Weekly Feed: El Teatro Campesino, Protecting The Reservation, Realities of Local Food, and more

 El Teatro Campesino Founder Luis Valdez

Each week we present a compendium of links and perspectives offered daily on our Rural Arts and Culture Feed. We encourage folks who have upcoming events (local or national) to contribute to The Daily Yonder Calendar. 

By Rachel Rudi, Digital Contributor

• El Teatro Campesino has created powerful, boundary-crossing work in San Juan Bautista, California for over forty years. Below, composer Daniel Valdez discussing Cancion De San Juan: Oratorio of a Mission Town.

Story One: The Research from El Teatro Campesino on Vimeo.

From the Cancion De San Juan online exhibition:

Through CANCIÓN DE SAN JUAN: ORATORIO OF A MISSION TOWN, El Teatro Campesino and composer Daniel Valdez hoped to honor history’s forgotten voices by telling human stories through music and images – evoking the moments and memories of real people who lived and died staking a claim to this little corner of the world. Together these stories, researched and collected by current residents of San Juan Bautista, were woven into an epic tapestry that unfolded as a paean to the rise, fall and constant rebirth of a small town in all its multicultural glory. CANCIÓN DE SAN JUAN: ORATORIO OF A MISSION TOWN explored the many transformations experienced by the people of this region – and their perseverance, resilience and stubborn refusal to cease existing in the face of overwhelming odds.

• "I wish a lot of people could see this. This is something that's going on in the reservation: This don't look too cool." Appalling news from Wyoming: 

Loophole Lets Toxic Flow Over Indian Land, Elizabeth Shogren, NPR

• "A hundred years ago, when extension was founded, one-third of our nation's population was involved in agriculture.... We need extension today, more than ever, because our society is growing not only in size, but also in the nature and complexity of its problems:"

Extension Programs, Now A Century Old, Remain Relevant as They Face New Challenges, Speaker Says, Scott Carlson, Chronicle of Higher Education 

• Shelby Grebenc, a Colorado poultry farmer in her teens, writes beautifully in The Denver Post: "If you want sustainable, wholesome, pasture-raised organic, hormone- and antibiotic-free food, you have to support it. You cannot get these things by talking about it and not paying for it."

• A must-read: During World War II, the Rowher and Jerome camps in Arkansas housed over 16,000 Japanese Americans. An intern at the University of Arkansas's Institute on Race and Ethnicity considers the legacy of these camps and their relation to contemporary American life:

Reflections on Rowher, Jessica Yamane, The Boiled Down Juice

• "Even as cities from Philadelphia to Chicago to Detroit mobilize to hydrate the food deserts, it's becoming clear that even if you make fresh produce affordable, people may not buy it."  

Cheaper Fruit and Vegetables Alone Can't Save Food Deserts, Eliza Barclay, NPR

• "Kultivator is an experimental cooperation of organic farming and visual art practice, situated in rural village Dyestad, on the Island of Oland on the southeast coast of Sweden. By installing certain functions in abandoned farm facilities, near to the active agriculture community, Kultivator provides a meeting and workign space that points out the parallels between provision production and art practice, between concrete and abstract processes for survival Kultivator initiates and executes  meetings between idealism and realism, hoping that fruitful cooperations should should take form." 

• "The joy is not just for me, it's for others too. The colors do that. Mural art is transforming small-town Martin, Tennessee." 

Colorful Murals a Welcome Addition to the Landscape of Martin, Sandy Koch, NWTN Today 

• Welcome to Shelbyville "takes an intimate look at a southern town as its residents – whites and African =Americans, Latinos and Somalis – grapple with their beliefs, their histories and their evolving ways of life:"

• Mark Your Calendars: The 2012 Rural Arts & Culture Summit will happen this June 5–6, in Morris, Minnesota, hosted by the Center for Small Towns at University of Minnesota-Morris. We will be sharing much more on this event in the coming months -- please plan to join us there!

