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The Upside

Using humor to cope

A sign for the times.

Sydney Kook walking "Hutch" and Niciole Troia walk under a sign of the times at The Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville.
Sydney Kook walking "Hutch" and Niciole Troia walk under a sign of the times at The Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville.Read moreSTEVEN M. FALK / Staff Photographer

The sign at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville is one for the times and a great play off the 1977 American sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The film, written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starred Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary, an everyday kinda guy from Indiana who has an encounter with an unidentified flying object. Neary went on to try to establish contact with alien intelligence.

The film inspired children across the country to mimic a memorable scene when Neary tried to sculpt, out of mashed potatoes, the iconic geological formation from Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming.