Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007
by Patricia M. Murret | Staff Writer
Holiday magic will take center stage on Saturday in a winter theatrical event that will welcome a fictional family to Washington Grove.
The drama, ‘‘Town for All Seasons,” was conceived by Carolyn Rapkievian, who has lived in the Grove for nine years. Heather Hoerle, another Grove resident, took Rapkievian’s idea and scripted a 75-minute show featuring music and dance that follows a new family’s first year in the tiny town.
‘‘It’s really like a friendship quilt because we came up with the design and we gave out pieces and then we had one rehearsal to sew it all together into one piece,” Rapkievian said. ‘‘It’s made by friends for friends.”
For years, Washington Grove, a town with several hundred families, has hosted a Christmas choral concert, music concert, variety show or play including sing-a-longs and performances of ‘‘The Nutcracker.”
But this year’s show makes the experience personal.
The new family gets a glimpse of the town’s seasonal events — from a ballroom-dancing pair representing the New Year to an Irish step-dance number hinting at spring and an all-male number choreographed to Tchaikovsky’s ‘‘Maple Lake” by David Rapkievian signifying summer.
Children are featured too. A kids’ music ensemble performing a Beatles tune represents the Grove’s ‘‘Music Weekend” that takes place every summer. A dance performed by children’s dance ensemble Dance Works represents Halloween and the trees of Washington Grove coming alive.
The family sees its future while travelling along the town’s historic railroad.
‘‘The train is such a presence in Washington Grove – the town sits along the railroad tracks,” Carolyn Rapkievian said.
She loosely based her idea on ‘‘The Polar Express‘‘ by Chris Van Allsburg in which a boy’s magical train ride on Christmas Eve takes him to the North Pole for a special gift from Santa. Instead her co-collaborators developed the drama to center around the new family’s nervousness about ‘‘what to expect” and discovering the magic of a year in the town.
An Armenian dance troupe, a virtuoso violinist, a Scottish fiddler, a bell choir, a poet and a beekeeper all take turns displaying talent in the performance, Rapkievian said. All of the contributors have roots in Washington Grove.
‘‘It was my intention that new friendships would be made, that old friendships would be renewed, and that the process we were creating together was as important as the final show,” she said.
Get in the spirit
‘‘Town for All Seasons,” will be performed at 7 p.m. Saturday at MacCathran Hall, 300 Grove Ave., Washington Grove. Free. For more information, call 301-519-2021.