• This week in 1975, Waylon's "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" was the number one country single in the land. Via the essential Southern Folklife Collection:

Double Weekly Feed: Wild Girls, Our Town, Native Ground, Westbrook Artists, and more

 International Sonoran Desert Alliance, recipient of a NEA Our Town grant

By Rachel Beth Rudi, Digital Contributor

• Congratulations to our colleague Mary Stewart Atwell, whose debut novel Wild Girls was recently published by Scribner. "Fire-lit from start to finish, Wild Girls is a story of Appalachian magic, conflagration, and supernatural violence," writes Swamplandia! author Karen Russell. Around Art of the Rural, we call it The Appalachian Anti-Twilight. Check out the book trailer below, directed by Charlie Cline:


Wild Girls by Mary Stewart Atwell Book Trailer from Charlie Cline on Vimeo.

• GALA Hispanic Theatre is bringing a reality of rural Southwestern culture to audiences in Washington, D.C. via the Mexican dance company Teatro Linea de Sombra and their newest multimedia program. Celia Wren offers this introduction in The Washington Post: "a theatrical meditation on the harsh realities that face undocumented migrants and their families, “Amarillo” also features projections, throat singing, a surveillance camera, 100 water bottles, a 15-foot-high wall that actors climb and bounce off – and a poem by Harold Pinter." 

This event was made possible, as Wren writes, thanks to "Southern Exposure: Performing Arts of Latin America, a program of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, supports U.S. arts presenters that band together to bring Latin American performers to this country."

 

• National Endowment for the Arts Our Town grants fund creative placemaking projects that enliven communities through vibrant and sustainable art. Information is available online, and two webinars are scheduled to aid in the application process. 

November 6: 
http://artsgov.adobeconnect.com/our-town-guidelines-nov6/ 

November 13:  
http://artsgov.adobeconnect.com/our-town-guidelines-nov13/

Rural projects have been prominently featured in this program in the past, so folks should consider applying. We will be featuring much more information on the Our Town program in the weesks to come.

• The folks at Dust-to-Digital are directing a new non-profit, Music Memory, which will feature an expansive digital database that "will serve as a musical Rosetta Stone for future generations by showing the links and cross-influences of the many musical styles captured on phonograph records in the first half of the 20th century."

• "I'm not nothin' new 'cause I'm black. Bill Pickett was black. He was one of the greatest rodeo acts of all time. A black man, DeFord Bailey, was the first country-music superstar ever. I'm just doing what the greats have already done before me."

Wild Bill Young infuses his country singing, and his strutting, with elements of hip-hop and rap, a mixture of the musics and lifestyles of his Missouri childhood, and has found he is able to defy racist stereotypes and expand cultural understanding among the audiences he performs for across the country. Calvin Cox offers a profile in The Riverfront Times.

• On Native Ground "captures a demographic of youth through elders, and reaches past all cultural and ethnic barriers, by highlighting positive role models and current and historical events that are uniquely Native American." 

Here's the premiere episode, first broadcast on First Nations Experience on October 24:


On Native Ground vol 1 from jack kohler on Vimeo.
 

• Don't Forget This Song, the Carter Family comic book, is out now – complete with a CD of eleven rare radio recordings. Says American Songwriter Magazine: "Affectionate and admiring, The Carter Family: Don’t Forget This Song captures the family’s rise to success through numerous struggles as well as the enduring power of music and love." 

 selection from Don't Forget This Song

• Check out this great write-up on Brian Frink and Rural America Contemporary Art in The Free Press of Mankato, Minnesota. We encourage folks to check out the amazing range of work presented on the gorgeous new RACA site -- and stay tuned, RACA is about to debut its online magazine!

• Located in Madison County, Iowa, The Westbrook Artists' Site operates as "a project for exploration of the post-industrial rural condition." We are excited about their mission statement: 

The Westbrook Artists’ Site (WAS) explores the continuity between rural and urban contexts. If the rural is typically viewed as what was left behind in the process of urbanization, WAS insists, to the contrary, that rural life and landscape need to be seen as vital parts of a system that is urban and rural. WAS cultivates art and design as purposeful interventions within such an interconnected system. The WAS project mission challenges participants to find and explore the connective tissue binding rural and urban worlds and to create modes of address that speak from a rural landscape to both rural and urban audiences. 

