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Coming up, a Cleveland Baroque ensemble debuts a new cantata.

A Columbus designer opens her wardrobe for the Wiz.

And northeast Ohio collectors indulge their passion for postage.

Hello and welcome to another round of applause, my friends.

Im Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia.

We begin with a topic that's touching many families.

When a parent starts losing memories, it can be a challenge for their children who become their caregivers.

Cleveland's Baroque Ensemble Les Delices, tackles this through music.

They commissioned a new work that mirrors the realities of dementia care.

Looking to an ancient myth from halfway around the world.

The memory myth begins with a son expressing frustration and sadness with the condition that his father ha sunk into.

A man in his middle years well respected with a household, wife, son, servants, who loses his memory entirely.

And the family led by the son decides to seek any and all ways to heal their father or cure him of this illness.

They go to doctors, soothsayers, religious figures.

Nobody can help.

And then finally they come across a scholar who says, I can cure your father.

Let us remember how this all began.

Your father, whom you know to be man Of some renown and steady, sober temper, Has lost himself -- unable to remember.

The Mythology Project is a multi-year initiative from Les Délices to expand the repertoire of cantatas.

And a cantata is a special Baroque musical form, and the way that we are understanding it for the Mythology Project is a secular piece often on a subject of mythology, almost like a miniature drama.

Here and now... I'm half Greek and half Chinese, when I get to do some of these cantatas, it's not uncommon that I'm dealing with Greek mythology and, you know, the tales that I heard in my childhood of Greek mythology in that part of my culture, but never, ever have I had the opportunity to delve into the Chinese half of my heritage.

When we were talking a this, I actually happened to be spending a lot of time home in my childhood bedroom because my parents' health was declining.

So I had all of my childhood mythology books and I found this very tattered book of Chinese myths that I use to read when I was a kid and a teenager.

And I came across this wonderful myth, "The Loss of Memory."

He thinks us strangers—he may say, 'I know you but I dont know how I think maybe this is also partl because of what I was going through my own life and dealing with parents with declining and failing health and suddenly being a child who now has to parent my parents in a way.

The son must father his own father, the wife becomes her husband's mother.

I thought, 'Oh wow, there's something here for a lot of people to resonate with and relate to.'

We needed to translate this prose myth into something that could be sung.

I beg you, help us gather These fragments into someone whole, Poets don't often get to collaborate, and the idea that the end product here was not going to be just a poem, something that was living and breathing and being performed, that was something that really appeal to me.

So you have come to me... The first movement is an exposit movement where in the voice of the scholar, we're catching you on what's happened to date.

It is wretched to forget.

In the second section, the son begins to speak.

How wretched to forget And the son says, “Whatever you do to help our father,” from an emotional perspective, what it's like to have to father one's own father, to watch the wife become her husband's mother.

The father, we recall... The father, we recall... The third section is more narrative This is where the cure itself is taking place.

His kin should know: the cure may not seem kind.

Hurt his body and we may heal his mind.

As in the original myth, I sort have the cure happen off stage.

It happens really in between lines This man is cured.

This man is cured.

This man is cured.

In the fourth section, we have the father figure come out and having been cured, having had his memory restored, the father is all of a sudden able to articulate that he was much happier when he couldn't remember anything.

Is this a cure?

It is a curse.

They are very surprised to hear from him that he is not only greatly disappoin by the new reality that he finds himsel in, but deeply angry.

He didn't ask for this.

You are no healer.

His aria is a curse upon everybody who has brought him to this place.

A curse upon the scholar, a curse upon his wife, his son, a curse upon life itself because he was blissful in his ignorance.

He was blissfull in that moment's oblivion.

--let me forget We think everybody wants to be cured, but what if, you know, the person themselves has arrived at a peace or an understanding about their condition?

-- let me forget.

In the fifth and final section, this is spoken in the voice of the scholar but I'm thinking of it as well as something of a Greek chorus moment.

Let us remember how this all began... That's where we end with this plea, even though it's terrible to remember, we have to remember lest we forget.

And something that I understand from health care professionals when they're working with families who have a family member who's experiencing dementia or Alzheimer's, you know, is that they encourage to meet them where they are in that moment.

And I think that is one of the lessons of this piece and of this myth.

An hour to grow old, who once were young.

The hour grows late, the song is nearly sung.

It's a really special thing to be thinking about these people, hundreds and hundreds of years a on the other side of the planet, contemplating something that all us contemplate now in our present day.

... Remember, lest we all forget Remember, lest we all forget Next up, philately.

It's the study and collection of postage stamps which has a long history in northeast Ohio.

