The ghosts of three very distinct ladies who lived throughout the primary 20 years of the Moravian settlement that have become Bethlehem inform their tales in the very constructing in which they would have lived.
“The Hidden Seed: Bethlehem’s Forgotten Utopia,” an unique manufacturing written by using Touchstone Theatre’s founder Bill George and Lehigh University professor Seth Moglen, explores the hidden records of Bethlehem’s beginning and the dream of a Moravian utopia Oct. 5-10. It and may be held within the ancient Single Sisters House.
Moglen says the first era in Bethlehem lived below a exquisite communal monetary order that superior multiculturalism and women’s rights.
“They abolished poverty and shared wealth similarly,” Moglen says. “They knowledgeable all people without regard to intercourse or race, and consciously emancipated girls so they could tackle leadership roles. There was truely unprecedented integration. It changed into an wonderful birthright.”
In the play, the ghosts of 3 women return 3 centuries later with a message for the existing.
The ladies are an enslaved West African woman, a Lenape girl whose parents died of smallpox and who became followed by the Moravians, and a woman who came to America from Germany with her family.
Moglen says the characters are all based on historic figures, and within the play they're talking definitely about their relationships with one another for the primary time.
The girls are performed by using Candece Tarpley, Dierdre Van Walters and Laurie McCants. A fourth individual on stage is Michael Duck, who performs music during the overall performance.
Duck is the composer for the display and has written music stimulated by means of the Moravian musical traditions of the 18th century, with modern touches.
The play is also directed with the aid of McCants.
Moglen notes that the Moravian’s Utopian society, even though exceptionally prosperous and technologically advanced, did not closing.
He says the play additionally offers with “painful paradoxes,” which includes the truth that maximum of the Africans who lived within the network had been enslaved and held as chattel by way of the church, and that the metropolis became built on land stolen from Native Americans — although now not at once by way of the Moravians.
He says after the demise of Bethlehem’s founder, Count Zinzendorf in 1760, officials determined to abolish the communal economic system, and the community’s achievements evaporated.
The play’s very last overall performance Oct. 10 may be recorded and offered at PBS39, SteelStacks, 839 Sesame St., Bethlehem. There can be a panel dialogue following the overall performance.
— Kathy Lauer-Williams
Veterans communicate out at ‘Forward March’
“Forward March: The Future of our Warriors,” is an evening of storytelling with the aid of 10 veterans Oct. 9-10, designed to offer an knowledge of the veteran revel in, from boot camp to deployment to homecoming to reintegration. The manufacturing was created specially for Festival UnBound by way of Jenny Pacanowski of Bethlehem, a veteran of the U.S. Army.
Pacanowski turned into a combat medic who served 2003-2007 and did a tour of Iraq in 2004. She says veterans are usually no longer encouraged to talk approximately their reports, in contrast to warrior cultures of the beyond — Greeks, Romans, Native Americans — which have welcomed their navy home in rituals of storytelling.
In 2011, Pacanowski commenced carrying out writing and performance workshops for veterans as a way to inspire them to proportion and placed them on a path to recovery. The strategies, she says, are demonstrated to lessen tension and relieve melancholy. In 2016 she commenced the Women Veterans Empowered Group to focus on supporting ladies. The organization has given some of performances in the Lehigh Valley.
“Forward March” functions veterans telling their own memories, informed by means of Pacanowski’s workshops, which encompass schooling in performance.
The program emphasizes reintegration and the transition domestic from military provider.
“To understand reintegration, the target audience and network need to listen the start of the journey, the education, the struggle, deployment and navy sexual trauma,” she says.
There may be an opportunity for target market members to offer their very own reflections and ask questions. For folks that opt to have their conversations in non-public, the show could be accompanied through an “Ask the Vet” reception, in which useful resource materials will be to be had.
“This area is provided to have the hard conversations approximately what's the price of army carrier to family and network; further to celebrate connect the civilian and military cultures,” Pacanowski says..
‘Forward March: The Future of our Warriors,’ 7 p.M. Oct. 9, eight p.M. Oct. 10, Touchstone Theatre, 321 E. Fourth St., Bethlehem. Admission is pay-what-you-will, with cautioned donations of $15, $10, students, seniors and veterans.
— Kathy Lauer-Williams
Polish theater and Moravian College present ‘Beyond Utopia’
As a part of Moravian College’s year-lengthy investigation of “Scarcity: Poverty and Inequality,” touring visitor artists from Polish Theatre business enterprise Teatr Brama will gift an original performance “Beyond Utopia,” offering Moravian students and exploring themes of poverty and inequality in pursuit of a new imaginative and prescient for Bethlehem.
In “Beyond Utopia” Oct. 10 and eleven, Teatr Brama leads Moravian College undergraduate students and graduate college students from the new Moravian/Touchstone MFA program in Performance Creation in an unique work evolved for the competition.
Teatr Brama started out as a drama circle, and became founded by means of Daniel Jacewicz in 1996 in Goleniów, Poland. The company created a colourful troupe of young performers reworking the Goleniow theater scene, and now spends maximum of the 12 months appearing in the course of Poland and the arena.
The purpose of Teatr Brama is to create a relationship among the target market and theater through utilising performance to create a participatory meeting, not a spectator activity.
‘Beyond Utopia,’ 6 p.M. Oct. 10-eleven, Bethlehem Area Public Library, 11 W. Church St., Bethlehem. Admission is pay-what-you-will, with recommended donations of $10, $five, college students, seniors and veterans.
— Kathy Lauer-Williams
Info and tickets for all Festival Unbound suggests: 610-867-1689, Touchstone.Org or festivalunbound.Com