• "Big Tex – his mouth moved as he uttered ‘Howdy, folks!’ – was celebrating its, or his, 60th birthday. But on Friday, Big Tex caught fire and was all but destroyed in the flames and thick smoke. His fiberglass head, hat and boots were consumed, as were most of his fabric clothes, leaving only his outstretched arms, belt buckle and metal skeleton intact." Folks can read Manny Fernandez's piece New York Times story here.

Left, LM Otero, Associated Press; right, John McKibben, Associated Press

Readings: A Route on the Map: Italo Calvino and Double Edge Theatre

Photographs of The Grand Parade; Maria Baranova

In our Readings series, we offer selections from visual and printed texts that offer perspectives, expand dialogues, and challenge assumptions. Today we feature the photography of Maria Baranova,  from Double Edge Theatre's rehearsals for The Grand Parade (of the Twentieth Century): "an original, multi-disciplinary piece of theatre" that imagines the life and art of Marc Chagall alongside the shifting cultural tides of the last century. The piece is directed by Stacy Klein, with music composed by Alexander Bakshi.

 

Alongside this work, we offer the closing paragraphs of Invisible Cities, the seminal story cycle by Italo Calvino consisting of a series of conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Polo's ever-expanding descriptions of magical and diverse cities is revealed, by the close of the book, to be facets of a single place.

••••••••••

The Great Khan's atlas contains also the maps of the promised lands visited in thought but not yet discovered or founded: New Atlantis, Utopia, the City of the Sun, Oceana, Tamoé, New Harmony, New Lanarck, Icaria.

Kublai asked Marco: "You, who go about exploring and who see signs, can tell me towards which of these futures the favouring winds are driving us." 


"For these ports I could not draw a route on the map or set a date for the landing. At times all I need is a brief glimpse, an opening in the midst of an incongruous landscape, a glint of lights in the fog, the dialogue of two passersby meeting in the crowd, and I think that, setting out from there, I will put together, piece by piece, the perfect city, made of fragments mixed with the rest, of instants separated by intervals, of signals one sends out, not knowing who receives them. If I tell you that the city towards which my journey tends is discontinuous in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for it can stop. Perhaps while we speak, it is rising, scattered, within the confines of your empire; you can search for it, but only in the way I have said."

Already the Great Khan was leafing through his atlas, over the maps of the cities that menace in nightmares and maledictions: Enoch, Babylon, Yahooland, Butua, Brave New World. 


He said: "It is all useless, if the last landing-place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us."

And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognise who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

Related Articles:

Double Edge Theatre and The Grand Parade

The Odyssey of Double Edge Theatre

Invisible Cities, Invisible Country

Double Edge Theatre and The Grand Parade

photograph from The Grand Parade rehearsals; Double Edge Theatre

The Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater has just announced that Double Edge Theatre will offer the world premiere of The Grand Parade (of the Twentieth Century) February 6-10 in Washington, DC. Inspired by Marc Chagall's paintings,  this piece offers a narrative of the twentieth century that The Arena Stage has described as "an emotionally stunning journey through the 20th century with the use of aerial flight, puppetry and music."

As we've written previously, Double Edge is a one-of-a-kind theatre company that lives, trains, and farms in Ashfield, Massachusetts. Not only are they one of the most powerful examples of "laboratory theater" in this country, but they also focus on the idea of "living culture," consistently asking how themselves how they can engage with local communities. This documentary excerpt begins to tell the story. 

Here is more information from the Arena Stage's press release:

The Grand Parade is conceived and directed by Double Edge Theatre Founder and Artistic Director Stacy Klein and is created with Carlos Uriona, Matthew Glassman, Hayley Brown, Jeremy Louise Eaton, Adam Bright and Milena Dabova. The show is realized with a collaborative team of artists from the United States, Argentina and Russia and features original compositions by Alexander Bakshi of Russia.

