FEELD PLAY

This project began with two questions: what is community? What happens when the Earth goes silent? Across two semesters in two phases, our group of six actors and I devised a trans-historical dustbowl play, taking place then, and now. We made the stagecraft be the poetic—how could dialog, movement, scenes—most resemble music, in terms of spareness, repetition, motifs, rhythms, structures, dynamics, and silences? Our innovations included: a play that’s already begun as the audience comes in; a follow the leader, leaderless dance; a structure of nine scenes of: the day begins? Wait, something’s wrong? Oh, I think it’s… fall asleep. Resume. Using spare staging—chairs, a scarf—we sought to tell a story of a family of migrant farmers for whom the earth has gone silent—and the hidden, buried story of death that has brought about their drought and their unhappy wandering.