The experiences you give your children in theatre endure a lifetime. These talents are applied at the oddest times and under what might be considered unusual circumstances.
Team building, interactive play, socialization...all these qualities are part of arts education. I was chatting with the owner of the only day care for autistic kids in New Castle County. She said she applies similar skills and methods that she learned as a child actor to these challenged kids.
My artistic socialization began at the Wilmington Drama League in 1957. The League is nearing its 80th year, with almost seven decades at the Lea Boulevard address.
If memory serves, I think initial funding came from Chick Laird, a duPont scion who funded The Brecks Mill Cronies and The Brandywiners.
Now more than ever, WDL deserves our support.
When a theatrical institution needs to make money, 'ol Mr. Reliable is “Sound of Music.” It is the most popular film musical ever. Who doesn't know the image of a twirling Julie Andrews and the varnished cheeks of its children, its drapes recycled for fashion dilemmas, the dreaded Nazis and “Do Re Mi” – a song that suctions to your brain like remoras to a shark. Factor in a lot of kids which translates to multitudinous ticket-paying aunts and uncles.
The Sound of Music runs at WDL through Dec. 29. “The Little Prince” and “Suessical The Musical” follow in 2009. For more details, call 764-1172 or visit www.WDL.org
Cherry Bomb at Plays and Players in Philadelphia
Admit your guilty pleasure. Admit the fascination you have when you watch people do horrendous work and humiliate themselves. Does James Huang of “American Idol” ring a bell? The Gong Show? The notion that bad is good dates back to the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe by the mechanicals in “Midsummer Night's Dream.”
1812 Productions in Philadelphia is premiering an original show, “Cherry Bomb” at the intimate Plays and Players on Delancy Street near Rittenhouse Square. You have never witnessed a presentation where trained actors must be outrageously bad. It's preposterous. It's hysterical.
Writer-Director Jennifer Childs took a real life story and created the musical with composer James Sugg.
At the turn of the 20th century, Iowa's Cherry Sisters - Ella, Lizzie, Addie, Effie and Jessie - were an unbelievable singing act. The girls were infamous for being the worst act to ever grace a vaudeville stage. Making their living singing, dancing and acting, the sisters were renowned for being able to neither sing, nor dance nor act. The Cherry Sisters were the pits. Their show was so breathtakingly ill-conceived and ill-performed that people flocked to marvel at how bad they were, and to throw rotten vegetables at them.
In an 1898 review so scathing that the Cherrys sued (and lost), one journalist called them "three creatures surpassing the witches in Macbeth in general hideousness.”
It wasn't just their voices - the aptly-named Cherrys were also virginal sourpusses who performed to "uplift the stage" by means of righteous songs and bizarre skits including, of course, their nightly on stage crucifixion. (Vaudeville performances staged “tableaux” wherein actors enacted frozen poses in honor of, say, a painting or a moment in history). The re-creation of the sisters' crucifixion scene lifted the roof with tumultuous laughter.
Sugg gives his take on the fascination with incompetence: “for me, the point is that we are entertained by the oddest things, good and bad, horrific and corny, heartfelt and completely contrived.
This is a real audience interactive show....and a first for Aisle Say; the first time I was ever given the opportunity to throw something at someone on stage for good / bad or is it bad / good singing? Whatever. It was cathartic.
1812 Productions has won multiple Barrymore Awards in the Philly region. The show runs through Jan. 4. Tickets at 215.592.9560. www.1812Productions.org.
