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:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)