Friendships shine at Stars

A small band strikes up a chord and a group of men and women -- many in their 60s, 70s and even older -- break into a spirited rehearsal of the R and B classic, Soul Man. The choice of song isn't surprising if you know the Silver Stars Musical Revue.

Each year, dozens of performers, ranging from first-time amateurs to people with decades of performing experience, spend months putting together a song-and-dance extravaganza. It will feature everything from classic ballads to show tunes and pop classics, sometimes in unique combinations.

Jean Mekitiak and Gladys Sands will sing a duet on Happy Days Are Here Again in the styles of Barbra Streisand (Mekitiak) and Judy Garland (Sands). "We've become really good friends and we enjoy working together," says Mekitiak.

Sands' musical experience dates back to the Second World War, when she toured Canada with an all-girls' band.

The experience led to a brush with fame. "We were in London, Ont., and Martha Tilton was singing and she took very ill," says Sands.

Tilton was a singer for legendary bandleader Benny Goodman. "I was practicing with my band and (Goodman) said: 'You sound like her -- how about coming with me to New York?'"

Sands was only 17 at the time, so she had to get permission from her dad, who promptly said no. "So that was the end of that, but it was very exciting."

Audience members will get to hear some of these stories thanks to a new focus the Revue is taking for its November production at the University Theatre.

Under artistic director Gerry Dubbin -- a one-time member of the famous family act The Dubbin Show -- not only will singing and dancing be on the menu, but also the stories of the performers, themselves.

"I've made the show multimedia this year," says Dubbin.

"We'll be having a huge video screen and throughout the show we'll have video vignettes -- interviews with current and past cast members. We want the audience to know about the stories of these people, and get some insight into the passion and dedication they all have."

His mother, Nina Dubbin, and fellow performer Yvonne Currie have another great story to tell.

Years before her kids toured the world as The Dubbin Show, Nina had a dance act with her sister. But one day, her sister had to drop out.

"I was 17 and I was dating this chap, and one day, one of his friends showed up with a cute little thing and it was Nina," says Currie. "I loved dancing, so she asked me if I would like to be in the act, so she taught me the steps and we became an act."

After the dance act ended, "we went on with our lives, and I got married and moved down East," says Currie.

Fast forward more than 50 years later, and Nina and Currie found themselves working together in the Silver Stars Revue.

However, it took a year of working together before they realized who each other was, says Nina. "We'd changed a wee bit," says Currie.

The friends people "meet along the way, you really develop friendships for life," says Nina, who is also president of the Silver Stars Musical Revue Society. In this year's production, the two friends will perform Sixteen Going on Seventeen from The Sound of Music.

For Currie, the joy of getting on stage will not be hampered by the fact that she needs oxygen due to emphysema.

"For the first time for me -- and apparently the first time anywhere, according to my lung specialist -- I'll be on stage with my oxygen," says Currie.

"Gerry has written everything based on my going on with my oxygen. My specialist is very excited and says this will be a very strong message I'll be getting across."

The multimedia isn't the only change for the troupe this year.

For the first time, a spinoff touring production of Silver Stars is launching with a special 100 Years of Broadway concert Oct. 5 at the Kerby Centre.

The new show will feature dozens of Broadway show classics and a scaled-down cohort of 15 performers, says Gerry Dubbin. The main show features 50.

The plan is to tour the scaled-down show at long-term residences and other places where residents might not otherwise be able to attend a show at the University Theatre.

The Kerby launch also celebrates a new partnership between the revue and the centre, which is now the troupe's home base for rehearsals. "We'll be able to offer Kerby members dance training, movement training and vocal lessons --and they can, in turn, use our show for fundraisers," says Dubbin.

Since March, the Silver Stars performers have been rehearsing for both the touring show and the full stage show.

Set for Nov. 12 to 14 at the University Theatre, this year's theme is "Joyful!"

"I have never seen so much passion and dedication in these performers," says Dubbin. "That's why I called it 'Joyful!'"

A highlight of the main show will be a tribute to James Bond, says musical director and conductor Doug Zacharias.

"We're going to have a little gunfight between James Bond and the villains -- and we'll have some Bond girls, and, of course, singers doing some of the Bond songs," he says. "And we have a whole Blues Brothers sequence, with everyone in hats and sunglasses."

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Learning About Friendship

WHY BE FRIENDLY, AND WITH WHOM? HOW CAN YOU AVOID DANGEROUS FRIENDSHIPS?

