1986: THE BEGINNING
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We kick off The Big 30 blog with this great photo from the very early days of Heart n Soul. This is a shot of Geoffrey Goodall, Pino Frumiento, Winston Green and Alix Parker sitting on the stage at The Albany Empire coming up with ideas for the musical the ‘Rock n Roll Dance’ in 1986, the year Heart n Soul began.
Together the performers, Alix and Mark, devised the entire musical, which had a loose connection to West Side Story. It featured two rival gangs, the Scorpions and the Cats, and a parallel love story to Tony and Maria's (Pino and Donna!). This became the first show ever performed by Heart n Soul in Dec 1986.
Over the next few months we’ll be collecting many memories about Heart n Soul from our friends, artists, volunteers, participants and staff for The Big 30 Archive. Pino Frumiento (pictured second left) and Alix Parker (pictured right) co-founded Heart n Soul with Mark Williams (not in picture) in 1986 and they are just three of 50 interviewees contributing their stories to the project.