A Post-Show Blog Post (Jennie)

Two months have passed since the final performance of Farms & Fables.  In that time, I have been on family vacation, fought my way through piles of receipts registered in three different Quicken accounts, written final reports to funders, returned props and held post-mortem meetings, attended a professional development workshop vibrantly focused on The Future, and kept a cheerful holiday in my home. 

Waiting for preset . . .

Two months have passed, and I am still working on the project, but not working on it.  Looking back to analyze and describe, looking forward to discern What Comes Next.  Taking time to go on long walks with my son, and stressing over that $7.14 that doesn’t belong here!  People ask me if Farms & Fables will continue, what the next project will be, how did it go?  I have some reasonably truthful answers stowed for emergencies in my back pocket but really I’m just buying time until I can change the subject.  For me this is a time of not knowing, not thinking, not answering.  It is a time of In-Betweens, of Not Really, of Maybe, and I’ll Think About It. 

Emily preps the cast for dress rehersal.

Mostly I'm enjoying the freedom of not thinking a whole lot about it.  But sometimes it surprises me to realize that the door really is not closed.  Agricultural news still catches my eye and raises a flurry of active questioning, changing my perspective slightly on the stories that have seeped under my skin.  I stumbled upon this article the other day: Blue Hill Farmer.  And then there is this: Saco Farm.  I know from both Penny and Steph that this is the week of the Ag Trades Show – it’s happening now! – and I find myself wondering: should I go?  Maybe I should go . . . I read a newsletter from the Scarborough Land Trust and it launched me into a twenty-minute monologue to my husband over dinner, on date night.  “Sheesh,” I finish, gulping plum wine.  “We could write another whole play!” 

Emma's "Dress Rehearsal Face"

Claire's "Dress Rehearsal Face"

Neftali's "Dress Rehearsal Face"

Jesse's "Dress Rehearsal Face"

This process of processing, of stepping back to get a better view, of identifying the lessons and the successes, of remembering the triumphs and marveling at the sheer quantity of new experiences, cannot be rushed.  In truth, no part of this particular project could ever stand to be rushed.  We cannot hurry our assessment of treasured moments, painful failures and inordinate joys.  The journey has been too complex, too fleshy.  I confess I do feel a pressure to understand the full impact of the Farms & Fables process now.  To assess its value.  To summarize success and failure for myself and for every remotely interested passerby.  And yet it will not be rushed. 

And so I wait.  In the meantime, to aid our process of remembering and to share another piece of our production with those who could not see it, here are some photographs, which somehow never made it onto this blog:

Flora and Claire - "What do think this growing season will be like?"

Juan Bobo

Strawberries!

Full Cast Finale

Flora helps with strike.

And now it's gone . . .

Dog Wants Out Wants In! (Seth Asa)

I'm so excited about this post I'm putting part of it in large print...

On Saturday, October 29th, at 6:30pm, before the Of Farms and Fables evening performance, the music group Dog Wants Out will treat us to a live acoustic performance!

Dog Wants Out has been performing their brand of Alternative "Funtry" music for Farmer's Markets and local food events to help promote local agriculture and healthy, sustainable living.  They have graciously provided us with original recordings, from their upcoming album for use in our production.  For more information about Dog Wants Out, please see my earlier blog post and/or listen to my phone interview with John Zavodny on the Production Audio widget (right-hand column).

Sound/Sight/Thought Bytes from Cue-to-Cue (Cory)

CLACK. Door opens.
CLACK. And closes.

"We're at five." "Thank you, five."

"Going dark onstage."

Stacy plops a bag of Broadturn-spiced popcorn down on the tech table, next to the dregs of a bag of chocolate-covered gummi bears and a box of day-old Dunkin Donuts coffee; Jennie gasps a happy greeting for "the best popcorn in the world."

"Are these pink?" asks Flora, fingering the set's four fabric rows. "No, they're white, that's the lights," says Emily.

CLACK.
CLACK.

"Heather, what kind of gobo is that?"
"It's called 'sponge.' It's slightly out of focus, too."
"I like that."

Tali in a red hoodie and blue baseball cap. Emma's paint-stained pants and crocs. Claire with a floppy-brimmed hat, whispering with checkered-dressed Flora in the center vom. Penny in her "Karen" digs, plain waitress's clothing - and divested of her usual Penny costume: her khakis, her boots, and her iPhone, which she leaves with me.

