Farm Arts Collective to Present Newest Installment of DREAM ON THE FARM
The adventure follows the two scientists who are tasked to take a competitive fact-finding journey across the farm with the audience in tow.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Jul. 20, 2021
Farm Arts Collective, an ensemble of performers and farmers (they call themselves perfarmers) will premiere its newest performance installment of Dream on the Farm August 4th at its home on Willow Wisp Organic Farm. The ensemble-devised performance will run for 5 performances until August 8th.
Farm Arts Collective artistic director Tannis Kowalchuk is a long- time theatre maker and co-owner of Willow Wisp Organic Farm (the farm can be found at both Union Square and Grand Army Plaza Farmers markets). She has attracted and trained an ensemble of over 25 actors, musicians, stilt walkers and writers, many of them farmers, to create original site-specific performances.
The collective operates out of a theatre venue located in a greenhouse on Willow Wisp Organic Farm, and was founded as an agri-cultural organization in 2018 with a mission to intersect farming, performance, food, and ecology as life- sustaining practice for the community.
Kowalchuk and the ensemble have committed to presenting a decalogue of plays about climate change from 2020-2030 titled Dream on the Farm. This August will be the second performance installment of the climate change-themed series.
The Dream on the Farm 2021 storyline follows the journey of two scientists, Carl Sagan and Lynn Margulis, deceased American scientists who were, at one time, married. The microbiologist and the astronomer, played by Jess Beveridge as Margulis and Hudson Williams-Eynon as Sagan, are reunited in a boxing ring by a ringmaster referee played by Tannis Kowalchuk to compete in a sport in which the referee challenges them to "help save life on the planet."
The adventure follows the two scientists who are tasked to take a competitive fact-finding journey across the farm with the audience in tow. The microbiologist, Lynn Margulis meets a microbe on the farm's compost pile; a funghi on a decomposing log; an exhausted hungry butterfly singing her lament in a field of flowers; and a corn escaping the monoculture of an industrial farm. On the other side of the farm, the astronomer Carl Sagan meets the Atmosphere, a beatnik in a greenhouse smoking a hookah; the Hydrosphere, an dancing stilt walker kicking up a storm; and Sonny, a man designing a way to escape planet earth, like a billionaire space explorer (except he is not a billionaire).
The performance, filled with original music played live by musicians and composed by ensemble composers Doug Rogers and Rima Fand draws on themes that explore the world through two lenses -the microscope and the telescope. The competition concludes with the scientists presenting their findings to the judges in a climatic dance of ecology, and the results deliver a climate change message that is urgent and poignant.
The performance Dream on the Farm runs August 4-8 at Farm Arts Collective on Willow Wisp Organic Farm at 7 PM.
Tickets online at www.farmartscollective.org
Location: 38 Hickory Lane, Damascus, PA 18415
917-566-7698 for more information
Farm Arts Collective Creative team:
Tannis Kowalchuk (artistic director), Mim McGurl (dramaturg, co-director), Melissa Bell, (writer) Manon Manavit (writer/dance director), Rima Fand (composer), Doug Rogers (composer), Hudson Williams-Eynon (writer/actor) Jess Beveridge (actor/production manager) Sue Currier (costumes) Ace Thomas (technical director) Ginny Hack (stage manager actor)
Actor-Creators: Jess Beveridge, Marguerite Boissonault, Michael Chojnicki, Gregg Erickson, Annie Hat, Karen Hudson, Julia Kerhely, Tannis Kowalchuk, Daniel Lendzian, Jessica Lopez-Barkl, John Roth, Gary Silien, Bobby Skotch, Hudson Williams-Eynon, Stefanie Workman
Musicians: Pam Arnold Max Carmack
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