The Grand Parade creates a mythology of the American century and its Russian counterpart, from the story of Evelyn Nesbit in the 1900s to the fall of the Wall to the Supreme Court Gore v. Bush decision in 2000. This imaginative, kaleidoscopic mashup of the century echoes Chagall’s life, which spanned from 1887 to 1985, and summons the artist’s sensibilities and personal memories.

“Work on The Grand Parade has been a wild and revelatory experience, from learning that women are still facing the same century long struggle, and that lessons of war and economy have gone unheeded, to the amazement and sheer fun of peoples’ continued attempts to fly, to invent, and to laugh in spite of it all,” says Klein. “With Chagall as our muse, we have dared our way through the century’s chaos, trying to find our own thousand ways to fly.”

More coverage of The Grand Parade is forthcoming; until then, many gorgeous photographs from the rehearsals in Ashfield can be found on Double Edge's Facebook page, along with recent news of their upcoming training intensive and their critically-acclaimed summer spectacles on the farm.

Related Articles:

The Odyssey of Double Edge Theatre

In Brief: Odysseys, Brown Revolutions, Rural Druggists, Towns Running Their Age, and Some Resurrection Blues

Jim Howell, Brandon Dalton, and Zachary Jones, Horse Creek, SD; Lisa M. Hamilton

• Double Edge Theatre has just released a gorgeous slideshow of images taken from the preparation for, and performances of, this summer's Odyssey spectacle. We've previously written about their visionary work here: 

• Here's Lisa M. Hamilton, setting the scene for her recent Atlantic article "The Brown Revolution: Increasing Agricultural Productivity Naturally:"

On this particular 8,000-acre section of the Plains there is a single light in view, coming from inside a trailer. Bustling about camp are three men -- cowboys, you'd probably call them. They certainly look the part, dressed in boots and wide-brimmed hats, one of them splitting old fence posts with an axe to build a campfire, another working on some beef for dinner. They call this pasture Horse Creek for the water running down its center, and on it they have 1,100 yearling cattle.

And yet, for these men the bovines are only a means to a greater end. According to the unofficial ringleader, Jim Howell, their goal is nothing less than helping the world to avert a looming global catastrophe. What they're doing here is not just herding cattle; they are starting what they call "The Brown Revolution."

• In another national publication, Peter Hessler offers a vignette of rural healthcare we don't often see. Many thanks to Chuck Shuford for the tip:  "Dr. Don: The Life of a Small-Town Druggist" appears in last week's New Yorker:

Don Colcord has owned Nucla’s Apothecary Shoppe for more than thirty years. In the past, such stores played a key role in American rural health care, and this region had three more pharmacies, but all of them have closed. Some people drive eighty miles just to visit the Apothecary Shoppe. It consists of a few rows of grocery shelves, a gift-card rack, a Pepsi fountain, and a diabetes section, which is decorated with the mounted heads of two mule deer and an antelope. Next to the game heads is the pharmacist’s counter. Customers don’t line up at a discreet distance, the way city folk do; in Nucla they crowd the counter and talk loudly about health problems. 

“What have you heard about sticking your head in a beehive?” This on a Tuesday afternoon, from a heavyset man suffering from arthritis and an acute desire to find low-cost treatment.

• Long time readers will no doubt be familiar with Folkstreams, a phenomenal resource with a mission to "build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures" and "give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet." Here's a recent addition, Mr. Jimmy's Birthday Challenge; the trailer follows below, with the full available for viewing on the Folkstreams site. 

When Mr. Jimmy Moore challenged himself to run 80 kilometers in 1 day for his 80th birthday, his small Mississippi town got behind him to see if they too could "run their age," from age 8 to 80. Mr. Jimmy's quest reveals how a retired railroad man-turned extreme athlete could face the death of his wife and the limitations of his aging body to "enjoy life right up to the end."