"Are we good in here for places?"
"We are. I just need to use the bathroom. Oh, and I need to pile that stuff in the barn real quick."

Penny paces a moment. Stacy, sitting in the audience, encourages, "Just look out here and find my face." "Oh, I'm planning to," Penny replies. "Every time."

CLACK.
CLACK.

All actors onstage. Where's Jennie? Milling, murmuring, nerves. Emily instructs everybody to "just stand still one moment while I get my head on."

CLACK.
CLACK.

"It's a totally different vibe tonight," Stacy says to me.
"Yeah. Completely different feel."

Emily: "These are our rehearsal fence posts. The real ones are on the way. Please note that the REAL fence has five posts, not four."
Chris: "I can't work this way!"
Laughter.

CLACK.
"Can we tape that thing?" Seth storms to the offending door with a roll of gaff tape. "Oh, no. It's that kind of door."
CLACK.

Emily's head is now on.
"All right, let's get set for the top of the show."

Sound, preshow: go.
Who's your farmer? sings Dog Wants Out. Who's your farmer?
The preshow sequence ends.

A lot of things have changed about this play from Draft 1 to Draft 2 to Draft 3.
But the opening moment is something that hasn't changed.

Just past dawn. A field of weeds and two workers – OMAR and RAMÓN.

They stretch.
They spritz themselves with bug repellant.
They pull on plastic gloves – snap!
OMAR puts in iPod earbuds.
The workers begin weeding.

In our very first script conversations, Claire, Jennie and I dreamed up a pair of "weeders" who would weed throughout the play. The image was important to me and my understanding of the structure of a farm, as something with two different trajectories: one forward-moving and innovative, the other cyclical, conservative, sustaining. I wrote that moment in January - the very first chunk of script to make it from my head to the page, and one of the very few to remain essentially untouched, as-is, through the performance draft. And we just got to see it pop off the page, in vibrant sound and color, for the first time.

Tech's the day where the creative juices flowing from all the artists hard at work on a play come together for the first time to marinate the play in a giant vat of courage, risk, color, and heart. Words meet actors meet music meet lights meet puppets meet costumes meet scenery meet movement and, as a whole, become more than their sum.

One ingredient's still missing: people to watch it happen. On Thursday, we toss that into the pot, ready or not.

A Chance to See (Jennie)

Today, today is the day of our long-awaited Load-In.  I have been in the theater, what used to be the Great Room at Camp Ketcha, all day and I imagine I’ll be here well into the night.  All around me there is activity.  Seth and Heather building and testing at the tech table, Perry and Chris rigging The Barn, Gregg hanging curtains in the hall’s massive windows to block light during our matinee performances. 

I took a break about an hour ago and went out for a walk on the Camp Ketcha grounds.  I was in need of fresh air and the last of the day’s light.  There’s a trail across the fields that heads out through the camp’s ropes course in the woods, past a pond and across the Libby River Farm, owned by the Scarborough Land Conservation Trust, ending at the Scarborough Marsh.  The Libby River in its current honorific is named for my ancestor some twelve generations back, a Mr. John Libby, who settled on Pine Point in 1632. 

When I left the room, I had no idea where I was headed or how long I would be gone.  I emerged from the woods into a clearing with a stalwart pine on its southern border.  I rounded a bend and passed through long grasses, bittersweet popping like fire to my left and right.  Burning bush, deeper maroon and purple, hunched low in the cattails.  I was careful to keep my feet dry.  As I walked, I thought about journeys. Discoveries made, unexpected surprises: a stand of birch with a dozen leaves remaining on their topmost branches, saluting the season, beckoning nightfall.  A nervous Penny Jordan staunchly delivering her lines and creatively concocting solutions through a minefield of dropped cues.  Eddie Benson and his daughter Kati, in my rehearsal room, coaching our actors in the staging of a cow chase.

  

I thought about journeys: how we start without knowing, how we traverse multiple subtle landscapes, how we find comfort in reminders of home.  I walked steadily across land once roamed by generations of my own family, unsure of my goal but purposeful in uncertainty, remembering beginnings, honoring passage.  Nearing the marsh at the end of the trail I felt my pace quicken with anticipation of the finish and when I reached it I discovered: an observation deck.  A place to gain perspective. 

