Photo Gallery

The People Who Made Peace Child Great

Index:

1. Peace Child Royalty – the people who made Peace Child great around the world

2. Peace Child Royalty Video – a compilation of other figures who made the musical

3. A Pot-pourri of memories of different Peace Child shows and personalities

4. Hugs and Happy People – showing how Peace Child tugs at the heart strings

Peace Child Royalty

Maybe because Peace Child started in Britain, we always chose to refer to those who gave the greatest support to Peace Child in terms of time, ideas, talent and funding as Peace Child Royalty. Some you will know, many you will not: suffice it to say that Peace Child would not have happened without them.

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Lucia Effros - The Administrator of Peace Child International through the 1980s and 90s who, more than anyone else, became the rock on which Peace Child’s Reputation was built in the USA

Lib Segal – The Quaker Director of PCI who hosted Peace Child in her heart and in her home for most of the time it was in Washington DC. She also hosted the entire Peace Child Central America Cast

Barbara Katz - Probably Peace Child’s most generous sponsor: she sponsored the Minneapolis sell-out performance or the Peace Child US-Soviet tour and was a friend to Peace Child for many years. The Peace Child stables at the White House in the UK was partly built with her funding and is dedicated to her memory

Lee Ross - The Producer of the San Francisco show at the 1984 Democratic Convention and for the US-Soviet 1986 Tour

Bill Schintz and Stas Namin - Bill was a brilliant photographer who made York PA Peace Child’s spiritual home in America. Here he is with Stas Namin – the rock star: two people from completely different worlds whom Peace Child brought together as friends. Here performing the funky chicken for Alexander Woollcombe

Ella Vituk and Karina Chepoy - The composer and singers of “Say you love this world” – one of the best cast-created songs in the Peace Child Song book. Here with David Woollcombe holding an unknown Peace Child

Canon Kenyon Wright - The man who made Alpha Omega happen at Coventry Cathedral – without whom, Peace Child would never have existed. Here at the Kremlin party thrown by Mikhail & Raisa Gorbachev for the likes of Norman Mailer and Yoko Ono,(see below) which David attended as the guest of Natalia Sats

Cornelia Biddle - Long-term Peace Child Trustee and supporter, Neil Biddle is seen here, far right, with the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Kris Kristofferson after a lunch in his mountain hide-away. Neil had that sort of friends – including Bill Clinton who she knew from her Arkansas home town of Little Rock

Mike Malone and Tony Booker - Mike was the choreographer, and Tony Booker was the musical director of the US Premiere of Peace Child at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC; they were so good, we flew them both out to direct and choreograph the 1986 US-Soviet Tour. Here we see them at Yalta, Crimea

Peace Child Royalty Video

A video compilation of the many other Peace Child Royal Family Members as listed below.

1. Stas Namin Band Members + Members of the ’86 Tour cast;

2. Birce Boga – Editor, Rescue Mission, from Turkïye

3. Carlo Grossman – Director / Co-Creator, City At Peace

4. Chic Streetman – composer, Peace in the Heart

5. Cora Weiss – Peace Child’s longest serving Distinguished Advisor

6. Our Island / Your Island – Greek & Turkish Cypriot editorial team

7. Daniella Zunec – Rescue Mission Editor from Croatia;

8. Dharaj Maxfield – Director, Theatre of All Possibilities, Santa Cruz, California

9. Pete Seeger with David Woollcombe, in Central Park, New York City

10. Rosey Simonds and David Woollcombe – Co-Founders, Peace Child Intl.

11. Lucia Effros, Administrator, Peace Child Intl. USA

12. Natasha Woollcombe

13. Gwen Ross & Alexander Woollcombe

14. Helen Strickland, Coordinator, Peace Child Washington State, with David Woollcombe

15. Geri Champlin – Peace Child Administrator, Fairfax Virginia

16. John Denver at the Peace Child Space Bridge

17. Linda Sorenson with Yuri Gorkov, from the Stas Namin Band

18. Michael Lindemann, Tour Director, 1986 Peace Child Tour

19. Lisa Katz, first student producer of a Peace Child musical

20. Marco Clarke – the Boy in the Kennedy Center, US Premiere & New York Riverside shows;

21. Greer Boyle

22. Gwen Ross – DC-based singer of I have a vision

23. Natasha Woollcombe

24. Yevgeny Yevtushenko with Natalia Sats, Children’s musical theatre, Moscow

25. Norma Johnson, Peace Child Tour Director & Orientation expert

26. Rick Staropoli, the intern who went on to produce the landmark Kids on Strike show

27. Rosey Simonds (4 x photos)

28. Sasha – the Russian tour organiser

29. Alexander Malinin – Russian soloist who went on to be a big star in USSR

30. Slava Galinin – young ’86 tour cast member

31. Stas Namin with Kenny Loggins

32. Steve Riffkin with Moosey Friend and a wave

33. Alex Vaubel - Member of the ’85 & ’86 Tour cast;

34. Xenia Kuleshova - Member of the ’85 & ’86 Tour cast;

35. Sandi Croan – Chaperon of the ’85 Tour cast;

Shows and People

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Rosey Simonds, Carlo Grossman
and the City at Peace team

Danaan Parry, with Rosey, Steve and Lucia Effros — Danaan Parry, with Rosey, Steve & Lucia Effros - Danaan was one of Peace Child’s main inspirations in engineering the early US-Soviet Youth Exchanges – and became a great personal friend of David’s, sharing many trips to Moscow with him. Natalia in the middle of the picture was one of our most trusted translators

The Gettysburg Show - The East Coast tour premiered in Harrisburg Pennsylvania – where it was agonisingly bad. Steve Riffkin and David Woollcombe re-wrote it with the cast – and the 2nd performance at Gettysburg was quite good. The day after, the Peace Child cast led a procession to the event marking the 125th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Carl Sagan spoke movingly and Peace Child Cast Member, Ann Cummings, sang the US National Anthem beautifully! (We just had to keep it very secret that Ann was in fact a Canadian!)

