DECOMPOSITIONS

DECOMPOSITIONS

Written and performed by Tannis Kowalchuk

Produced by Farm Arts Collective

Farm Arts Collective founding artistic director Tannis Kowalchuk writes and performs a new solo performance entitled Decompositions.

Kowalchuk explores decomposition as metaphor for life. Employing her devised theatre practice and her life as a farmer, Decompositions is in an original song-filled, multi-media, solo performance that digs into birth, death, farming, art, sickness, and health.

Featuring a compost pile at center stage, the performance begins with Kowalchuk invoking excerpts from a Gertrude Stein essay, "Composition as Explanation," giving the performer (and the audience) entry into the existential monodrama.

A theatrical and deeply personal meditation on mid-life existence, at one point in the performance, Kowalchuk tosses a “finished” sunflower onto the compost pile, and describes the composting process, something analogous to her own ageing process. The performance poetically explores transformation of decaying matter to humus (a word which shares the Latin root with “human”).

Written and performed by Tannis Kowalchuk, “Decompositions” is created in collaboration with Mimi McGurl (director), music by Rima Fand (songs), Janhavi Pakrashi (beats, soundscapes), the Farm Arts Collective Ensemble Band (songs), visual artist Phyllis Lehrer (animations) and the Farm Arts Collective design and production team Jess Beveridge and Ace Thomas.