Special Event

From the Artistic Director

"Somewhere between my home in Raleigh and the Farmworkers office in Benson, the earth changes color..."

Somewhere between my home in Raleigh and the Farmworkers office in Benson, the earth changes color.  The exact spot is neither a point of restriction nor a blemish…and I still do not know where it is.  My body has traveled over this spot on Saturdays and Sundays from April of 2007 to last Saturday, where we met as a group for a final time.  On those Saturdays and Sundays I traveled to the homes of the teens, picked them up, met with their parents, chattered and laughed away in the car moving from one home and then to another.  We wound our way through a rural country side – talking over the teens involved with this project, their lives and the latest songs and clothes.  The landscape changed significantly over the course of the ten months.

In the beginning the tobacco plants were in a growth stage, spring was pushing open and the barometer was just beginning to climb; June, July, August and September were hot.  Hazy sunsets on my way back home, sweat, disappearing tobacco leaves revealing naked stalks marked the fields where the hands of Farmworkers toiled under the sun, and returned to dwellings where air-conditioning does not run and water can be scarce.  Because I am the mother of three, a student, an instructor and an artistic director – often I was late.  We held our workshops and rehearsals inside the Farmworker office, outside in the park, the parking lot, anywhere that was available.

In September we began to present our work; these “community forum” performances, influenced by the work of Augusto Boal, have been created, developed and shared with migrant farm workers throughout eastern North Carolina.  The purpose of the work as envisioned by Student Action with Farmworkers was to get important information about health care and other basic rights out into the fields…but much more happens when you find yourself in the throws of work.  We sat together on front porches with Christmas lights, food and wafting music and on naked mattress springs under trees beside cinder blocked dwellings – bodies intermingled, aware, open, smiling, and connected regardless of language or societal separations….sharing with a community typically hidden in the shadows – quiet…invisible. 
The works objective - to empower and engage an isolated population, and to perpetuate awareness, understanding and discourse that explicitly renounces unfair, unjust and unsafe conditions; highlights the “work” still to be done.
The teens and I thank you for taking part in this discourse.

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