DESPITE the scientific changes that have come over the world in recent years, people still need people. For most persons this need is not satisfied by mere acquaintances, but goes much deeper than that. It reaches out for a friend who can be trusted with one’s most precious thoughts. Its want is for a confidant who is responsible, trustworthy and who will respond when one is in need.

The ideal situation is when most of one’s emotional needs are satisfied within a Christian family relationship. Children who have devoted parents and loving brothers and sisters have good reason to be quite content. Sustained by this warmth and association, a child can grow up happy and well balanced without always having to look elsewhere to satisfy his emotional needs.

However, even when friendship in the home is not lacking, children may feel the urge to embark on new friendships. The stimulation provided by other children near their age can be beneficial. On the other hand, lack of friendship inside and outside the family relationship causes many youngsters to become lonely. This is a common problem among teen-agers.

Parents who are aware of this try to satisfy their children’s growing need for friendship. One way they can do this is by developing a closer and more confidential relationship with them. Teen-agers especially find that life takes on a happier tone when parents give them a chance to express their views, and help them to work out their doubts and uncertainties. In frank discussions the children can be fortified with encouragement and counsel.

There are also times when the friendship of another youth can provide the needed encouragement. Wrote a middle-aged man of his more youthful days: “As a teen-ager I was often moody, for reasons I no longer recall. During one particularly bad week when I was at my lowest ebb, thinking myself ugly, misunderstood and unlikable, the phone rang. A high-school lad . . . was on the line. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked gently when he heard my voice. ‘You sound as if you didn’t have a friend in the world—I’m not dead yet!’ A glib, graceful phrase, perhaps—but in twenty-five years I have not forgotten it, how I sat up straighter, smiled and felt alive again that night.”

How to Become a Friend

Some people seem to have a talent for making friends. Others need to learn the art of friendship, and they do. Still others are neither gifted in friendship nor quick to learn its ways. They need help. Whatever the case may be, to be a friend one has to care about people, what they think, how they feel and why they suffer. One must be sympathetically interested in things people do. One must accept their faults as well as their virtues. One must be willing to make sacrifices and help others to achieve their goals.

The American poet and essayist Ralph W. Emerson once said: “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” Help someone, if you want a friend. That should be easy, because there are so many people today who need help. Where there is work to be done, volunteer to do it. Working brings people together.

Invite people to your home for a meal or simply to share conversation with you over a cup of tea or coffee. Simply say, “How about coming to our place Saturday night?” Even if it is not convenient for them to come this time, at least they will know that you would like to know them better.

Perhaps the very beginning of a friendship is the willingness to say “hello” first. You must show that you like people. If you greet them with a smile and with a cheerful salutation, it may surprise you what response you will get.

What Is Needed to Keep Up Friendship

Friendship can be likened to a plant that has to be cultivated. It must be watered and tended if it is to produce sweet and wholesome fruit.

Maintaining a friendship is not automatic. It takes planning. On our weekly list of things to be done, we might well assign deeds of friendship. We could write down the names of those we would like to visit or telephone or drop a note to, or send a gift. How easy it is to neglect friends just because they are friends. Many who know the art of friendship plan to have dinner once a week or once a month with certain friends.

An aid to preserving friendships is doing things together. One friend taught another how to cook. After that, the delights of cooking enriched their conversations and their lives. Others have encouraged their friends to go places with them and to do things together, such as visiting museums, taking walks through parks or having picnics together.

Distance may prevent friends from getting together, but a warm letter can bridge the gap. A telephone call will remind them that you care. It may be possible to spend a vacation with an old friend and renew the friendship. Often reunions are most heartwarming.

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Friendship In Our Materialistic Age

True, loyal and faithful friends are indeed our prized possession supposed to be treasured forever. Their friendship is timeless and eternal. “For without friends,” Aristotle says, “no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” Good friends are two bodies with one soul.

Regrettably and ironically, genuine friendship is hard to be found in our materialistic world where money and personal gains are considered as yardsticks or criteria for having friends. All the folk tales, stories, great sermons extolling the virtues and setting great standard of friendship seem to have lost their core meaning in our present age. The ideal friendship has been confined to books only. Its significance is reduced to nothingness in our jet-set age, where moral values are blurred and eclipsed by greed, avarice, self-aggrandizement, faithlessness and some other social evils and vices.

There was a time when it was unimaginable for a friend to cheat his friend. Cheating friends amounted to infidelity. Friends were considered two bodies with one soul. The spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of friend was common worthwhile quality. They were gelled together in adversity. They were always mindful of each other’s interests and give each other room to grow. Jealousy, envy, prejudice, hatred, greed, hypocrisy were foreign to them. They were all-weather friends, treating their friendship as something great, noble and holy. It is indeed very painful to say that such an ideal friendship is rare in our present era. In their wild attempt to be part of rat race to hanker after worldly riches and benefits, friends, shockingly, have adopted an indifferent and devil-may-care attitude towards their friends, who are less fortunate than they are. This who-cares attitude is a grim reminder that genuine friendship has been adversely affected by our irrational and inordinate desire of self-aggrandizement, setting aside all the basic moral values and ethics.

All this creates a bleak, depressing and pessimistic outlook. One wonders whether he will ever be able to have good friends in this materialistic world. The answer is a big “Yes”. One must hope for the better. Pessimism must be replaced by optimism. Despite the fact that materialism reigns supreme in our times, loyal and devoted friends can still be found provided we make concerted efforts to locate them and encourage them to come out and let people know true friendship still exists, although it lays hidden by being eclipsed and overwhelmed by negative elements of our society. But its disappearance is not permanent. It will shine again.

Friendship is a noble quality. We hate to lose or deprive ourselves of this great and wonderful possession of ours. We are all supposed to make sincere effort to keep friendship alive for our own sake. Remember, Friends have no substitute, no match, no even money, nothing whatsoever. Following are some useful suggestions to keep friendship still valuable and worthwhile:

1. To have a friend, be a friend.
2. Never test your friend. He/she might not be in a position, though they wish to, to come up with your expectations because of their own problems and compulsions.
3. Be sincere with your friends. Your sincerity will win their hearts, and they will reciprocate your love, sincerity and devotion.
4. All friendships have their ups and downs. Learning to put aside disagreements makes companionship long-lasting.
5. There should be frankness among friends for self-revelation. One must take friend’s criticism as seriously as their expressions of admiration or praise.
6. Friends must show their unity, faithfulness and loyalty.
7. Friendship contains some trial, but true friendship endures the test and ever grows from it.
8. Friends give more than they expect to receive.

In our age, when casual acquaintance often comes so easily and when intimacy comes too soon and cheaply, we can’t blink the fact that the plant of genuine friendship takes time to grow and prosper provided being watered by sincerity, love, dedication, devotion and , above all, the spirit of self-sacrifice.

True friendship is timeless. Circumstances may, sometimes, fade or eclipse it, but it cannot be completely effaced.

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Spiritual Friendships

As we walk along our paths in life, we will encounter several forms of friendships. There will be friends of convenience, friends by association, and friends of the heart. Friends out of convenience are friendships that you might have simply because you both are accessible to one another. These friendships are common in a work or school environment as people are united by place alone. You might even term these friendships as 'associates' instead of friends, because you associate with one another because you feel that you have to.

These types of friendships can easily disappear as quickly as they came or they can actually turn into more meaningful friendships as time moves on. Then there are friends by association, friendships that exist because of an association with another friend. You might acquire these forms of friendships because of your current friends. You acquire your friend's circle of companions and make them your own. These associations can lack strong foundations and even knowledge of one another, but either way, you respect them as a part of the friend that originated the encounter.

Then there are friendships that are few and far between, friends of the heart or friends of the spirit. You may find this form of friendship with or in addition to your significant other. This type of friendship is guided through a profound spiritual connection. They are very pronounced and spiritually ignited. They can overcome distance. They can surpass cultural and language barriers. They can surpass age and even gender.

They do not exist out of convenience or association. These friendships exist out of respect and purpose. This unity of beings connects our hearts to our souls. They remind us and encourage our greatness and contribute to our over all well-being. These friendships exist on the purest of levels. They are not sexually motivated. They do not even necessarily rely on the power of any physical contact. They exist on a level all on their own.

What these friendships do touch are our hearts. They leave precious imprints where they matter the most. These friendships are gifts unto themselves as they are aligned with our inner workings and details. They somehow give us comfort no matter what our state of mind and they seem to blanket our worries with little or no effort. They exist not out of force, but out of care.

These spiritual friendships allow us to actually feel the insides of another. They allow us that close of a connection that typically both people can feel the others thoughts and emotions. We are attracted to them because we are intended to be. These friendships may baffle and surprise us as they can sneak up on us quickly, but they are friendships that need not go unnoticed and certainly not forgotten, for however long they are to stay.

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