Shrove Monday was celebrated with large carnivals and costume parades where I grew up. Heuer the drama queen (or pirate, as the case may be) was in her element, particularly if allowed to hold a toy gun, strictly taboo in our household for the rest of the year. My sister, the Hungarian Bride, or whatever she was supposed to be, will hopefully get a good laugh out of this photograph….)

This theatrical picture led me to this week’s topic: performance.

A month from today will be World Theatre Day, which was created in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI). An international non-governmental organization, ITI was founded in 1948 by UNESCO and the international theatre community. Various national and international theatre events are organized to mark the occasion, but many events are local with the purpose of drawing attention to theatre and international harmony – or so they say; maybe in 2017 we should extend that notion to national harmony as well…

I came to  real theater late, really as a volunteer photographer for local non-profits; sort of felt like Miranda from The Tempest, Act V, scene 1  – “O wonder! Howdy goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in’t!  

This week, then, I’ll explore some theatre, performance and dance news, with a steady reminder that I am no expert whatsoever. Photographs will be random portraits from rehearsals of Jewish Theatre Collaborative (oh, do I miss thee!) Boom Arts, and the occasional Dance Performance.

The photograph below is from JTC’s production of A Pigeon and a Boy some years back – no effort was spared to get a decent pigeon shot.…we were sitting in the park blocks waiting for them to take the bait.

And to cheer us all up, the first theatre event, attached below, is the true community kind – a high school cheer leading team in 2016. Instead of coming in with glittery costumes, pompoms and rah-rah-rah music, these girls chose to dance to a poem – a very old form of theatre. The poem What room does fear have is by Jon Jorgensen – when I read it in its entire length it was a dedicated religious missive; the way the girls perform it,in contrast, is inclusive for all, religious or not. Even Betsy deVos would approve of this public school of Mahomet in Illinois – which will probably disappear under her reign….