Saturday’s 7pm Cleoma ~ A First!  is now wait-listed.  Seats are still available for the today’s premiere (7p, Oct. 4)  and tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 5.

The Magnolia Sisters is a SEPARATE SHOW on Saturday night.  It starts around 8pm & is outside/inside.  Ticket is $10.  Location:  The Annex of Imperial Calcasieu Museum (ICM), 204 W. Sallier St., LC.    The Sisters will set up on the Annex’s porch.  See ANY Cleoma & return Sat. for the Magnolia Sisters. You still get to use that 50% discount.  ICM staff will have refreshments for sale.

Saturday’s “Cleoma ~ A First” will sell out in 12 more tickets. We’ll wait-list you.  But!  Here’s an idea. Go to ANY “Cleoma” performance –October 4 or 5.  Return Saturday night, 8p for the great Magnolia Sisters music.  With proof that we’ll give you, you get the 50% discount on that separate Mag. Sisters’ ticket. Just a thought.  Buy tickets on this website.  Each night is special.

Itinerant Theatre is excited to host The Magnolia Sisters!  This Grammy-nominated SWLA musical troupe starts its night’s playing right after the final “Cleoma ~ A First” performance concludes.  The Saturday evening kicks off at 7pm.  That means the Sisters will begin at approximately 8pm.  All occurs at The Annex, Imperial Calcasieu Museum, 204 W. Sallier St., Lake Charles, 70601.  The ICM is our terrific co-host for this weekend of live theatre and live music, and they will have refreshment for sale.

Since the troupe is setting up on the Annex’s porch, the event will be indoors and outdoors.  Your choice.  Tickets will not sell out for The Magnolia Sisters.  (“Cleoma ~ A First”… will sell out, so, get those tickets now.)

This talented all-female troupe specializes in musical genres and sub-genres particular to SWLA.  They will play Cajun, country, Creole, front porch ballads; there are blues and jazz influences throughout.   They play acoustic instruments; they may switch instruments mid-song; they sing some songs a capella, and what a treat that is.  Their muse is Cleoma Breaux Falcon herself who has informed quite a bit of the Sisters’ repetoire.  They are, in a word, balladeers and students of their music.

Special guest musician for the evening is Christine Balfa, of the famed  musical Balfa family.

Join us.  If you see ANY “Cleoma” performance, your separate $10 ticket to the Magnolia Sisters is discounted 50%, paid the night of the performance.

For more info on the Sisters visit www.magnoliasisters.com.  For info on the varied weekend of performances and to buy tickets, visit IT’s site: www.itineranttheatre.com or call 337.436.6275.

We do not want you to forget about the wonderful things happening Thursday and Saturday nights, but for this blog, as with last week’s blog, we’re going to stay with Friday night for now.  We think we’ll have several books of interest to buy, other historians who have written or edited about Cleoma Breaux Falcon.  Also, post-performance Ann Savoy is going to participate in a Q&A on the making of her all-new, all-Cleoma music CD.

But, for now we’re  staying with “Things From Our Past”, the pre-theatrical event to Friday evening’s “Cleoma”.

Please, meet the playwright/director of  “The Things From Our Past”,  Angela Belle Richard Wubben:

“I was born to Cajun parents in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the middle child of four. My adventurous parents created the unique opportunity for us to grow up in California, Colorado, and Louisiana.  As an adult I have continued that tradition and resided in Florida, Los Angels, New York City and Lake Charles. In 1993 I returned to McNeese

and graduated with honors as an Education Major. Then, like many graduates, I put my career on hold, married Gerry Wubben and enjoyed raising my two children, Liam and Avery.  I have always been drawn to the theatre and once again find myself at McNeese finishing my second degree in Theatre.

For the past 13 years Mary Lee Coles and I have directed an after school youth drama program for the Jeff Davis Arts Council. Our program began with about 14 students in grades 3^rd -5^th. This season we proudly enrolled 46 students from grades 3^rd -10^th. Witnessing these drama students grow over the years has been enlightening. Some of the productions I have directed are: Robin Hood, Louis Braille, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Fourteen Dancing Princesses, and The Steadfast Tin Soldier. This fall I will direct two plays: The Fairy Tale Courtroom and a student written play The Good Ferries Bad Retirement (working title).

“The Things From Our Past” has evolved over the years from a look, see and touch exhibit to the current narrated living history. It provides a glimpse into the way things were prior to electricity. I have had the pleasure of edu-taining with this eclectic collection of “old stuff’ that helps to shed some light on the challenges of living in a less technological world. Armed with humor, information and a few tall tales we explore the not so distant but very different reality of family life.”

Friday night, Oct. 5, will be a special night of reflection on Acadiana.  All events start at 7pm, for one $10 ticket.  But, the evening unfolds as a series of events’s.  First with the half-hour special “Things From Our Past” we’ll explore life in rural Acadiana.  This piece was written, directed , produced & performed by Angela Richard Wubben and the Richard family.  This will be a good opener to “Cleoma” because “Things From Our Past” throws a strong light on how fast and profoundly life in Acadiana was changing when Cleoma, the Breaux Family Band and Joe Falcon, Papa Cairo, the young Hackberry Ramblers, were playing their music.  Crowley was located at a true crossroads.  Urban life was meeting up with rural tradition, and you could see it in the new ways of working (oil rigs for example), the pressure to speak only in English; the means of transportation; the music styles and the instruments played — all was changing!   In the middle of all of this The Great Depression hit!    Friday, October 5 you will meet some strong and proud people and their unique culture caught in currents of change!

Friday night is a special “Cleoma ~ A First” evening.  It’s jam-packed (but not overly long or tiring!). We’ll tell you about the events in another blog.  Check out the  calendar on www.itineranttheatre.com.

The CD release after the “Cleoma” performance is our focus today.  Ann Savoy has translated, produced & performs on her all-new, all-Cleoma CD which will be released Friday, October 5, 2012.  Ann will sign CDs — available for purchase at a reasonable price.   IT also will host a Q&A with Ann on her making of this CD which required several of her talents — research, production, artistic interpretation.  Be there!

IT hopes that historians, afficionados of SWLA culture, immersion teachers and students attend this TGIF event at The Annex, Imperial Calcasieu Museum, 204 W. Sallier St., LC, LA 70601.  Limited seating.  Purchase tickets at www.itineranttheatre.com or ‘will call’ at 337.436.6275 (‘will call’ tickets will only be held until 6:45pm.)  Events begin at 7:00pm.

We at Itinerant Theatre (IT) have 3 fun-filled fall events for Southwest Louisiana. As our never-a-dull-moment State’s Bicentennial Year draws to a close, IT decided, for Fall Production #1, to bring you the innovative, bold Acadian first lady of song:  Cleoma Breaux Falcon.  Cleoma was a rule-breaker, for sure, cher.  She stood alone for decades, as the 1st and about the only female to perform, for pay, in SWLA’s rough-and-tumble dancehalls… and be recorded with husband, Joe. They were firsts.  That’s only a sliver of this colorful tale.  For this premiere join IT at 7:00pm Oct. 4-6 in Lake Charles’s intimate Annex, Imperial Calcasieu Museum. Ann Savoy, Cleoma’s successor to the throne of Acadian music and a 2x-Grammy-nominee performs Cleoma as a staged reading ( www.annsavoy.com ).  Each night different events accompany this short, sassy play — such as The Magnolia Sisters music at 8p on Saturday night!  (www.magnoliasisters.com — Separate $10 ticket but @ a 50% discount for play-goers).  For more info & to purchase tickets  visit www.itineranttheatre.com or “like” us on Facebook.