• Folks may also be familiar with the North Carolina-based Paradise of Bachelors label from our writing here and here on their excellent 2010 release Said I Had A Vision: Songs & Labels of David Lee. A new record is in the works, now available for pre-order: Poor Moon by Hiss Golden Messenger, also known as folklorist and musician M.C. Taylor. This LP greets the world on November 1st, though anyone who preorders will receive access to further new and unreleased EPs by the artist. Live in Bovina documents a festival performance in Bovina, New York (pop. 664) that also included appearances by Endless Boogie, P.G. Six, Meg Baird, and Michael Talbott. As we are told, "considering the condition of most participants that summer—and what has come since—it's amazing that this even exists." Here's a stand-out track from this live EP, "Resurrection Blues:"

The Odyssey Of Double Edge Theatre

Still shot from The Odyssey; more photographs available on Double Edge's Facebook page

Last week I wrote "What We Talk About When We Talk About The Rural" in response to recent NPR coverage of rural issues, and I promised to offer a series of examples for how we might use arts and culture to expand the current dialogue on rural America. Instead of a list, I'd like to present this week's articles as points from which to move the discussion forward.

Today we begin with Double Edge Theatre, located on their Farm in Ashfield, Massachusetts. I first learned of this unique gathering of actors, directors, artists, and farmers at The National Rural Assembly, when I had the opportunity to meet Double Edge's Core Actor and Co-Director Matthew Glassman. After a day of discussing the challenges (and assets) in rural America, I sat down with Matthew to learn more about Double Edge--and I was deeply inspired by what he shared, a visionary sense of what a community can accomplish together in a place. After a full day of the Assembly, hearing Matthew's story of Double Edge was a moving reminder that we choose to live in (and advocate for) rural America because of its culture, its deep history (and our relationship to that history) and because we feel a sense of possibility in this space that we can't find elsewhere.

Instead of my own string of superlatives, I'll let the folks at Double Edge offer their introduction below:

Double Edge is more than a theatre: it is a center for discovery. Its activities include year-round theatre training, indoor and outdoor performances, and community events. The theatre's highly physical performances are immersive events that are lush and dreamlike, nuanced and emotional. Each original performance is created by an ensemble of multi-talented artists who have worked together over many years and are bound together by regular, strenuous training. These works are toured nationally and internationally, creating further opportunities for reciprocal exchange between artists and audiences. Double Edge's training methodology attracts students from all over the US and the world to The Farm to learn challenging techniques that enable them to physically and visually craft an original theatrical landscape. Interns and apprentices also work in our gardens, on our buildings, and take part in the administration of the company in order to learn about the context of making art and producing and sustaining a theatre company.

What's extraordinary about the work of Double Edge is that their vision is local, national and international. They cultivate a connection with Franklin County, Massachusetts that "embodies the concept that good art makes thriving communities, and supports historic and commercial value in ways that engage local residents’ perceptions of what is possible;" in keeping with this, Double Edge maintains a presence in a number of local schools and community organizations. In addition, their Chagall Cycle will take Double Edge across the globe over the next few years for five site-specific performances inspired by episodes in the peripatetic life of painter Marc Chagall; thus, art created (or envisioned) in Western Massachusetts will meet with new cultural perspectives in Argentina, Russia, Israel, and France.

This summer featured The Odyssey, an installment directed by founder and artistic director Stacy Klein, which was offered to audiences at The Farm in Ashfield (and co-presented by the Charlestown Working Theater). For this performance, Double Edge used 82 lithographs Chagall created between 1974 and 1975 to imagine Homer's Odyssey across the space of their farm. The audience is asked to follow the actors through the farm's space, as scenes from this spectacle take place in the structures, fields, and waterways on The Farm. Actors perform in the trees, spring from the water on bungee cords, and treat their physical surroundings as an integral character in the story.

Odysseus (Carlos Urlona) with Calypso (Jeremy Louise Eaton); David Weiland

As with all of Double Edge's work, the reviews have been unabashedly enthusiastic. Here's Terry Byrne writing in the Boston Globe:

Five senses hardly seem enough for “The Odyssey,’’ Double Edge Theatre’s annual “summer spectacle,’’ a sumptuous sensory feast that resonates on so many emotional and intellectual levels. The third in a series of productions inspired by the paintings of Marc Chagall (the other two were 2009’s “Arabian Nights’’ and 2010’s “The Firebird’’), “The Odyssey’’ effortlessly integrates whimsical aerial adventures and puppetry with thoughtful explorations of loyalty and loss, regret and determination, all set within a loose framework of murals and motifs from Chagall’s evocative paintings.

