With "Guía Show":

The cast of Guía Tour will soon expand their act to other tourist attractions.

The Old Quarter, Casco Viejo, is coming back to life, not only with its increasing number of remodelled colonial townhouses, but with history set to theater. Approximately 20 young Panamanian actors and afficionados are part of "Guía Show", a troupe which recreates some of the most memorable chapters of Isthmian history.

Guía Show is the brainchild of Javier Anaya, a tour guide of the Panama Canal's Miraflores Locks who has produced a show that mixes historic accuracy, clean humor and public interaction.

Tours start at Casa Góngora, an 18th-century Spanish mansion, and continue with humorous skits, speeches on the narrow streets of San Felipe and ending with a grand ball at Cathedral Plaza.

Two beautiful society girls of San Felipe. Back them was Panama as warm as it is today?

One of the scenes depicted is that of the execution, by firing squad, of Victoriano Lorenzo, a guerrilla leader of the War of the Thousand Days (a civil war fought when Panama was still a Colombian province) whose death was one of the factors leading to Panama's independence. The shooting takes place in the exact location of the 1903 execution, on the French Plaza.

Other tableaux include the reading of the Declaration of Indepence (which took place on November 3, 1903) and renditions of day-to-day living in San Felipe, the well-to-do neighborhood where all the important families lived in the early-20th-century Panama City.

The complete, two-hour tours are offered in Spanish, English and French and cost US$35.00 per person. The troupe also expects to extend its act to the ruins of Portobelo, in Colón, and Old Panama, where the show will take a Spanish-colonial twist.

www.guiashow.net, or call: 390-4245

A ball at Cathedral Plaza.

Complete tours take between two and three hours.