1989-1994

In 1998, Kathryn Petersen and Mark Hallen offered a summer program at Wheaton College in IL. It was loosely based on the People’s Light and Theatre Company’s Summerstage program and was widely successful.  The next summer, they spent their July at Wheaton, but in August traveled to Indianapolis for another 4-week program in the inner city.  In 1990, the community in Indianapolis took over the program and this band of actors and educators now called MUSE came East. That first year in the summer of 1991 there were two programs: one in Norris Square (in North Philadelphia) and the other, a photography project called Tricksters, at Urban Promise in Camden, NJ.  Over the next four years, Mark and Kathryn and thee other MUSE members would work in the Norris Square community with performances such as “Amayauna!,” a piece based on Puerto Rican mythology, and “Echoes,” an intergenerational piece where campers interviewed their elders and created from those interviews a myth-based performance.  When MUSE ended in 1994, Mark and Kathryn’s passion and vision did not.  We are honored that they trusted this precious gift, this invitation to play, to create, to grow and collaborate to us.  The model and philosophy of this teaching and creating has not changed much over the last 17 years, but each experience is as new and energizing as the children in the room.