The evening opens with the audience gathered under a tent as John Pietso, accompanied on lute, sings us into Odysseus’ tale. As we listen, we look out on Nancy Winship Milliken’s huge woolen sails as they wave gently in the breeze, changing colors in the sunset just beyond the tent. Like a Pied Piper, Pietso leads the crowd into a pavilion where we meet Odysseus’ son, Telemachus (Matthew Glassman), who rails against his mother’s crowd of drunken suitors eager to take over in Ithaca the moment they are sure Odysseus is dead. Each step casts a more enchanting spell until it’s easy to forget we are wandering indoors and outdoors over several acres of Double Edge’s Farm, and simply believe we’re with Telemachus as he meets Sparta’s King Menelaus (Kieran Smyth) and his queen Helen (Tanya Elchuk) perched gracefully on the wooden Trojan horse Odysseus created that turned the tide in the war for her.

I'd encourage folks to listen to Monte Belmonte's radio piece broadcast Northampton's WRSI as well - the sounds of the performance and the audience's response give those of us who can't make it to Ashfield a sense of what we're missing.

There's much more to explore on The Double Edge Theatre site, as well as on their Facebook page, which offers some excellent galleries of images from these performances and from the extensive training beforehand (for instance, for The Odyssey, actors trained with the New England Center for Circus Arts). You'll also find this video of an appropriate pre-performance training for a group of artist such as Double Edge, in the weeks before bringing the travels of Homer and Chagall to life in Western Massachusetts:

Rocking The Rural Cradle, Rocking the Theatre

We're back today, and no better way to begin the week than with The Center for Rural Arts Development and Leadership Education. 

Dr. Scott Walters, a theater professor and director based out of UNC-Asheville, leads CRADLE in its mission of "'bringing the arts back home' to small and rural communities with populations under 20,000," and in "'[rebuilding] the front porch of America' (as Patrick Overton puts it) by strengthening pride of place through a rich expressive life available to everyone." While more of the program's comprehensive philosophy can be read here, it's worth pondering how long-overdue (and increasingly necessary) their three-part mission could be for our rural communities:

1. Communication: through its website, CRADLE will collect, summarize, and distribute information important to rural arts organizations. In addition, because by definition arts organizations in small and rural communities tend to be geographically isolated, CRADLE will facilitate conversations through conferences, meetings, and on-line forums. It is our goal to be a source of inspiration.
2. Support: CRADLE seeks to promote the creation and growth of arts organizations through fundraising and assistance with administrative tasks. A long-range goal is to provide health insurance and retirement benefits for the full-time staff connected with CRADLE-affiliated organizations.
3. Education: the knowledge and skills necessary for creating healthy, engaged arts organizations in smaller communities usually go untaught in traditional theatre department. CRADLE, through the Theatre Arts Curriculum Transformation (TACT) project, will devise a curriculum that emphasizes those skills. Through a combination of partnerships with colleges and universities and on-line components, CRADLE will make this training available to those interested in becoming rural arts leaders. CRADLE will also provide ongoing workshops and other training for those running arts organizations.

Regardless of the angle through which we are engaging with the rural arts, the CRADLE project certainly offers a "source of inspiration," and an opportunity for us (as farmers, folklorists, musicians, writers, sustainability advocates, etc) to come together and to find ourselves connected to the much larger project of revitalizing our rural communities.

Another element of Dr. Walters' work that is worth spending some time considering is his writing on his Theatre Ideas blog. While, in the space of The Art of the Rural, it has been a challenge to locate and discuss the rural components of contemporary theatre, Dr. Walters is able to seamlessly connect the real-world issues facing rural America with the practical and aesthetic challenges of making great theatre in the twenty-first century. There are a lot of ideas and connections contained in those virtual pages, and I recommend that folks give it a look. 