Cecilia Asi and Veronica Mone - The Don Richardson Peace Child Story of warring tribes in Papua-New Guinea exchanging babies to cement any peace treaty negotiated between them, has been celebrated in many of our shows. The Pennsylvania team generously sponsored Cecilia and Veronica to come all the way from Papua New Guinea to participate in the East Coast Tour. They were wonderful and sang Dombega - an indigenous song from their culture which became a cast and audience favourite

Peace Child Central America - Launched in Washington DC with Latin American Diaspora youth along with the Nicaraguan daughter of a Washington DC resident who had never seen snow before. This was one of the loveliest Peace Child shows, which toured from Washington DC to Costa Rica to San Francisco and Santa Cruz, California

Royal Albert Hall Cast - Susannah York with some of the cast who brought Peace Child to life memorably on 3 x stages built in London’s Royal Albert Hall on October 30th 1981

Teens on Stage Cast – A successful local production of Peace Child in Baltimore went on to shows in London and Geneva

Frank and Florence Weisfeld - The Weisfeld’s became David’s adopted parents in New York. Their lovely apartment on Central Park West became David’s home from home – and their inspiration and support got Peace Child through many difficult times. Lifelong peace-makers, their support made a huge difference to Peace Child

James Grant of UNICEF meets Peace Child - The legendary Director of UNICEF is the only UN Agency chief ever to have appeared in a Peace Child show in Noordwijk. Jim Grant was a big supporter of Peace Child, as was his deputy, Sir Richard Jolly

Royal Albert Hall Launch of the United Nations International Year of Peace - Peace Child returned to the Royal Albert Hall in 1985, straight after our first US-Soviet performances in Moscow, at the behest of Joyce Pearce, head of the Ockendon Project. It deeply strengthened our relationship with, and support for, the United Nations.

US-Soviet Space Bridge - Vladimir Posner in Moscow, and John Denver in Minneapolis hosted this show which reunited the US-Soviet tour cast of the 1985 tour to pay tribute to the memory of Samantha Smith, an actual Peace Child

Peace Child Family tour to the USSR - The parents of many Peace Child tour participants felt left out of the excitement of going to the USSR – so we created a series of Family Tours to lead them around the places their children had visited. This was the second one, attend by the Katz family, David Woollcombe’s father, Rupert, and Steve Riffkin’s parents, Ethel and Roger. Rupert Woollcombe, a London solicitor, never expected to be photographed alongside Frank Zappa, let alone in Moscow with a Russian rock star, Stas Namin!

San Francisco Democratic Convention Show - The cavernous halls of the Convention Centre in San Francisco rang to the music of Peace Child as Melissa Anderson starred in her first Peace Child show. Produced by Lee Ross, who hosted the Woollcombes in their lovely house in Kentfield, the whole experience was wonderful – apart from the Weather which lived up to Mark Twain’s famous dictum: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer I spent in San Francisco

The 1986 Peace Child US-Soviet Tour Cast bring their songs to the United Nations - The day after our show in New York at the Riverside Church, Chase Manhattan Bank were hosting a celebrity launch of their New York fun run. It was held outside the UN Building with loads of celebrities

Peace Child Around the World! — Peace Child Around the World - Flyers from a few of the many thousand Peace Child shows that have been produced around the world

Peace Child Around the World 2 — Peace Child Around the World - Flyers from a few of the many thousand Peace Child shows that have been produced around the world

Hugs and Happy People

A video showing the joy and passion that Peace Child arouses in its participants – young and old; that undiluted joy that shines from these faces is a testament to the life-changing impact it had on some young people.

[Unlike the Royalty video, we don’t have names for these people – but they are Peace Child heroes and heroines one and all. Also, we know it was not always like that: there were, inevitably, disappointments, Peace Children who became Peace Monsters and political/technical / logistical snafus that made life miserable for some Peace Children and their families. We’re very sorry for that but hey! We try to accentuate the positives!]

Melissa Anderson with Alexander

Melissa was the star of our San Francisco Democratic Convention Show, our 1^st Peace Child visitor to Moscow (on her own bat!) – the star of our Central American Show in DC and of the 1986 US-Soviet tour. There are no real stars of Peace Child because the lives and talents of all children are important – but Melissa’s contribution lives in the minds of all who were lucky enough to see her, or perform with her.

Joy with the Russians

Cast members at the end of a Peace Child show + Steve Riffkin with Stas Namin after singing “Back in the USSR” with Stas’s Soviet rock band… – happy, happy times in the 1980s with our US & Soviet Peace Child friends. Back then, we all felt that Peace would last for-ever. Yet now, peace is more distant than it was then. Our distinguished US trustee, Abbot Washburn, told us to never to shift our focus from US-Russian relations – but we did. We strayed into other areas because our young people wanted us to move on and the Hot war between people and the environment seemed more of a threat once the US-Soviet Cold war was over. But as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett famously agreed, the key to their success lay in that one word: “FOCUS.” So – now we hope that it is not too late to shift that focus back to Superpower relations as we are in the UN Centenary Peace Child.

The Peace Child Royalty Video also shows the less serious...

Never taking ourselves too seriously...

This video of out-takes showing the less serious side of Peace Child: for though we deal with perhaps the most serious existential threats facing all life on this planet, we cannot take ourselves seriously all the time. That’s our composer/lyricist, David Gordon, with his god-daughter, Natasha Woollcombe – who tries not to take him seriously any of the time!!

Wacky Peace Child People