energy must shift and Second Wind has that power. Thank you for your commitment to children at risk, your devotion to your craft and for being who you are openly and lovingly.

Via Allegre Educational & Counseling Services, Inc.

September 22, 1999

Dear Toni:

Thank you for sharing with me about the new foundation, Here's To Life! which will support the production of theatre to build self-esteem for "at risk" youth.

I want to commend you on the work that your productions give to children. I was so grateful to you and Gene for agreeing to help Tanya's Children when it was a very new foundation. The fundraiser was a great success a time of our greatest need. As you know, the children of our foundation are at risk as their parents have AIDS. They are often homeless and may be living with a parent who uses drugs and/or alcohol. It is so easy for our clients' children to turn to the streets themselves. Pepper Street had such a great impact on our children. Some of them had never even been to a play. All of your plays inspire self-esteem in the audience members. Your foundation would be a great way for a risk youth to get to see that there is hope and to help them have a second wind.

I also want to thank Gene Bua for the amazing experience that I received in being a participant in class for 3 years. Thanks to the philosophies and techniques which Gene teaches, my whole life changes. I became the Assistant Director of an AIDS Hospice and the founding member and President of a foundation that helps parents who have AIDS find homes for their children. You and Gene are an inspiration to us all. Your life is a great gift and I am so proud that you are going to create a foundation, which will support this work. Thank you for giving me so much self-esteem. I am sure that you will go on to do this for many, many people. Here's to life!

Warmest regards,

Tamara Effron
Founding Member, Tanya's Children

October 13, 1999

The HERE'S TO LIFE FOUNDATION is the next great step in a project that has been fermenting for years. As a cast member of PEPPER STREET and a student of Gene Bua, I learned the incredible value of human emotion and how much power and healing is available in its expression. I never thought of myself as a teacher until I worked in this context, then I knew that I too had to share with others what I learned and what I felt when I joyously sang "Here's To Life" in Pepper Street.

It was my privilege to participate with Gene & Toni in their first acting classes at Penny Lane, a residential treatment center for troubled teens, and I later continued their work on my own. As a struggling actor, these experiences were more fulfilling than any number of acting jobs because I knew I was making a difference in the lives of these young people and that I was needed. To this day I draw upon that experience in my teaching at Carthage College and can see the many challenges my students face in their lives from a rich perspective begun at Penny Lane.

Pepper Street affected lives all around me when I lived in Los Angeles. The musical became a focus for teen suicide prevention and for a greater community understanding of the anguish and doubt experienced by troubled youth.

I know that SECOND WIND will be an equally uplifting musical with a message as affecting as Pepper Street with the added wisdom of a few more years experience. Sometimes theatre is about entertainment and sometimes it is there to teach, sometimes it provides us with a context within which to explore our ideas and sometimes it reaches into the core of our being and shakes up our reality. Gene and Toni manage to do all of the above and leave their audiences feeling empowered and uplifted too. With the right backing, the Here's To Life Foundation can carry their work on-stage and off, to those who need it most and it will change lives.

Thank you for caring.

Eric Margerum, Chair
Department of Theatre and Communication
Carthage College

SUPPORTERS:

HERE'S TO LIFE' WISHES TO ESPECIALLY THANK THE WALLIS FOUNDATION for SUPPORTING US FOUR YEARS IN A ROW.

The Late Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles
LA Board Of Education
LA Board Of Supervisors
LA Unified School District
Mayor Stacey Murphy of Burbank
Councilman David Laurell
Former Mayor Michael Hastings of Burbank
LA County Commission on Child Services
LA Youth Suicide Prevention
Home Healthcare Reform & Awareness
United Everything Is Sacred Foundation
Tanya's Children
Equus Sanctuary
Making Marriage Work (U of J)
Angels Flight
Al-Anon
AMI
ASAP Program
Braille Institute Youth Center
Children Of The Night
Coming Home
Cry Help
Entertainment Industries Council
Family
Getting High On Yourself
Hadassah
Impact
Science Of Mind
The Sepulveda Universal Unitarian Church
University of Judaism
L.A. Network
Love Is Feeding Everyone
Last Chance for Animals
LA Boy Scouts
Lyons Club
Manner House for Eating Disorders
Mental Health Help Line
ORT
Hope House
Temple Judea
Church of Religious Science
St. Simons & St. Jude's Catholic Church
Professional Women's Club
San Fernando Girl Scouts
Socorro
South Bay Hospital
Stepping Stone
The Special Olympics
Vesper House
Vista Del Mar
Vital Options
World Wildlife Fund
Youth Help Team
The Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church
Metropolitan Community Church of the Valley
North Hollywood First Assembly of God
Sylmar High School
Kennedy High School
Birmingham High School
Muscular Dystrophy Association