Bajareque, Sylvia and more dancing, a great day of diversity

Posted by Lee on March 7, 2010

My Saturday in Boquete Panama started with fresh eggs stolen from under the beak of a hostile, over protective rooster. Mayara came to visit after a week of work in David and we embarked on a series of what she describes as actividades, activities.

Our first port of call was a reunion, a meeting with abundant food of the staff, owners and contributors of the Bajareque Times. The Bajareque Times is Boquete’s own good news, paper. The Bajareque Times makes no pretense of competing with La Prensa or other Panama periodicals, it tries to provide local bilingual coverage of what is relevant to people in Boquete, David and other areas of Chiriqui. We were invited because I have written a couple of recent articles and Mayara is going to start writing a column.

The get together was at El Pomodoro and as always the atmosphere on the terrazzo was excellent, the food mediocre and in this case the collection of people wonderful. I found myself learning as always and actually sitting at a table and discussing Boquete in Spanish. I think my language skills must be improving, I need more words. Thanks to Ted, Louis and Elizabeth for the invite.

From the El Pomodoro Mayara and I migrated to the ROCK, a new restaurant, not for dinner, but for Syliva, the latest production of the Chiriqui Players. I was concerned since Mayara does not speak a word of English. I had told her a friend, Pam Pankratz was going to play a dog and she did not want to miss the event. Pam, you were great right down to bitting your leg to deal with those nasty fleas; bravo. Pam your body language jumped the barrier of spoken words.

Since Jim Hatch arrived in Boquete the quality of theater has jumped from High School to near professional. What was astounding to me were the individual performances. Narin Kennedy in her first effort on stage was amazing. Narin if I did not know you better I would think you were type cast, but I knyou are not a dog hating school teacher type. You demonstrated great skill in a great role. The same for Tom Werder who was also in his first role. As a person who has never dared to be on stage I salute all of you, the copious support staff that made this possible and direction behind it all.

If you missed Sylvia you have another chance, it will be performed for one more week, Tickets are available at Mail Box Etc and if you enjoy laughing, you will enjoy Sylvia. Next Thursday, Friday and Saturday are the last performances   March11,12, 13th 8pm. Bring a cushion for your seat, the chairs are brutal. It is a shame the BCP facility built and paid for by the very people who attended and created this play could not be used for the production. The BCP theater has better seats and more of them.

When Sylvia ended and most intelligent people headed home for the evening, Mayara and I headed out dancing. I really think we need to organize a field trip to Coca Cola in Los Naranjos. This time we arrived about 10:30 and Coca Cola was filling quickly. By one AM when we left, it was crowded with people of all ages, partying and dancing. We enjoy this clubbing, cost is trivial, a $10 bill covered the entire evening and it is a great cultural immersion.