History
Initially, Spiral Q was a shadow puppet theater that staged performances throughout the community. Local activist groups came to Hart to make puppets, props and effigies for demonstrations and educational campaigns. Spiral Q's identity springs from this early work in Philadelphia's HIV/AIDS activist and queer communities, particularly with AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP). In 1997 and 1998 Hart organized the week-long Full-On Puppet Festival in Philadelphia. showcasing puppeteers from around the country. Spiral Q also organized an annual Day of the Dead parade on South Street up through 1999. Both the festival and the parade were set aside so that the organization could focus on community activism.
Workshops with a local children's garden led to another model of community performance with children and adults carrying giant puppets that they created in parades and pageants. In 2000 Spiral Q started an annual city-wide parade and pageant called Peoplehood. Each October the parade starts at the Paul Robeson House and ends in Clark Park. In addition to neighborhood parades and pageants such as Peoplehood, Philadelphians can get involved with Spiral Q through its Justice Works Program and Education Initiatives.
Since 2000, the theater has been located in the East Mantua section of West Philadelphia. Hart left the company he founded in 2003 to pursue other interests.
Read more about this topic: Spiral Q Puppet Theater
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)