‘Decompositions’ at Farm Arts Collective with host Author Darcey Steinke

Farm Arts Collective founding artistic director Tannis Kowalchuk has
created a new solo performance entitled Decompositions.
Kowalchuk explores decomposition as a metaphor for life. Employing her
devised theatre practice and life as a farmer, Decompositions is an
original song-filled, multimedia performance that digs into birth, death,
farming, art, decay (aging) and transformation.
Featuring a compost pile at center stage, the performance begins with
excerpts from the Gertrude Stein essay, “Composition as Explanation,”
providing an entry into the existential monodrama.
In this deeply personal theatrical meditation, Kowalchuk explores the
composting process as analogous to the process of her own aging– at one
point in the performance, she tosses a “finished” sunflower onto the
compost pile and describes the biological composting process which
ultimately leads to the creation of humus –a word that shares the Latin
root with “human.” Kowalchuk’s humorous and poignant stories of breast
cancer, menopause, and stroke take audiences on a journey of longing to
accept mortality as elegantly as the compost does its transformation.
Written and performed by Tannis Kowalchuk, “Decompositions” is created in
collaboration with director Mimi McGurl, songs by Rima Fand, beats and
soundscapes by Janhavi Pakrashi, music by the Farm Arts Collective, and
projections by visual artist Phyllis Lehrer. Technical director is Jess
Beveridge.
The evening will open with author Darcey Steinke
https://darcey-steinke.com/ (Flash Count Diary, Suicide Blonde) who will
read from her new book on the body and
Decompositions is a production of Farm Arts Collective. It was first seen
in a workshop presentation in November 2022 at Delaware Valley Opera Center
in Lake Huntington, NY, at played at Pontine Theatre in Portsmouth, NH in
February 2023, and Goddard Arts, NYC in March 2023.
With support from Network of Ensemble Theatres, and ART/NY.
Darcey Steinke https://darcey-steinke.com/ is the author of the memoir
Easter Everywhere, Flash Count Diary and five novels: Sister Golden Hair,
Milk, Jesus Saves, Suicide Blonde, and Up Through the Water. Her books have
been translated into ten languages, and her nonfiction has appeared widely.
Her web story “Blindspot” was a part of the 2000 Whitney Biennial. She has
been both a Henry Hoyns and a Stegner Fellow, and a Writer-in-Residence at
the University of Mississippi. She has taught at the New School, Columbia
University School of the Arts, New York University, Princeton, and the
American University of Paris. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn and
Long Eddy, New York.