DIRECTOR’S NOTE

The story of the “town mouse and country mouse” is a tale as old as time. There are versions of this story found throughout the writings of the ancient world, but perhaps the most well known version of the story comes to us from the Greek Aesopica, or Aesop’s Fables. Aesop, born in Greece sometime around 620 BCE, was a popular fabulist and storyteller of his time. It isn’t exactly clear how many of what would become Aesop’s Fables were his own creative inventions, and how many were other popular stories of the time that he simply codified and put down on paper. What is clear is that his anthropomorphic parables, including The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Lion and the Mouse, The Tortoise and the Hare and The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse, are timeless stories that speak to the human condition and continue to thrill and delight audiences of all ages.

I believe this story, and our telling of it, will resonate strongly with the 40,000+ young people that will get to experience it on this year’s tour. That longing for something bigger…the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side…is a feeling shared by many of us born on the plains and in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains. Who of us could forget the first time we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, Sears Tower or Empire State Building?

The exciting thing for me in telling our story is not the antithesis of town and country, or English and Spanish, but rather what the Chicano poet Alfred Arteaga called the Chiasma: the point at which two opposing forces meet and intersect. For it is only at this point, that we can truly begin to understand, empathize and appreciate one another.