New Year, new things, new thoughts, new challenges. In January, the Hubbard Hall Center For Education And The Arts will premier it’s new Winter Theater Festival, a two-week celebration of new works. The festival will include a staged reading of of a new piece I wrote, “The Last Day At Maple View Farm.”
The piece is seven scenes set on a dairy farm on it’s last morning of existence, the bank and the feed companies have pulled the plug on Ralph Tunney’s farm, Maple View Farm, which has been in his family for more than 200 years. Ralph is devastated, his wife is fighting for him to see past this awful day and live on.
As some of you know, I have been photographing struggling – and failing – family farms ever since I came to upstate New York and have witnessed some wrenching and very poignant scenes as this rich and historic part of American life fades, crushed by government regulations, politicking by animal rights organizations, and by relentless competition from giant and corporate factory farms.
Economists consider small family farms inefficient in the age of the global economy, the agricultural system heavily favors corporate farming. Small farmers do not know any other way of life, and the collapse of their farms is devastating to them. Americans love to eat, but they don’t really care to know where their food comes from, or what it takes to grow it or make it.
I believe small farmers to be among the greatest animal lovers I have ever known, and the loss of a family farm is an awful thing for them, in part because their cows and other animals will almost surely never seen pasture or freedom again, they will spend their lives on concrete or in small pens.
I wrote this piece to try and capture the last day of a dairy farm. This is not a full play, but a piece, actors – in character but not in costume – will read it five times in front of audiences: Thursday, January 29 at 8 p.m.; Friday, January 30th at 8 p.m.; Saturday the 31st at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday February 1st at 2 p.m.
The piece is about 15 minutes long, there are nearly a dozen different actors in it. I don’t know if it will ever become a full play, I am drawn to it for sure. But we’ll see how the staged reading goes. There are lots of other new works besides mine, including the world premier of a new play called Nexus by Danielle Mohlman. The winter theater festival is an exciting innovation from Hubbard Hall’s new director, David Snider. If you are interested, you can check out the festival and buy tickets here.
The demise of the family farm is an American tragedy, I believe, largely ignored by the media, and by government and the community of economists that shape the new global economy. We are forgetting what people are for. In the corporation nation, people always seem to lose out to profit and loss, the new national religion. So I’m excited to write this piece, I hope it will be a full play one day.