Why do I make community-based theater?  What has been the value of my Farms & Fables journey?  Only a bit of perspective.  Only a chance to see, with eyes that are cleared with wonder: a complex, delicate, and vital ecosystem of human relationships, and a collaborative creation of great beauty.

THANK YOU to Mike Vance, Mike Hahn, Bill Hahn, Cheryl Laz, Johnny Speckman, and Claire's friends for all of their help with Load-In today!

The Final Countdown (Claire)

We're in full swing here in Farms and Fables land and I mean FULL. With only eight days left until this play is OVER, and we're doing our darnedest to make sure to make them count, and life is a flurry- no a blizzard of activity: Seth mixes audio on the fly while we run the play over and over again, nailing down the details and picking up cues, and while Cory is putting the finishing touches on the program, Jennie is making plans for our last few of rehearsals, and I run around like a chicken with no head, gathering last minute props and touching up puppets. Even my grammar is going full blast- what a run-on sentence!

My emotions are a pendulum. At one extreme, a constant urge to go faster, and get more and more accomplished. "ONLY EIGHT MORE DAYS! GO! GO!" I hear over and over as I work- my life is a rock anthem, and this is it's theme song:

On the other hand, I have sudden fits of wallow-y, petulant and nostalgia-soaked stubbornness that screams "Noooooooooooo!!!!!" at the thought of this project ending. This side of me wants to curl up in a blanket, make a scrap book out of everything that this project has been and slow the remaining seconds down to a snail's pace so I can savor absolutely everything there is to savor.

Of course, I have no control over any of this. Time marches on at it's own pace, whizzing past in a dizzying frenzy of to-do lists and rehearsals. We're on lunch break right now in yet another marathon rehearsal day and the chatter ranges from a discussion of our sandwiches to cues that we have just run.

Emma and I are siting next to each other and while she plays me her new favorite song from her computer she makes this beautiful comparison: Autumn corresponds with the end of the show. She calls it, "the end of the glorious season and ephemeral perfume that is summer. Farmers slow down and relax after the hectic sprint that is summer, and at the end of the show the actors from Farms and Fables will be able to too." Imagine that.

I much my sandwich, make a few adjustments to my to-do lists, Emma goes back to homework. Emily groans: We've got ten more minutes left in our break. You can feel the mood shift as we all hunker down- heads down, noses to the grind stone. And in my head, the anthem starts up again.... "its the fi-nal count down! Bah-duh BAH BUH! Bah- Duh- Bup-Bup-Bah!....."

They're Growing Music! (Seth Asa)

In my teen years, my mother was a writer for The Journal Tribune. I spent afternoons at the newspaper office in Biddeford, browsing promotional CD's by aspiring bands hoping to be reviewed. Later, as a WBLM intern, I made my way through more promotional CD's never destined for 100,000 Watts of Rock N Roll airwaves. I analyzed combinations of appealing band names, cover artwork, and song titles, and chose my auditions accordingly. Using this system, I found some of my most enduring favorites.

Part of my duty as Sound Designer for Of Farms and Fables is to help choose music for the show.

I began on the information superhighway, cruising for Maine bands and songs about farming. With blazing fast speed, I was directed to www.reverbnation.com/dogwantsoutband and the music of Dog Wants Out. Loved the name. Loved the artwork. Loved the song titles. As I listened to Moo for Me, Who's Your Farmer? and Pickle You, I felt I had discovered a musical voice for the show. Upon visiting www.dogwantsout.org, I learned of our shared goal for the promotion of local agriculture, farms, and farmers.

Jennie and I struck up a dialogue with John Zavodny of Dog Wants Out regarding our desire to use DWO's music for Of Farms and Fables. Not only was John open to the idea, he provided several additional as-yet-unpublished recordings for our use!

It is a rare blessing, when searching through band names, artwork, and song titles, to discover real people and to make new relationships. We are fortunate to have been given access to advance recordings intended for the forthcoming Dog Wants Out album, "The Farm Market Waltz."

