From the Archives – “Yo Soy Quixote!”

In honor of us all, and the good work in which Touchstone has poured so much of its love and effort over the years, Jp has asked me to put together a series of video post cards from our past, to take this time to remember where we’ve been, to have some entertainment, and to remember what in part motivated us, what we’ve been curious about, and those flashes of beauty that have enchanted us along the way.

I’d like to start with our Street Theatre, as it is from this work that Touchstone grew.  It’s our deepest root, though there are other parallel ones.  This very brief scene comes from People’s Theatre Company in 1979 at Yosko Park on Bethlehem’s SouthSide, before we changed our name to Touchstone in 1981. This one-minute excerpt (taken by myself on equipment provided by Altronics Security Systems with the help of Larry Barkan—Larry died in 1994 at the age of 44.)  The piece was directed by and features the inimitable Ricardo Viera. My apologies, I can’t remember the names of the other performers, except for the early Touchstone stalwart, Belkys Lopez, the tall actress on the right in the red T-shirt.

It was Ricardo’s idea to do Quixote, and it is his bi-lingual adaptation for the children. John Pearson had passed away three years earlier, summer of 1976. And though Ricardo’s motivation for mounting Quixote are unknown to me, we were all still under John’s spell, and trying to understand how those who’d passed inspire us and keep a hold. We knew we had to carry on, and thus the strong message of how we must translate what inspired us about our lost ones, into ourselves and our actions. Yo soy Quixote!

– Bill George