Friends & Neighbors

One year ago this week, Someone To Tell It To concluded its most creative, innovative, and greatest public outreach and awareness project to date, when the original play it had co-produced with Open Stage, a nonprofit theater company, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - I’m Proud of You. 

The effort we made for the play has produced an even greater public outreach and awareness project, when next week, on Thursday, April 23, Someone To Tell It To will host a documentary film premiere, at WITF, Harrisburg’s PBS media center, at 6:00pm - Friends & Neighbors. This film features Someone To Tell It To’s name in every showing, spreading our name far and wide across the United States!

We’ll give you some historical context for how all of this happened for those who don’t know or who might need a refresher about it:

Before Someone To Tell It To was even conceived, our co-founders Michael Gingerich and Tom Kaden, read a book together - I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers - a memoir by Texas journalist Tim Madigan. It was about his experiences with Fred Rogers, the creator of the iconic children’s television show of over 30 years - Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Tom and Michael loved the book, which served as an inspiring catalyst in their own deep friendship and continues to guide them and the mission and values of Someone To Tell It To, 15 years later. 

They reached out to Tim Madigan after starting Someone To Tell It To, and for the past nearly decade-and-a-half, Tim had been a very close and dear friend of theirs.

When Tim collaborated with theater professor and director Harry Parker, of Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth, Texas, to adapt I’m Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers into the play - I’m Proud of You - in 2023, Tim invited Michael and Tom as his guests to a performance of the play, at the Circle Theater, in Fort Worth, where it premiered. Tom and Michael were moved by its tender message of kindness, empathy, and unconditional love, so embodied by Fred Rogers, and they immediately agreed that the play needed to come to Harrisburg, where Someone To Tell It To is headquartered.  

So, in March and April 2025, I’m Proud of You premiered, as a joint production by Open Stage and Someone To Tell It To. Excellent reviews. Standing ovations. Sold-out audiences, some guests from as far away as the U.S. west coast. Moments of joyful laughter and heart-wrenching tears. Audience participation talk-backs about our mission and work followed the performances. It was a glorious collaboration to be so intimately part of.

Someone To Tell It To was prominently featured at each performance. Co-Founder and Co-Chief Encouragement Officer Tom Kaden and Co-Chief Encouragement Officer Angie Dickinson introduced each performance before the “curtain rose” on the first act. They, along with Co-Founder and Chief Values Officer Michael Gingerich,  participated in each of the talkbacks after the performances. One talk-back special guest was I’m Proud of You’s co-author Tim Madigan, who was there for three performances, all the way from Texas. Michael was encouraged to audition for and was chosen for the role of Fred Rogers in the play, a privilege he never dreamed he would have. It was a truly magical run for each of us on our team.

Filmmaker Benjamin Wagner attended one of the performances, coming from his home in Wilmington, Delaware. Tim Madigan was featured in Benjamin's documentary from 2010 - Mr. Rogers & Me - about his own life-affirming, life-changing experiences with Fred Rogers when his mother rented a cottage on Nantucket Island next door to Fred and Joanne Rogers' summer home. That visit was a time for Benjamin and Tim to reconnect.

Benjamin saw a unique synergy between his work and Someone To Tell It To’s. He reached out to us after seeing the play and over several subsequent meetings and conversation, invited us to play a role in advocating for and supporting the film. That eventually led us to next week’s premiere event, at WITF.

Benjamin, the writer, producer, and director of this documentary - Friends & Neighbors - shares this in inviting the public to the premiere:

“Our film is a personal exploration of stress, trauma, and burnout, and what it takes to reconnect in a time when so many of us feel overwhelmed and alone. It's deeply inspired by my connection with Fred Rogers, and his belief that in the hardest moments, we can look for the helpers, and be neighbors we need in one another's lives. 

And you're invited! Join us for the Pennsylvania premiere on Thursday, April 23rd at WITF Studios in Harrisburg.

It's more than a premiere. It’s a chance to come together, to reflect, to have real conversation, and to remember that none of us are carrying this alone. And it's a chance to support our friends at Someone To Tell It To.

So get your tickets here. See you there.

Benjamin will be attending the event and will be part of a time of questions and answers following the showing, with Tom, Angie, and Michael.

There will be refreshments served, a red carpet to enter the premiere, and a beautiful message that Friends & Neighbors will share about how the loneliness and disconnection that pervades our culture can be and is being alleviated.

We hope you will be there with us!