To hear an audio piece featuring clips from "The Farm Market Waltz" with excerpts from a phone interview with John Zavodny of Dog Wants Out, simply follow the link below or use the "Production Audio" widget in the column on the right-hand side of the page.


http://soundcloud.com/sethasa/john-zavodny-on-dog-wants-out


Dog Wants Out plays "Alternative Funtry Music" with a folk sensibility. Their set list is designed to provide hum-along opportunities for the farmer's market crowd and includes "He Thinks my Tractor's Sexy," "Who's Your Farmer?" "Melt with You," and "Harvest Moon."

Dog Wants Out is Amy Arnett on Fiddle, Anna McGalliard on banjo and washboard, Chris Marshall on bass, Sara Trunzo singing and playing the mandolin, Cody Zane on suitcase trapset, and John Zavodny on guitar and vocal.

WERU Community Radio is the Media Partner for the Dog Wants Out Farmer's Market Tour (www.weru.org).

Dog Wants Out is an initiative of the Maine Community Music Project, a Unity Barn Raiser's Program (www.unitybarnraisers.org).
To learn more about Dog Wants Out, please visit:

www.dogwantsout.org
www.facebook.com/dogwantsout ("Like!")

Changing Seasons and Roles (Cory)

I've been quiet on the blog but very much present on the project, more present physically than I've been since leaving Maine last August - living again in Portland, settling into the next and new stage of my playwright role, and watching in rehearsals as the characters in our play enter their own next stage of development - now, largely, out of my hands.


Parts of these characters were once farmers and farm workers I've met or characters from stories and articles that I've read. Then they became a chorus of voices clamoring in the blank space between thought and page, a jumble of emotions and motivations of which I had to make sense. Now they're undergoing a final metamorphosis. The actors are molding their own three-dimensional figures from my two-dimensional pages of words. Sidney's a smart spunky redhead, a hand-talker with a jutting hip and a flint-hard squint when she's working on a problem or trying to figure somebody out. Walker is tall and lanky, spry and wry, with a half-grin and an unapologetic vulnerability. Uncle Ed relishes the taste of certain words like sweet and sticky taffy and has moments of delighting in his own power over Mitch. The people of Farms & Fables are inflating to round and full with life - and now and then, Jennie and I hear the hiss of air escaping, evidence of a hole we have to plug up.

What do I do as the playwright during this new and final stage?

Help plug those holes (it's a team effort between playwright, director, and actor: this week, Jennie, Harley, and I are tackling Uncle Ed).

Tweak roles to fit the realistic abilities of a five-year-old performer.

Adjust language to reflect the reality of the community - whether it's changing "driveway" to "dooryard" (thanks, Stacy), reworking Karen's exhortations to her daughter about college as per Penny's insight, or taking out "bananas in the shade" when Jae says it doesn't feel real.

Answer questions about motivation or backstory, when I can.

Work with Seth, our sound designer, to interview farmers for material for our interludes.

Man our booth at farmers' markets.

Attend Green Drinks with Kati Benson King and hand out postcards.

Be ready to become Emily's ASM (helping to tape the space, carry props, be on book) or Jennie's AD (coming up/leading exercises, solving blocking problems) or Claire's pasty-handed chauffeur at a moment's notice.

Teach my playwriting workshop at The Telling Room to a group of very cool and open-minded teens.

There's a black fabric that's used widely in agriculture, a woven plastic that covers a bed with holes cut or burned into it, at intervals. Those are the holes where you plant your plants and grow what you're growing. The fabric has the benefit of greatly minimizing the amount of weeding that you have to do. It also has drawbacks: it can protect and foster pests, keep the soil from drying and block its absorption of healthful sunlight.

A bed of peppers on Jordan's Farm. Photo: Claire Guyer.

Depending on the weather conditions and on the season, the benefits of using fabric or plastic on beds can outweigh the disadvantages - or vice versa. During my last weeks on Ryder Farm this season, we spent a lot of time pulling up fabric. It had gotten us through the weedy spring but was causing problems in the wet summer and into early autumn, keeping the soil wet and letting root-gnawing pests thrive.

The technique of sitting alone at my desk wrestling with the script was what the play needed for a while, but solo writing season is over. Now we've torn up the fabric. What this dirt needs is sun.

...And, in less than two weeks, an audience. Don't forget to reserve your tickets.