| Photo by GraceHues Photography on Unsplash FunTimes Magazine ‘Culture & Entertainment’ column, Week of September 11, 2023 |
Make a declaration right now: Make it a September to remember. Here are a few free or low-cost entertaining events and activities in the Philadelphia area. Please take precautions, when in groups, with the onset of COVID variants.
Stories come to life…
Saturday, September 16, 2023. Watch kids’ stories leap off of the written page. How? Imagine More: Story Adventures is behind a neat storytelling project called KIDS TELL TALES during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Smith Memorial Playground will be the perfect family place to explore sharing stories through movement drama, reading sessions, music, and more. Enjoy creative interactive activities including singing, dancing, and playing. Free but register in advance, 1:30 p.m. EST. Smith Memorial Playground & Playhouse, 3500 Reservoir Dr. FringeArts, 215-413-1318 or phillyfringe.org.
A literary world of difference…
Saturdays, September 16, 23 & 30, 2023. READ ME A WORLD brings the big world into small hands through interactive activities and artist-designed outdoor reading-nook installations for reading aloud with family. Call it a celebration of books. Local visual artists, performers, and literacy experts come together to stimulate the young imagination through illustrations, text, play, “curiosity, and the power of the expressive human voice.” Marisol Soledad is the creative producer and director of these three events. Free, but register in advance; donations accepted; 10 a.m. to noon EST. Appropriate for all ages. Liberty Lands Park, 913 N. 3rd St., 215-413-1318; 215-27-6562 or phillyfringe.org.
Food, film, face-painting, and fun…
Saturday, September 16, 2023. Esperanza Arts Center, Opera Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Ballet are teaming up for Arte en las Calles / Opera in the Park, a lively evening of Latin food, a local business fair, face painting, and opera on the big screen. See live performances by Magdaliz Roura & Trio Crisol and opera singers from Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts. Check out outdoor presentations by the Philadelphia Ballet and a screening of the opera Hansel Gretel (in both English and Spanish subtitles). 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST., Esperanza Arts Center, 4261 N. 5th St., 215-324-0746 (ext. 313) or brhoads@esperanza.us.
Unheard voices speak
Black Voices of the Revolution takes you on a journey through the war that gave a nation its bold independence. The one-hour guided tour of the museum’s core exhibit galleries dives into how the diverse groups of people living in North America experienced the American Revolution including Loyalists, Hessians, free and enslaved people of African descent, women at home and war, and other Revolutionaries. Explore the American Revolution from its birth in the 1760s. $31 for adults, $23 for kids (ages 6 to 17), $29 for seniors, students, and military), plus $10 for non-members, $10, for museum members. Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. EST. Arrive earlier to check out the museum’s galleries. Museum of the American Revolution, 101 S. Third St., 215-253-6731 or amrevmuseum.org.
A ‘Sunday gravy’ on Monday at Pasta with Sinatra
Monday, September 18, 2023. Pasta with Sinatra, an old-school supper show, celebrates the music from the Great American Songbook featuring Sinatra in his prime, and the Italian gravy is just like Frank’s mom Dolly made it back in Hoboken, New Jersey. If you are lucky, Sinatra’s coming-of-age reflection song, “September of My Years,” fittingly will be on the musical menu. Ol’ Blue Eyes sing on through the velvety pipes of local Sinatra sound-alike, Steve Ritrovato, who will help revive the classic sounds of Sinatra, who had many ties to Philadelphia, where he hit plenty of high notes: He married the love of his life, the glamorous Hollywood actor Ava Gardner, in a ceremony in Germantown in 1951; he came to Philly to perform at Palumbo’s Nightclub in South Philly regularly; he ate with the locals, including radio legend Jerry Blavat, at their homes and restaurants, and his closest friend was Sid Mark, local radio DJ, who had a national radio show on Friday nights and Sunday mornings based in Philly. Sinatra died in 1998 at age 82. His memory and voice live on. It’s an all-you-can-eat Italian ‘gravy’ dinner with a “Philly Finish” of the award-winning beer – a full tap list — from Wissahickon Brewing Company, of East Falls. Wissahickon Brewing Company, 3705 West Schoolhouse Ln., East Falls, $60; 5:30 p.m. 215-483-8833 or wissahickonbrew.com.
A call to artists
The City is conducting a public competition and is looking for artists and creatives to create an art installation featuring quotes, poems, and sayings in the form of 2D and 3D artworks spread throughout the Erie and Butler Triangles at the intersection of Broad Street at Germantown-Erie. Artists can display the quotes in mediums like mosaic, bas-relief, sculpture, and etchings. It’s all part of the City of Philadelphia’s Percent for Art program which gives us the nation’s largest public art collection. The deadline is September 21, 2023, at 5 p.m. EST. Nicetown/Tioga neighborhood in North Philadelphia. Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, 215-686-8446 or creativephl.org.
