When Mayor Daley and other city officials sent out an open invitation, in the new Park District Directory, to come out and play in the Chicago parks, they announced “a revolutionary change.”
“The Park District has changed every aspect of how it operates so that it can be more efficient and consumer focused,” explains Marj Halperin, director of marketing and program support. “We are also making a revolutionary change in our programming by working with partners from Chicago’s museums and various arts groups.”
These new Parks Partners programs are already in full swing with a series of daylong Mini-Festivals scheduled at various parks throughout the city featuring performances and activities from some of the best talent Chicago has to offer.
“Families can come out and do everything from learning to tap dance with a mother-daughter team from the Dance Center of Columbia College to making art out of what might otherwise be considered garbage,” says Halperin, “to learning about what it takes, besides the players, to put on a Bulls basketball game with workshops on the behind-the-scenes aspects by talent scouts and play-by-play announcers.”
Not all the activities will be held at each of the Mini-Festivals, which began last month, but visitors have already found some favorite ones that will be repeated at other events that continue through Aug. 27.
For instance, the Museum of Science and Industry brings along the materials for a chromatography project that uses coffee filters to separate black ink into the various colors that go into its composition. “We thought that children would do it just once and then move on,” says Halperin, “but they stay and experiment.”
If once-dreary parks are undergoing radical change, the appearance of Redmoon Theatre at several of the Mini-Festivals is in keeping with the spirit of revolution. With their giant-sized puppets, this creative company is dead set on overthrowing mundane expectations and wages a papier-mache war to break down barriers of communication.
During the Mini-Festivals, they arrive with some 40 puppets and recruit volunteers to join in the show. The story line itself, which sounds like a stream of consciousness tale told by a 3-year-old, is about some businessmen who get an electric jolt from a telephone they have invented and then are saved by a team of doctors. The telephone then reappears in a story about babies who encounter blackbirds who catch on fire. Along the way there are appearances by tall and short angels, devils riding on bicycles and giant sneakers that serve several purposes.
“It’s part parade, part show, part spectacle,” explains the company’s associate director Jim Lasko. “As opposed to conventional theater where the audience is asked to sympathize with an event that is taking place very far away, we like to call our event a pageant because it’s a kind of ritual in the way the audience takes part in it and, we hope, is transformed by it.”
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Parks Partners Mini-Festivals, sponsored by the Chicago Park District, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday: McKinley Park, 2210 W. Pershing Rd., 312-523-3811; Palmer Park, 111th and Indiana Avenue, 312-785-4277. To receive a Chicago Park District Directory and for a schedule of additional Parks Partners Mini-Festivals, call your neighborhood park or 312-347-PLAY.