By Patricia Miller
Arts & Entertainment Editor

Nichole Cooper appears as the towering Sand Queen, who threatens to cut off the Shadow Fairy's wings. Priests Miriam Cohen, left, and Damian Leuthold attend to her.

Old hippies rejoice. Or grumble if that feels better these days. A new generation is retooling all you held dear.

Or, if you've always wanted to be an old hippy but missed out, here's your tuition.

A local group of players has tie dye for you. They have a world like Tolkein's, or at least one that's trying to be like Tolkein's. They have color and puppets and players on stilts and cross-cultural references and music from the Indian subcontinent - just like the '60s.

Six years ago Alix Oliszewski, the show's writer and director, started improvising around the theme of light and shadow. He even gave his creation a '60s name, "Penumbra."

As you'll doubtless remember from reading your dictionary, a penumbra can be the light surrounding the shadow the moon casts during an eclipse. It can be the less dark region surrounding the dark center of a sunspot or it can be a vague, indefinite, borderline area.

This playwright knows how to do themes.

Miriam Cohen plays a masked priest in "Penumbra," a production at the Abbey Theatre that incorporates Catholic, Jewish and Pagan ceremonial motifs.

Oliszewski is one of a trio of old Fort Lewis hands behind "Penumbra." LeAnn Brubaker produced a close relation of the current production at the college four years ago as "The Boy and the Rainbow." She's the technical designer this time. Stacey Sotosky, the producer, joined "the collective dream" more recently. Twenty to 25 people are working in the cast and crew.

They intend to "marry guided meditation with beautiful aesthetic moments," Oliszewski said at the rehearsal on Friday.

The plot has to do with two fairies, one of whom is delivered by his father to have his wings cut off by the Sand Queen.

"You can guess I still have circumcision issues," Oliszewski said. "And my mother's coming to the play." There's a boy who knows how to keep a grudge perking.

At the rehearsal, the Sand Queen was an imposing figure on stilts - masked, gloved, bejeweled, skirted and wearing a lacy cardinal's hat. She waved a scimitar covered in tin foil. The queen was attended by two hieratic, menacing priests flinging incense and holy water. The performers will all wear masks and won't say lines. Many are dancers rather than actors.

Ecclesiastical echoes from various religions dot the production. There's the Jewish bris or circumcision service, from which Oliszewski's problems may stem, a Catholic Mass and a pagan funeral. Thundering voices on the sound track intone sacred words while kaleidoscopic images play across the stage.

Right on, sister. Pass that bong. Peace.

Reach Arts & Entertainment Editor Patricia Miller here .