“Now I Have A Whole Great Big Family”

Two months after a midsummer flash flood wreaked havoc on a vibrant neighborhood talent showcase, performers returned to tell Lyric Hall impressario John Cavaliere how much they love him. And to help him buy a new furnace and build a retaining wall.

More than 100people gathered Saturday night at the restored vaudeville theater and antiques shop on Whalley Avenue to recite, sing, and play music all in the service of launching the Lyric Hall Flood Relief Campaign, an online fundraising instrument

The aim is to raise $21,500 to replace the furnace the four-foot-high waters destroyed in the basement on Aug. 15; to restore waterlogged decaying sills; and to build a retaining wall at the rear of the property, with drainage channels appropriate to handle the heavy run-off from the West River behind the the theater, among other projects.

Within an hour of the kick-off the party and the fund, nearly $1,000 had been contributed online.

Cavaliere has restored the former vaudeville theater and opened it up to local performers from video artists to poets to composers restoring original scores to silent films. Many were on hand Saturday night to return the favor, and more.

The business that supports those effortsframing, antique restoration, furniture repair, and artisanal gildingsuffered a big blow in the flood: lost essential tools, supplies, jobs-in-progress, and other equipment.

Click here for a story with a tour by Cavaliere of the basement the day after the flood and an itemization of the damage.

The point of the Saturday night outpouring of support was not to relive the flood or to itemize the damages. It was to give a hand to Cavaliere, whose catholic tastes in the arts, humanity, and great pizza cooking in a 1930s gas oven have given a hand and even a new start to many, and transformed Lyric Hall into an essential community resource.

It was a flood, but my cup runneth over, Cavaliere quipped before he introduced the performers and they took the small, elegant stage he had restored in the theater .

James Joyce scholar Richard Stack gave a lively reading of the first published chapter of Finnegans Wake

Go here to see the original:
“Now I Have A Whole Great Big Family”