The Studio 360 radio program also recently featured a discussion between Dr. Walters and host Kurt Andersen in response to NEA chair (and former Broadway producer) Rocco Landesman's contention that, in the world of contemporary drama, “demand is not going to increase, so it is time to think about decreasing supply." Dr. Walters presents a provocative take on the prospect of "artistic death panels," and offers the Stage North theatre in Washburn, Wisconsin, as an example of how rural and small-town theatres can survive--and even flourish--in this new economic landscape:

"All these organizations rely 50% on unearned income—I don't think that's sustainable."  Walters isn't against government funding per se, but he thinks there should be more grants for theaters outside the New York-Chicago-LA circuit.  "They don't need anymore fertilizer, we need it in South Dakota and Nebraska and other places where there is a lot of demand and not much supply."

The 2010 Works Progress Administration

The Wassaic WPA Truck; Christopher Robbins

A few months back we featured some of the photography of Christopher Robbins with our introduction to the The Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska,  and we're  excited to introduce our readers to his new project which shares the same sense of ethics and aesthetics, and a similar rural-urban perspective. 

Mr. Robbins has an ambitious goal: to bring back the Works Progress Administration. It's a vision that seems necessary on both an economic and a cultural level, a way of looking at local and national "progress" that integrates art and community. Here's Mr. Robbins' introduction to the WPA-2010 project:

During the last Great Depression, the WPA employed millions, repairing roads, building parks, and other public works. It reached out directly to people who needed it most, creating projects outside the U.S. Government’s usual remit. 

Now, the WPA-2010 brings back small-scale, community-driven neighborhood recovery and action. 

We provide employment and skills development for people to work in their own neighborhoods, to focus on projects chosen by their own community.  In short, we are a flexible coalition of citizens, spearheading small-scale community-driven initiatives in the drive towards our government following suit. 

In recognition of the fact that the WPA brought together rural and urban workers, and that it worked to alleviate economic suffering from the densest urban centers to the smallest towns across the plains, the non-profit WPA-2010 has set up their first two offices: one in Jamaica, Queens, NYC and the other in the rural hamlet of Wassaic, New York--with more chapters to follow. The comparison of these two buildings, before the WPA-2010 moved into them, suggests more commonalities than differences:

As Mr. Robbins notes in his introductory video below, there is an element of theater here, or of taking the idea of installation art to its most pragmatic conclusion, yet it's refreshing to see these ideas applied for the betterment of the community, and not languishing in a downtown gallery. As with The Rural Studio, this is a line of thought which has been producing some of the most vital and interesting art in recent years, and we'll be keeping everyone posted on the development of the WPA-2010 in the coming months. 

The fund-drive that Mr. Robbins mentions in the video has successfully concluded, with support from  organizations and individuals alike. For more on the WPA-2010, head to Christopher Robbins' flickr page to see photos from the early projects in Wassaic, or visit here if you'd like to contribute funds to the project. 

Idaho Dance Theatre

photograph by John Kelly

Much like The North Dakota Rural Arts Initiative we highlighted a few weeks ago, The Idaho Dance Theatre is a forward thinking arts organization that is not only operating out of its home theater in Boise, but also making a concerted effort to bring their work to rural regions of the state.

The IDT was formed in 1990 after dancers Fred and Marla Hansen (both former dancers with the American Festival Ballet) traveled to Jackson, Wyoming to perform with dancer/choreographer Carl Rowe. The warm reception generated by that performance and a second one in Boise inspired the three artists to begin the process of setting up shop in Idaho, and fulfilling a vital artistic and cultural need. Twenty years into their project, the IDT has become a beacon in the region's art scene. Here's how the Idaho Dance Theatre describes their current mission:

IDT creates and performs educational outreach and rural touring to introduce dance to a wide spectrum of people throughout the state of Idaho and in the Northwestern region of the US.  It is important to us that all people are introduced to dance as an art form, no matter where they live.  Creating dance audiences in the future is important to the survival of all performing arts groups, and part of our mission includes performing in the schools and communities where we live. 

