Late Monday afternoon we fought our way, as always, out of New York City. It is a place that reluctantly lets one go. There were so many more things we wanted to do there that we might never have left; and it was not a pleasure navigating the van through the Holland Tunnel and up to Route 80 across Jersey and the Delaware Water Gap, along with the thousands of commuters who do the two-hour drive daily to Pennsylvania. We did arrive at Whispering Pines Campground, north of Bloomsburg, PA, after dark, and settled in for our first humble dinner of crackers and cheese and pickles and wine; and our first night in the van. The air was cold but hey: with the two of us plus Tosca and Jack, you can believe the van is warm!
All of this as preparation for the great pleasure, early Tuesday morning, of meeting with Jerry Stropnicky, the Ensemble Director at Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (http://www.bte.org/). Jerry is a founding member of this 30-year-old theater company in rural Pennsylvania, founded out of love and respect for an amazing teacher, Alvina Krause (see photo of the theater exterior at top; and then Judith standing to the right of the ghost light on the stage), whom the founding members of the ensemble followed to PA from Chicago. BTE is an amazing and interesting artistic model for OHA: right up to the fact that they just had to re-engineer themselves to survive financially, on the eve of their 30th anniversary. Yikes. But they care about community-based theater in the same way we do, which is to say: making new work that reflects and moves the community in which we live. And they do it, with passion, and have done so for 30 years. Mazel tov to them; and thanks to Jerry for taking time out of his busy, between production schedule to have breakfast with us (at Perkins Steak and Cake, which was once a favorite of my dad's) and give us a tour of his lovely Art Deco theater in this humble little 'burg.
Late Monday afternoon we fought our way, as always, out of New York City. It is a place that reluctantly lets one go. There were so many more things we wanted to do there that we might never have left; and it was not a pleasure navigating the van through the Holland Tunnel and up to Route 80 across Jersey and the Delaware Water Gap, along with the thousands of commuters who do the two-hour drive daily to Pennsylvania. We did arrive at Whispering Pines Campground, north of Bloomsburg, PA, after dark, and settled in for our first humble dinner of crackers and cheese and pickles and wine; and our first night in the van. The air was cold but hey: with the two of us plus Tosca and Jack, you can believe the van is warm!
All of this as preparation for the great pleasure, early Tuesday morning, of meeting with Jerry Stropnicky, the Ensemble Director at Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (http://www.bte.org/). Jerry is a founding member of this 30-year-old theater company in rural Pennsylvania, founded out of love and respect for an amazing teacher, Alvina Krause (see photo of the theater exterior at top; and then Judith standing to the right of the ghost light on the stage), whom the founding members of the ensemble followed to PA from Chicago. BTE is an amazing and interesting artistic model for OHA: right up to the fact that they just had to re-engineer themselves to survive financially, on the eve of their 30th anniversary. Yikes. But they care about community-based theater in the same way we do, which is to say: making new work that reflects and moves the community in which we live. And they do it, with passion, and have done so for 30 years. Mazel tov to them; and thanks to Jerry for taking time out of his busy, between production schedule to have breakfast with us (at Perkins Steak and Cake, which was once a favorite of my dad's) and give us a tour of his lovely Art Deco theater in this humble little 'burg.
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