Origination of the Piece

"I was ‘blown away,’ Dale Allen is an extremely gifted storyteller. It was like reading the most interesting novel, one that you just can't put down, and it keeps getting better and better, and then it is all tied together in such a way that you feel you really received something meaningful and lasting."

Casey Donahue, age 16

Dancers of the Dawn

An Original Play

“In Our Right Minds” was born of a two-act play written, directed and produced by Dale Allen in Westport, Connecticut at the WCT. The play featured a cast of seven women of different ages, shapes, sizes and colors. Sold-out performances brought audiences to their feet and into the dance as live drummers rocked the house. The piece was reviewed as having “the energy of a Cape Canaveral lift-off.”

In the play, music and movement celebrate the perfect dance of nature and the freedom of women to live beyond limiting roles. Historical information reveals the goddess. Myth, original songs, dance, live drumming and ritual bring her to life. Comedic sketches draw us to laugh at our contemporary experiences, from perfectionism, to road rage, to isolation and separation. The women of the cast model the strengths of friendship and sisterhood, uniting on common ground and illuminating a new path toward wholeness.

“Dancers of the Dawn” returns to the roots of theatre as a holy communion between audience and those involved in the production. It is theatre as a community experience of discovery, inspiration, illumination and revolution. The energvariety, and communion of the play have found new life in “In Our Right Minds.”

Westport News Review:

Recalling A Really Good Show

I see a great many shows, everywhere. Always have.

And I'm no impressionable youngster. So when I tell you that recently I witnessed an explosion of energy, of purpose, of excitement I have rarely experienced in years of play going, it's a fact. The occasion, Dancers of the Dawn, produced by Dale Allen, whose work I'd never seen before.

Ms. Allen, writer-director-actress singer-dancer had conceived. A dramatic musical event Celebrating Women. Anything I could ever have imagined was the place of women in the world from long ago to what I observed when I was a boy is quietly spelled out. All enacted by seven actresses, one of which is Ms. Allen herself. The seven are sewn together, as friends, each telling a story, singing a song, ending with an upbeat dance of joy propelled by the beat of five extraordinary drummers. And you cannot help yourself as the entire audience gets up to celebrate that women "have come a long way, baby!"

It's affectionate and funny, and you can't help as the lights come up and you're still smiling and laughing. I'm going again next Saturday, because I want again to feel that genuine thrill I get at Cape Canaveral watching a liftoff.

Gerald Kean

For Theatres and School Groups
Available as a full production or as script and musical score.