Under this big top, Lowell disabled find a spectacle they can share
- Lowell Sun
- Nancye Tuttle
- 09 Apr 2009
BOSTON -- Ben Nguyen grinned from ear to ear, clapping and laughing at Grandma the Clown's silly antics.
Joel Tabea and Nicole Letellier bounced in time to the peppy music, taking in the bright sights, smells and sounds under the big top at the Big Apple Circus.
And Dorothy Donovan, enjoying her first circus ever at age 57, marveled that she could "see" the show -- thanks to an infrared listening device and vivid act-by-act description -- despite being legally blind.
Nguyen, 15, Tabea and Letellier, both 10, and Donovan joined a contingent of developmentally and visually disabled Lowell residents yesterday at the "Circus of the Senses."
The Big Apple offers its complimentary show for special-needs people each year
under its big top, pitched through May 10 in Government Center.
The kids are students in Madeline Corcoran's life-skills class at Sullivan Middle School. Donovan is a client at the Lowell Association for the Blind. Butler Middle School life-skills teacher Laurie Prive brought 13 of her students, too.
The lights went down, the music revved up and the audience was immediately drawn into the circus magic.
Ringmistress Carrie Harvey set the scene, sign-language interpreters shared sounds with the hearing impaired. And, in a booth at the top of the tent, Big Apple founders Paul Binder and Michael Christensen described the acts for the visually impaired, who followed along through the special devices.
"She's standing
on the wire, now she's moving her hips and picking up a large fan, which helps her balance. Now she's taking her orange hat off," Binder said in his move-by-move account of tightwire artist Sarah Schwarz's act.
"The descriptions made it so real," Donovan said after the show.
Cary Renault, 50, another Association for the Blind client, praised the descriptions, too.
"It's fantastic and feels so good being here," he said.
Heading back to the bus after the show, students raved
Grandma, the LaSalle Brothers, a set of juggling identical twins, the dogs and horse at the end all earned hearty thumbs-up.
Summing it up for all, Sullivan student Jassier Martinez, 14, said, "I loved every part."
The program is invaluable, said Corcoran.
"They'll talk about it for weeks, and we'll incorporate it into our classes. It's a wonderful service the Big Apple provides, since most of these kids don't get to experience anything like this," she said.
But not yesterday, as they took it all in at the Circus of the Senses