Our goal is to have all people experience a dance concert in their lifetimes.  While not everyone may become a fan, we do believe that once they experience a performance they will become a better person for it.  We strive to maintain the most professional performance at the most reasonable price that we can.  Our performances are in an intimate theatre at Boise State University where we are in residence.  Our residency agreement affords us rehearsal and perfoming space, but no financial support.  Join our efforts by coming to our show - and bring someone new.  Introduce them to your local contemporary dance company...where local dancers are afforded the chance to perform at a professional level without leaving Idaho!

The Idaho Dance Theatre works in affiliation with Boise State University to offer new programs each season--and a visit to their dancers' bio page reveals one of the most beautiful facets of this groups success: many of the dancers are Idaho natives who have been given the opportunity to pursue their craft without having to leave their home state. This program stands as a stellar example of how a single arts organization can address and help correct--beyond the stage--many of the concerns native to rural america.

Below is one short clip of the Idaho Dance Theatre's work, but there is more to be found on Youtube.

Dell'Arte International

This is an artform from five-hundred years ago in Italy. How is that relevant now? It's relevant because we can create on stage, without the permission of television networks or movie studios. We can create stories that reflect the concerns, the desires and the pain of our audiences. We can reach out, without permission to tell stories we would not be able to tell in the major media. The theater is absolutely vital to the survival of free expression in America.

           - Tim Robbins, accepting Dell'Arte's 2009 Prize of Hope

The small town of Blue Lake, California is the homebase of the Dell'Arte International--a theatre company with a vision all to itself. Approaching its fortieth anniversay, Dell'Arte are "a committed community of artists who model and share in a sustained ensemble artistic practice," with a mission that is "international in scope, grounded in the natural living world [and] inspired by [their] non-urban setting." From that imperative, they both honor the commedia dell'arte tradition and renovate it for contemporary use, presenting a touring company, acting workshops and youth programs, as well as an impressive series of outreach projects in the surrounding community.

Though they offer a regular schedule of performances, their principles converge in dramatic fashion every summer during the Mad River Festival. Each year the local community is joined by theatre fans from around the globe, as Dell'Arte performs their work alongside troupes from a number of other countries. This year Klinke, a contemporary circus show from Italy, as well as Los Payasos Mendigos, will perform--though a visit to their site will reveal many more performances and events than a single paragraph here could condense.

The Festival will also highlight Blue Lake: The Opera, a piece conceived by Dell'Arte to celebrate the Blue Lake's centennial:

On the 100th aniversary of the founding of Blue Lake, Dell'Arte takes us back to the wild days of Blue Lake's birth in 1910. Hogs in the streets, rowdy logging camps, mysterious Odd Fellows, gunfights, fires, housewives and socialists--and three tired schoolteachers in charge of 190 students--how could love possibly survive in a place like this? But it did, even when the great fire of 1911 tragically and spectacularly took down the Odd Fellows Hall...

And so... we open the 20th Mad River Festival with Blue Lake: The Opera. Nearly every word will be sung in this story based on actual events--both lurid and lyrical--in the early life of Blue Lake. A ribald blending of styles and influences, as quirky as Blue Lake itself, mixing the earthy sounds of folk music with the full-throated coloratura of classical opera, and featuring some of the finest singers in Humboldt County, alongside sheep, chickens, pigs and a milk cow.

What was spawned 100 years ago has hatched into the "peaceable hamlet" we know and love today. The machine guns may be gone from city hall, the gambling palace has a new hotel, the sewer system is still working--but what new visions await us in the next 100 years, that we seed today? As Shakespeare said, "What's past is prologue, what to come in yours and my discharge..."

Though there hasn't been much video or photo stills released yet in conjunction with this project, Tim Gray, the opera's musical director, has made available streaming demos of the songs as well as pdfs of the sheet music, so you can learn "The Woodsmen's Chorus" or "The Bear's Lament" before attending the show.

For further investigation, included below is a video compilation of the various facets of Dell'Arte International: