performance

the best part of the Children's Museum was that they had a functional stage (full proscenium arch with some rigging and working curtains, a costume 'shop' with closets full of clothes, a backstage 'dressing room' with lighted mirrors, and a functioning light/sound booth that would produce pre-recorded sound effects, music, and dim various lighting circuits). All the kids there were beside themselves with imagination, and all the parents sat around in a kind of unexpected amazement at the entertainment they dreamed up. It was almost like a sociological case study to watch them form groups and work out cooperative strategies to organize and present these various little dances and skits. Often they would open the curtains for the sole purpose of presenting themselves assembled, all in newly changed costumes, into a crowded tableau. it was living proof of a drama teacher's assertions that theater is a kind of inate humanist necessity, if i can get away with saying something like that.

the light/sound board.