Food Drama: Organizers, Writers, Actors, Cooks, Board Members Wanted

by: Brad Wilson

Sun Jan 17, 2010 at 08:52:54 AM PST

I gave a brief panel presentation on the dramatic topic:  "Corn Farming and the World Food Crisis" at a conference of the Community Food Security Coalition in Des Moines Iowa last October.  I started with a bit of drama of my own.  I offered corn "safety nets" to audience members.  I offered two choices, one with a larger farm program "Crop Acreage Base,"  but a smaller "Program Payment Yield," and one that reverses the two.  These were soon rejected by my audience, as they got sort of, well, "hammered."  

I further introduced myself by explaining that I was working on a dramatized version of my presentation which I'm calling "Corn Farming and the Human Spirit."  For 15 years I have categorized my writings on farm and food issues into a series of unfinished, poorly edited, unpublished books, under the series title:  Hog Farming and the Human Spirit:  My Sequel to Moby Dick.  In these writings I seek, often unsuccessfully, as readers at La Vida Locavore can see, to incarnate a "yes" of renewal beyond what I interpret to be Melville's great "no" of renewal.  The "Corn Farming" drama is the latest volume in this larger work.  It is built around a wonkish PowerPoint presentation, starkly contrasted with a dramatic interpretation of my family's history as told through farm bill history (cf. my farm folk song and poetry pamphleteering and other materials in HFHS), and also a series of skits on topics from farm and food history (ie. NFO's dramatic throwing of a huge pile thousands?] of Sears Catalogs in response to the 1962 CED report, which I've mentioned here, or mud biscuits from Haiti [does anyone know the recipe?).  That's how I'm starting to build it.  I believe this work could become a presentation with a series of simple skits, or, with adequate assistance, a powerful play and/or film.

Later last fall I was able to see the artsy farm film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, at CSPS, a small art and drama venue on the 3rd Street cultural corridor in Cedar Rapids Iowa.  After the show I went out with John and a local playwright who puts on a one man show about Grant Wood.  (Wood was a leading 20th century Iowa regionalist, and the painter of American Gothic).  The film and these conversations inspired me to realistically visualize a production Corn Farming and the Human Spirit at venues like CSPS.  Such a vision is probably not possible, however, without significant and holistic help.

Excerpts from My Cover Letter

"Take away the dramatic occasions of urban life, . . . and half the essential activities of the city would vanish and more than half of its meanings and values would be diminished, if not nullified."    Lewis Mumford, The City in History

"Man seeks for drama and excitement; when he cannot get satisfaction on a higher level, he creates for himself the drama of destruction."  Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

"The life of the farmer, engaged in a constant conflict with natural forces, is essentially dramatic.  the drouth of last Summer provided innumerable episodes of the most gripping human interest.  The nomadic movements of cattlemen in Wisconsin, in South Dakota, and in other states, the great dust storms, the floods following drouth, the milk strikes, the violent protests against foreclosures, the struggles against dry-year pests, the sacrifices forced upon once prosperous families--all these elements and more are colorful, significant, and intensely dramatic."    Grant Wood, "Revolt Against the City"

... No doubt one reason for the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs to form their Youth Council is the fact that Iowa loses many of our well educated youth.  

Efforts are being made, for example, to make the state more "exciting," with big ticket attractions which, hopefully, can compete with the much larger cities elsewhere.

The Fireweed Folk Center represents a very different approach.  We are building on Iowa's strengths as a smaller  (more human scale), slower (less commercially wrecked) state.  What if Iowa actually used culture in real life, for example in evaluating the megatechnologies currently devastating rural areas!  Perhaps we're small enough and slow enough to achieve such cultural authenticity, and small enough and slow enough so that youth could play a major role in leading the charge!  

Much of the blame for this lies in our mechanical, reductionist philosophy of life.  We see this, for example in modern "public relations," which specializes in helping our corporate and political leaders replace our authentic dramas with carefully managed superficial dramas.  

Likewise, Lewis Mumford argued, mechanistic approaches to city building have seriously damaged the modern city as the site for drama.  He suggested, for example, that "the least likely place for culture to flourish in New York is Lincoln Center."   Drama, then, is a central factor for understanding the city, (or in our vision, the integrated region or "social city") as a magnet to attract "the best of the best" youth and adults into its orbit.

This then is our goal, to increase, not the size of Iowa's cultural attractions, but the authenticity of our cultural dramas.  Toward that end, we believe, the Fireweed Folk Center can itself serve as a powerful magnet.  Don't miss out!