The Garfield Perry Stamp Club started more than a century ago and keeps the hobby going with about 100 members.

And every March, the group welcomes folks from across the country to show off their philatelic collections.

In this story from our archives.

My dad was a stamp collector, and it was a way for the two of us to spend time together.

That taught me geography.

It taught me foreign languages, the names of foreign countries in their language, and so on.

And I was really interested in it.

It was great fun.

I got started in collecting through my mother.

She got me interested when I was a child, and as a child I started coming to the character Harry.

Stamp shops.

The guy from Terry Stamp Club is one of the oldest existing stamp club in the United States.

The club was formed in 1890 here in Cleveland, Ohio.

This year, the March party is our 135th consecutive show, which is held every March since the founding of the club.

You know, I've got enough.

Cleveland picked March party to give the idea that we're fun.

We're having a good time here.

Yeah, it's a stamp show, but it's the March party.

So that's how the name came about.

It's an annual American Philatelic Society show with dealers that sell philatelic material, and the exhibit displays stamp material which could include postage stamps, postcards or postal cards.

It would also include postal history.

The exhibit when you go through, you learn a lot of history because people exhibit all kinds of different things.

Some may exhibit a particular stamp, and they go for all the different variations and the postmarks and the varieties on the stamp.

Some will take a historical item and look for everything that deals with that historical item, which could include some ephemera.

In addition to the postal stamps.

So this is actually a unique exhibit in terms of combining picture postcards and advertising mail to tell the story of downtown Cleveland at the turn of the century.

All the material is from 1890 to 1910.

It's a 20 year period, and the exhibit is structured to take you to each area of Cleveland based on what the businesses were at the time, whether it was a civic center or typical Main Street or the shopping area or the grocery area.

The structure of the exhibit is divided into geographical zones within downtown Cleveland.

You can see the buildings, you can see the businesses that were in the buildings, and you can get a feel for the products of the period that were made and marketed in Cleveland.

I tend to deal mainly Confederate postal history and stamps.

I got into it at an early age and I enjoy the history.

And that, of course, led me to the personal history.

This is the very first of the general issues, which was a portrait of Jefferson Davis, who was the Confederate president.

There are many different, elements where there are errors or differences in the plate that collectors look and say, where does this belong on the printing plate?

This is position number one in the upper left hand corner and so forth.

And they identify different parts of the stamp to actually plate the stamp.

Errors, freaks and oddities.

This is an area that's popular in other areas besides civil war, but, it exists certainly.

And Confederates and obviously us as well.

If we think mostly about United States stamps, the, the, the classic design, that ranked most highly up to, let's say, 50 years ago was a $1 trans Mississippi stamp issued in about 1900.

Western cattle in a storm.

It's a black stamp, and it's a picture of a couple of cows out in the field with white snow, a blizzard blowing around them.

And that was considered the the best of American design when I was a kid, a long time ago, and first collecting every stamp was engraved, so the design was sharp and for years they were essentially one color, maybe two colors, because each color had to be separately engraved, separate plate, and it was complicated to produce them.

And then they started doing different kinds of printing.

And now when you look at a modern stamp, almost all of them look like, a page out of a magazine, because it's the same printing process, it's offset printing and no longer engraved.

So it just becomes interesting.

And of course, the more you know, the more you learn, the more you figure out what's scarce and what you go find in the dealer's box that, maybe you recognize something that somebody else doesn't.

It is a treasure hunt.

Certainly the hobby is evolving.

It is not going away.

Sometimes you hear Chicken Little stories, you know, the sky is falling and you know all this.

All old people of the younger ones, they're not as visible.

So our challenge really is to get them to stamp shows like this and show them that there's something besides a computer screen.

And if we can get them into that, the social aspects of this are tremendous.

And we are really just caretakers, preserving it for a period of time.

And then it goes on to the next collector.

One work on as individual collectors.

And hopefully we've taken care of it.

So to go for generations to come.

The Garfield Perry Stamp Club's annual show is March 13th through the 15th in Strongsville.

It's time to ease on down the road to Columbus and meet a costume designer whose dream job was, you guessed it, The Wiz.

Courtney Reddick recently got the chance to concoct the costumes for this acclaimed musical at the Short North Stage.

This story is part of our ongoing series Behind the Scenes Art across Ohio.

It mixes all of my favorite elements artistically and culturally.

I could be but unapologetically nerdy black.

So when it comes to the ways, because I love doing big, fantastical shows and I can utilize, you know, things from my own experiences in the show as well.

It's just one of those rare shows that allow for that.

How we approach the family and like Kansas.

How we approach especially like the ways how big and loud and bright that it is.

