Prim-Raf Theatre Murder Mystery Evening......

Maybe I should confess. When I was a small child, I discovered the arts in the following order:

• Ballet at age 3 (I must have seen it on TV, as that is the year we got our first one and I teased until they broke down and sent me for lessons!)
• Literature/Reading (shortly thereafter)
• Drawing as a serious pursuit at age 5 when my Kindergarten teacher tried to convince my parents that I should go to art school  (they declined, as I was already in ballet, and it was LONG before the over-scheduled child era)
• Theatre at age 9, when my grandmother took me to see West Side Story, the original original, on Broadway (yes, now you can calculate my age)
• Music at age 16, when my mother insisted I take piano lessons, which I loathed, as I had long since given up ballet, and she thought it would be useful to me as I was an avid theatre-goer by then, and acted in school plays.

So naturally, I became a journalist when I grew up, writing both arts and business, and spending a miserable year as editor of a large American agriculture magazine--odd enough since I was raised in New York City and on Long Island, where the only agriculture was to be seen in parks and consisted mainly of grass and ornamental trees.

From where to eternity???

I went to art school as an adult, and now do as much painting as writing. But old loves never really leave one, so I've gotten back into theatre, in a way. I accepted the task of doing promotion for Prim-Raf Theatre, Callington, Cornwall, UK. It's a job I did for a couple of years in the 1990s for a world-famous theatre in the US, Barter Theatre, which produced Gregory Peck, Larry Linville (Maj. Frank Burns on MASH), Frances Farmer (Titanic), Ernest Borgnine, Patricia Neal and more. At Barter, it was both a labour of love and of money in the bank; at  Prim-Raf, since it's a community theatre, is a labour of love.

Worthy love object

Prim-Raf is worth loving. Among the stars who have graced its stage are Edward Woodward and Michele Dotrice. It owns its building, highly unusual for a community theatre in any country. It has a store of costumes most professional theatres would drool over (and it hires them out to groups for productions and to individuals in need of fancy dress). And it gets high marks from the critics for its annual pantomime. The most recent one was an adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes--as it happens, a favourite fairy tale of mine when I was little, along with The Twelve Dancing Princesses with whom I naturally identified. Prim-Raf's version of Clothes saw a King who wanted to become a top model in the modern world, so all the songs were current. But that didn't mean the production lacked exploding cakes and all that sort of thing, and the ultimate baddies and the charming goodies, and of course a perfect ending.

Currently in rehearsal for presentation May 2 and 3, 2014 is Blood Money, an interactivie murder mystery evening written by Prim-Raf member Paula Beswetherick. It's Cornish all the way to the ground, with the action taking place in a pasty factory, and the audience being treated to pasties and a pint as they unravel who dunnit. At the end of the evening, one audience member, drawn from those who correctly provide the killer's identity, will be rewarded for his or her efforts with a prize.

No mystery about it

If you live in Cornwall or West Devon, pass it on. It will be a fun evening, as the interactive mystery evenings always are. It isn't Shakespeare (too high-falutin') nor Eugene O'Neill (too problematical)....but it is Paula Beswetherick, who has a deft feel for comedy and is a dab hand at food, having been a professional chef for no less that Madame Tussaud's some years ago. (So, of course, food WOULD have to be a part of her art.....)

Take a peek at the poster above. Click it and enlarge it and pick up your tickets in Callington, or on the door (if available). Frankly, for ten quid per person, it's a heck of a deal if I do say so myself.

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Below, bonus video from a couple of years back.....

Boids

My grandmother's birds, drawn by Laura yesterday with her brand new box of Crayolas! Sixty-four colors!

What's a boid?

See those blue things in the picture? Boids.

I never spoke Brooklynese, despite having been born in Brooklyn. I was raised in large part by my maternal grandmother who was French-Canadian by way of Montpelier, Vermont, and always claimed that she spoke the King's English. In fact, my memory suggests that her accent was quite bland, with most things pronounced exactly as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of American English would have specified. And thank goodness for that; regional accents mark one, especially in America which is much more stratified than the UK.

My grandmother also taught me many other things. She taught me how to sew. She taught me how to cook. She taught me that the ONLY appropriate colour for nail polish and lipstick for a respectable woman was red. Yes, I've violated that one! But I do attempt to keep the colours ladylike...which is not anti-feminist in light of the personal accountability and insistence on equality in meaningful things that she also taught me.

And she taught me how to draw birds.

I used to draw ALL the time. I used to make the neighbour boy, three years older than I, draw with me. If he didn't, I gave him a whack on the head with my pink plastic hair brush. I loved him, you see, and I was only three.

But I didn't know how to draw a bird in flight, so my grandmother showed me. I wonder if that's something everyone knew back then, how to represent birds in flight kiddie-style. I wonder if anyone knows it now. I wonder how many mothers, grandmothers, aunties and other significant adults sit down and draw with their toddlers. I should think it would be just as important for the toddlers' mental development as reading to them. It develops awareness of spatial relationships, observation skills, colour appreciation, curiosity about the world...all sorts of things.

But the emphasis has been so much on reading and maths the last couple of generations, I really wonder how many kids ever had the fun of seeing how Dad drew a cow and telling him that wasn't how cows looked; cows were bigger, or had horns, or their tails were longer and so on. My Uncle Eddie used to draw farm animals for me. His were really good. I particularly liked the pigs. All this was odd since the entire family had lived for generations in Brooklyn, where if there's one pig or ever has been since the invention of the motor car, I'd like to know about it.

Among the first cuts to school funding is always arts instruction. And yet, art offers so much in educational value, and even more in human values. Certainly, life is easier if one reads competently, and if one can do sums enough at least to balance the monthly budget. A smattering of science, geography...and so on. But why leave art out of it? Most students are not going to become physicists nor world explorers. Most will need to do something in their spare time; maybe art. They will need to decorate their homes: art. They will need to show their own kids how to have fun with finger paints and make a total mess of the house: art.

There is art in every aspect of human life and every aspect of human life needs art. If a person can do no more than paint my grandmother's birds on a cardboard box to decorate it as a gift, isn't that enough? To add some hand-painted primitive flowers to a crumbling kitchen wall that there's no money to repair? To draw something to entertain a sad child? Aren't those reasons enough to ensure that art is taught in schools? Then, when broke or the victim of poor planning or in need of a skill to improve a place or a life, the adult can come up with a creative way to cope because he or she is not afraid of art.