Adding a little culture to our lives

Symphonies, concerts, ballets and plays have never been a part of our lives. It isn’t that we don’t like them, it’s a choice. Bill is a sports fan. He likes any and all sports so those are the events we chose to attend while in the states. Some would say we lacked culture. Bill’s mother was one. Before she passed she’d encourage him to take me to see plays at Grady Gammage Auditorium in Tempe. At her insistence, we saw both Cats and Les Miserables and enjoyed them both. After each show, several years apart mind you, we’d vow to attend at least one cultural event a year. Unfortunately, Bill took me to ASU football games instead of symphonies. When you live in a college town, football is often culture.

I started a family tradition of attending the Nutcracker Ballet when my son was small. Some years Bill would attend with the children and me, others he’d stay home and watch sports. As Callista grew older she’d manage to talk him into seeing children’s theatre productions with us from time to time. Her daddy has a hard time refusing her anything.

When we told people we were moving to Costa Rica one family member tried to use lack of culture here as a deterrent for us in moving. We were warned we wouldn’t be able to run to a movie, see a play or symphony when we had the urge. Hmmm… we saw movies in a theater maybe once a year in Arizona… if we were lucky. Who wants to waste part of the ridiculous admission price by going to the bathroom? The possibility of Costa Rica lacking culture was not a negative for us. It was a non-issue.

We’ve been here over eight months now and have made friends in various parts of the country. What we’ve learned from these friends is that Costa Rica definitely has culture! You just have to know the right people or where to look. Who would’ve believed that people of culture would befriend us and invite us into their world for a glimpse?

Yesterday afternoon we drove into Escazu, to see a friend in the play "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean". The play was put on by the Little Theatre Group of Costa Rica at the Blanche Brown Theatre. http://www.littletheatregroup.org/text/index.html What a treat! According to their website, the group was founded in 1949 and is the oldest continuously running English-language theatre in Central or South America.

The theatre is in a residential area and is attached to the home of Blanche Brown. You walk thru the gate to the backyard along side a garden area to a patio set up with chairs and a concession area. The wall of the entrance to the theatre is covered with framed playbills from numerous previous productions. Very impressive!

I’m obviously no expert but thought both the production and set were done very well. We were impressed enough to want to attend future productions. Others may say differently but we thought Sally as Sissy, the sassy blonde stole the show!

We’re all looking forward to our next cultural event, a performance by another dear friend in the University of Costa Rica’s adult choir at the Teatro Nacional in San Jose. You see, it isn’t that we lacked culture all this time it’s that we didn’t have friends involved who drew us in that direction. Ok, yes it does help that the UCR campus nearby doesn’t have an American style football team.

Nonetheless, in Costa Rica we’ve found that we’re accepted for the people we are, not for the groups we’ve associated with, professions we’ve had, clothes we wear or amount of money we have in the bank. Back in the states I would’ve said we weren’t the type of people who go to the symphony. Who knows, if we can find matinee performances in San Jose we just might become ‘those’ people. Anything is possible in Costa Rica!

Pura Vida!

Jen, Bill, Callista and Bear

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