Excerpts from My Concept Piece

Fireweed* Folk Center
Regenerating the Regional Drama, from the Grassroots, Up

"Poetry is power, building toward a better day./It's in the lead, it sows the seed, empowering what we say..../Poetry is power, deep, dark and wild./It fills our dreams, bursts our seams, bearing an enchanted child." Brad Wilson, "Poetry is Power," Hog Farming and the Human Spirit:  vol. I:  Honoring a Heritage of Beauty, (21st century Iowa regionalist)

"I knew he held the tang of stack and mow--/One sensed that he was brother to the soil;/His palms were stained with signs of stable toil/And calloused by the handles of the plow."  Jay Sigmund, "Visitor," (20th century Iowa regionalist poet and playwright)

"Oh, fair young mothers of tomorrow's world --/When little children gather 'round your knee,/Seize ye the torch that falling hands have hurled/And hold it bravely high for all to see;/Follow the gleam that shines a down years,/Lose not the vision bright that sees the goal;/Relay the message, sent through toil and tears,/'Give them the food to nourish well the soul.'"    (my great, great Aunt) Martha Hood, "The Pioneer Mother," From My Window (20th century Iowa regionalist folk poet)

Board Members Wanted:  

The Fireweed Folk Center needs startup board members.  There are no special qualifications, only a love for culture and a commitment to bringing cultural expression and interpretation directly into our region's real life dramas.  

Tentative Goals:  

• Bringing strategic art education to people immersed in Iowa's most powerful real life dramas (ie. farm families immersed in pathos).
• Bringing professional artists into direct contact with current grassroots dramas.
• Bringing culturally literate youth back into contact with rural communities or urban neighborhoods.
• Bringing urban (ie. inner city) and rural people together to share the commonality of their dramas.
• Saying "no" to anti-culture efforts, (ie. attacks on rural culture in promotions of technological and economic change for rural Iowa).
• Saying "yes" to holistic cultural renewal (ie. sustainable agriculture includes a cultural perspective).
• Advocating for balanced approaches to our region's cultural renewal, (ie. inclusive of family farms, rural communities, small cities and larger regional cities; ie. regions as "social cities").
• Dramatizing the cultural aspect of alternative approaches to economic, scientific, technological and civic change.
• Developing methods for facilitating group gatherings (ie. conferences, workshops, hearings, negotiations) which enable real dramas to become manifest and which  empower low status grassroots people.
• Collecting and sharing regional cultural resources being used in real life dramas (ie. folk music:  Joe Kimmell--Wisconsin Rural Development Center; Bret Hesla--Land Stewardship Project in Minnesota; Rosie's--The Missouri Rural Crisis Center; John Pitney--Dakota Rural Action, Brad Wilson--Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement).

It was at the Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee that Martin Luther King learned the song, "We Shall Overcome."  The culture staff at Highlander gathered in this and other songs, renewed them, and then took them on the road all across the South.  Highlander played a significant role in two major social dramas:  the labor movement and the civil rights movement.  This provides an excellent model for a pragmatic approach to regional arts and humanities.

Today Iowa is centrally located in another major social drama:  family farming versus the "megatechnics" of factory farms.  The full implications of this drama affect every aspect of our existence, rural and urban, and go far beyond our state as well.  A major purpose of the Fireweed Folk Center (or Cultural Center) is to make this drama visible, as drama, to guide us in the regeneration of our culture.  

Part of our inspiration in this effort to renew our region comes from "the flowering of New England" during "the golden day" of American literature.  These writers tuned in to what was current in their culture, including the everyday activities being worked out in the material world around them.  We see this, for example, in Moby-Dick, where Melville, immersed in science, economics, and his work as a sailor, also created a powerful new myth for American culture.

We are also inspired by the writings of Lewis Mumford, who, as a world renowned authority on "the culture of cities" and technology, and as an advocate in the field of regional planning, also understood the contribution of rural culture in Western civilization.  "Great cities might be leveled to the ground, their temples ransacked, their libraries and records burned:  but the village at least would spring up again, like fireweed*, in the ruins."

The voice of youth at Iowa's Cultural Caucus was inspiring.  Youth challenged cultural leaders to invite them onto their boards.  We invite youth onto our board.  Youth are invited to become "fireweed," and actively work for our regional and national cultural renewal.

Lewis Mumford Essays

Lewis Mumford, "From Revolt to Renewal," in The Arts in Renewal.
______, "Art, Technics and Cultural Integration," the final chapter in Art and Technics.
______, "Human Prospects," ch. 9 in The Transformations of Man.
______, "Culture of the City," Journal of the American Institute of Architects, June 61 (#35), p., 55.  
______, "History:  Neglected Clue to Technological Change," Technology and Culture, Summer 1961.
______, "Moby-Dick," ch. 7 in Herman Melville.
______, "High Noon," in the title chapter of The Golden Day:  A Study in American Experience and and Culture.  (on Walt Whitman)