Come in Stranger

The same day I went to  Snootytown I also went with my pal Ronda to a place that was once the largest building in New England. Our aim: to see a special performance by the Brio Integrated Theatre in which two people very dear to us are involved: I mean Brio's founder and Creative Director Sahar Ahmed and high school sophomore Rayvoughn Millings, her able assistant. As Sahar says here in this video, Brio teaches awareness about disabilities through integrative workshops, productions, educational programs and community outreach.Darkness had fallen by the time we arrived - rain too - and to warm ourselves en route, Ronda and I had stopped to get coffee, which we now clutched in our chilly fingers.“Well we DO have a rule about No Beverages,” the young woman in the ticket office told us when we first walked in. “But the tours are over for the day and the museum is closed so I guess we can call this a special occasion. Just if you spill any, come tell us right away okay? ”So in we went and it was all lovely. Lovely to watch the graceful movements. Lovely to sit in those high-backed pews all warm and safe. Lovely most of all to feel so welcomed in a place built before George Washington was even born.Rayvoughn only occasionally takes part in a Brio performance; usually he stage manages. But on this night he took to that famous pulpit and read the play’s final words, with the dancers beneath him in this old old building, once the church where Sam Adams and Ben Franklin and former slave and poet Phyllis Wheatley would come to worship.Here's Ray now in a tiny 3o-second clip.Oh and as for Ronda and me? We didn’t spill a drop.:-)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiGfCzHb_W0]