Less violent, but no less eerie, was a teenage girl with Down’s syndrome who suddenly lolloped up to me on a sidewalk in Tacoma, Washington – I being then a morose and moony college student – and kissed me on the cheek.

The history of these televised contests can be, in part, traced back to holiday camps, according to Annette Hill, professor of media and communication at Lund University, Sweden: The best talent shows are great entertainment, full of warmth and empathy, she says. If you look back at Butlins in the UK in the 1930s and 1940s, it was mainly a working-class holiday camp that offered a whole entertainment experience and at the heart of it were the people known as the Red Coats, who had to provide a warmth of atmosphere.

In the fall and winter I shot in the lagoons and in the harbor of Greytown blue-wing and green-wing teal and gadwalls; also sickle-bill curlews, peeps or least sandpipers, and brownbacks or grass birds.

His cast and Ms. Romero offered advice and insights on everything from the kind of coat that a central character would wear to the staging of the juba, an African dance at the end of Act I.