Like I don't come across as that kind of person, but when I do my art, that's where that comes out.

Is that, that's where all my obnoxiousness hopefully, hopefully goes.

You never really want to get attached to an idea too early on because it's a collaborative process.

We get it.

Start with the director.

What's their vision, what's the needs of the show.

And then in a lot of cases, what's the budget?

What is actually within practicality of getting done versus what we dream of?

Once I know the show and like the parameters, it's just research.

It's always better to go kind of pie in the sky and then draw your way back.

Then to try to build yourself in a preexisting box.

That's generally how I work, is like, what is the absolute dream for this show?

Okay, Ken, what parts of this dream can we actually make it work?

I started, almost accidentally, into it, when I was in, community college.

I was in studio arts.

Just kind of like, oh, you can draw.

You shouldn't do that.

And I was like, great, I'll guess I'll do that.

And I ended up doing it through like a work study at the school.

Just started volunteering.

Not volunteering.

I got paid, but it was just kind of accidental into it.

And I know a lot of people that had don't go to school that just started volunteering at a theater.

There's a lot of different pathways into it, and you just kind of have to call up a theater and ask like, hey, you need some help?

And then you can start learning the ropes.

That way.

My favorite part is like actually being able to have tangible proof that I'm working with people and creating something, and it has like a definite result.

There's a lot I think there's a lot of jobs these days that you can do endlessly.

That never feels like it has a tangible result.

And even if you're working with other people, it can still feel isolating without a sense of purpose.

But in theater, there's always a date.

We got to get this done.

We always had to be talking to each other.

The costumes have to work with the sets, have to work with the lights, have to work with the sound equipment.

It is it is the epitome of collaboration.

I don't think, in a lot of things these days, there's a lot of other places you can get that.

let's detour from the Yellow Brick Road in Columbus to the Sidewalk Studios of Dayton.

In 2025, Ohio's Jam City celebrated the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords.

And in honor of that, a group of artistic Dayton transformed the city streets into a walkable art exhibition.

My piece, for the NATO, village like window activation is, it's called Red Earth Golem.

Held in truth, it's a larger than life golem made out, fabric, including bedsheets.

I tried to use a lot of recycled material because that's a part of my ethos and approach to art inside of it.

Like, it has an open body with a mirror so that viewers can be contained and protected within the being, so that you can be sort of held and protected in truth and love.

But from this being that represents in Jewish folklore, protection of the Jewish people.

For a really long time, when I thought of doing this piece, my inspiration came from going to the Air Force Museum, and I wanted to take a look at all the different planes there.

Of course, the Wright Flier and by planes.

And I wanted to check out the struts that are in the wings of the plane and the wooden structure.

I wanted to make it Dayton centric.

That was the concept that I got for that, and the inspiration.

I love these these work.

I think they're the best representation of what Dayton has to offer.

Absolutely.

World class talent and skill and artistry that unfortunately, sometimes even even appreciated at home as much as it is in other cities internationally.

I really wanted something that represented the story of, women indicting.

There was a lady, Idaho Grove, who worked for the Wright brothers.

She was the first female to be employed in the field of aviation.

She was the same person answered an advertisement asking for a plane, the same stories, and she thought they just wanted someone to whip up boring dresses.

And when she went to the interview, she realized, oh, that's not what they meant.

So she really was the first woman in aviation history, and I wanted to represent her story and try to gather and represent a lot of other women here in Dayton throughout history.

The most fun parts of this process was right as the installations were complete before the city got kind of shut down for NATO like security protocols.

There was a press conference and all the artists gathered, and we kind of went from piece to piece a piece, walk around with each artist, got to kind of explain their work a little bit.

It was almost emotional because being an expert and knowing all these other countries, we coming to Dayton.

It felt good to know that we're being recognized as a city that will welcome international guests and showcase what we can offer them.

Because this to me is home now.

I was so excited seeing the flags and knowing that they were going to experience what Dayton can offer.

Not everyone gets the chance to make a movie about their lives.

On the next applause, learn how Art of me brings student stories to streaming audiences around the world, It's important for us to have a global reach, because we know Cleveland stories are connected to people from other places as well.

Well, for and the stories of bawdy sailors are sung on stage with Apollo's Fire.

All that and more on the next round of applause.

Soon may the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum.

One day when the tonguin is done well take our leave and go Thanks for watching this round of applause.

I'm Ideastream Public Media's Kabir Bhatia leaving you with another example of the cantata, this time in French from Les Delices and award winning tenor Nicholas Phan.

(Singing in French) Production of applause on Ideastream.

Public media is made possible by funding by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.