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Morningside Heights hosts 'Strangers and Other Angels' play by Compagnia de' Colombari By Patty Lee DAILY NEWS WRITER Thursday, December 2nd 2010, 4:00 AM Daniel Cingari 'Strangers and Other Angels' stars JD Webster and Sarah Heltzel in a Christmas play that will use different locations around Morningside Heights. Don't be surprised to see angels walking around in Morningside Heights this Saturday. Performers from the local theater company Compagnia de' Colombari are using the neighborhood as the backdrop for their annual Christmas play, "Strangers and Other Angels." The modern take on a centuries-old holiday story draws talent from all disciplines -- performers include Broadway veterans, classically trained opera singers and even students from the Calhoun School. The event got its start in Italy as a celebration for the Feast of Corpus Christi, but director Karin Coonrod thought New Yorkers were more likely to relate to Christmas. "We wanted to do something that ushers in the season," she says. "Christmas is really huge in New York. People come to see the tree. They come to go skating and go shopping." The free production takes advantage of its outdoor setting by sending the cast right into the audience. This year, the play will start near Riverside Church and wind through the neighborhood to the Union Theological Seminary as it spins a tale based on the medieval nativity story "The Second Shepherds' Play." "Because it's so environmental, people can really enter into it," says Sarah Heltzel, a mezzo-soprano who will don a pair of the colorful angel wings. "There's no stage that the performers are set apart on. We're all mixed up and people have to turn around to catch different parts of it." Heltzel tries to pull in the audience as much as she can during the two- hour production and, by the end of the play, they're usually eager to join the group dance and feast. "As New Yorkers, we have a certain amount of personal space that we claim and are very suspect of anyone who tries to invade it," she says, "but the nature of this piece is so joyful, I've really watch people just open up into it." Read more at www.nydailynews.com

 

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