Theatre”'s Community Soul

BY SANDY SPIELER*

Perhaps it seems like a contradiction to be a professional theatre with a community soul.  Our internal dilemmas—about speaking our artistic voices while also giving community participants a voice; about providing our company with livable wages while keeping the theatre work inexpensive and affordable—are not separate from the external dilemmas of the larger world.  Indeed, such a path contains all the recurring dilemmas of seeking to live a soulful life in the midst of our nation, where everything is valued primarily as a commodity of the marketplace.  Walking this dilemma is part of being “in the heart of the beast.”

In 1979, company member and poet Stephen Linsner suggested the name “In the Heart of the Beast” as a metaphor for our theatre.  He wrote,

“To be puppeteers in the Heart of the Beast

”¦is to find ourselves in the great world Beast made of families, races, ages, classes, corporations, and nations, people, (and creatures!) all different, working out a way to live together.

”¦is to work puppets. To hold life in our hands, to sense how we are all like puppets—worked by instincts, voices, and forces above and below us.

”¦is to carry and protect something very old like a heart within us, a secret, a promise.… Read the rest “Theatre”'s Community Soul”

Clyde Turner Basketball Camp At East Phillips Park Cultural & Community Center-17th Ave. & Phillips Community Center-13th Ave.

Coach Karim Jackson says, “Stretch you arms way out!” “Keep them up.” “Now you have it! “That”'s Good!”

Is MORE than Basketball!

BY CAROL PASS

The highlight of summer for hundreds of Phillips kids is the Clyde Turner Youth Basketball Camp. Approximately eighty boys and girls from nine to seventeen years of age filled the East Phillips Park Gym the week of August 14th and the Phillips Community Center the week earlier. They came for basketball and got a whole lot more. Clyde Turner”'s Camp is an Educational Basketball Academy where basketball is utilized as a conduit to learning skills and skill application for success on and off the court. It provides sport opportunities for group social learning, leadership, development of good decision-making skills and a sense of accountability. The Camp is made possible by a partnership with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, East Phillips Improvement Coalition (EPIC), Minneapolis Parks & Rec. and Past Athletes Concerned About Education (PACE).

I saw this unique concept unfold on Thursday as the gym started to fill at 11:00 AM. Clyde called the group to order at a little after 11:30 and introduced Dequon Oliver.  Dequon was one of the youth in Clyde”'s Basketball Camp twenty plus years ago.… Read the rest “Clyde Turner Basketball Camp At East Phillips Park Cultural & Community Center-17th Ave. & Phillips Community Center-13th Ave.”