Apollinaire To Present An Operetta About Chelsea's Grace Muwina This Saturday

This Saturday, tune in online for Apollinaire Theatre's original operetta being written THIS WEEK about Chelsea's Grace Muwina!

Grace was nominated by GreenRoots to be one of the subjects of Apollinaire's online summer celebration: Chelsea People.

A creative team of more than 20, who had the pleasure of interviewing Grace on Sunday, are spending the week creating songs, scenes, and artwork to showcase moments from her life which will comprise the operetta.

Who is Grace? She's a problem solver and a force for social change, fighting inequities in her community head on with intelligence, integrity, love and, well, grace. Her work includes the (seemingly) small but impactful acts of walking with neighbors and adding children's books to laundromats, to helping take on the MBTA to improve Chelsea's public transit and advocating to reroute airplanes so other communities share the burden of noise pollution.

She hails from Zambia where she met her husband, Derrick, an Episcopal priest, and worked in an orphanage. Her father, a special education teacher, helped to instill in her the power of education. These stories and more she shared with the Apollinaire creative team, including descriptions of Zambian celebrations filled with drums!

With her husband, her daughters, her faith, and a strong belief in the freedom education grants children, she moved to Cambridge, MA and then Chelsea while her husband was earning his PhD. When her first daughter entered kindergarten, she found a connection to the community and then set to work improving it. She's brought her determination to Chelsea Community Connections, GreenRoots, Raising a Reader, the Chelsea school district, and more.

This Saturday's performance promises to be inspiring (how can it not be with a subject like Grace?) and entertaining (Apollinaire Theatre never disappoints!).

More on the Chelsea People project:

Moved by the heroic ways Chelsea has come together in the face of the pandemic to provide for its residents, Apollinaire Theatre has set out to create an exciting work of art that celebrates the heart of Chelsea: its people.

Apollinaire asked three Chelsea organizations, GreenRoots, The Neighborhood Developers, and the Chelsea Collaborative, to each nominate a Chelsea resident to be the subject of an original play with music, which will be created over the course of one week. Four Chelsea residents- Grace Muwina, Terry & Joe Englen, and Jessica Armijo- will each have their life stories developed into original operettas and presented live over Zoom by a large Apollinaire Theatre creative team!

Chelsea People will stream live on Saturdays, July 25th, August 1st and August 8th for FREE! Participants are welcome to begin gathering online at 7:30 pm for pre-show programming with the show itself beginning promptly at 8:00 pm.

All performances will be presented with simultaneous Spanish/English interpretation.

Register for FREE tickets at www.apollinairetheatre.com