Pests

Of Farms and Fables shows beauty, struggle of family farming – Theater – Portland Phoenix

FINDING THEIR PLACES Actors, including farm workers and their children, rehearse Of Farms and Fables.

An interesting show coming up in Portland, ME….

It’s all in a day’s work on a family farm. From pests to family strife to the game-changing scale of industrial farming, the challenges to the modern family farm are given unsentimentally resonant treatment in Open Waters Theatre Arts’ Of Farms and Fables, the theatrical culmination of several years of research and residencies on farms here in southern Maine.

With a script by Cory Tamler, direction by Jennie Hahn, and a cast that includes farm workers and children of farmers, this most recommended production runs October 27-30, at Camp Ketcha in Scarborough.

In Open Waters’ plain and simple billing, Of Farms and Fables is “a play about the people who bring you food.” A team of its actors, playwright, and director spent last summer working alongside those very people, the farmers and farm workers who sow and weed at Wm. H. Jordan, Broadturn, and Benson farms. After a season of learning their work, and of hearing their worries and joys, Open Waters’ artists turned to the task of making theater of the experience, to share with the public a nuanced look at the realities of family farming in the modern age.

via Of Farms and Fables shows beauty, struggle of family farming – Theater – Portland Phoenix.

Celebrating insects in art, and the art of being an insect

PESTIVAL: Celebrating insects in art, and the art of being an insect, opens tonight at the South Bank Center in London.Glasswing Butterflys

The events for Pestival weekend look extraordinary and include a large Termite Pavilion, Praying Manitis Kung Fu andForensic Entomology (insect experts who are often called on to assist the police in cases of suspicious death). Needless to say there will be  lots of lots of insects.  And some excellent RSA Fellows who have recently worked with RSA’s Arts and Ecology: neuroscientist Beau Lotto is creating a large bee hive in the Queen ‘Bee’ Hall and Architect Michael Pawlyn will present his biomimcry work.

Pestival is a rare creature: an international, inter-disciplinary, community-led festival. Events include insect-inspired comedy, music, ID walks, talks, workshops, experiments, fashion and a termite inspired architectural structure at the centre of Pestival 2009. 80% of creatures on earth are insects, the ‘pests’ without whom humans wouldn’t survive. Pestival celebrates the 100s of millions of years of evolution, which places insects at the heart of human existence. Pestival 2009 celebrates how insects shape our world, and how humans shape the world of insects, in both science and the arts.

Check out the programme for 4 – 6 September: Pestival programme
The events will be broadcast by London’s favourite (and only) art radio station Resonance 104.4 FM and Tweeted on The Guardian’s Environment Blog.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology