A Father Whispering: Northern Stage’s “The Vermont Farm Project” Opens
Farms. Chances are you drive by Upper Valley farms on the regular, purchase veggies at your local farm stand or farmers market, or wait every year (as I do) for MacLennan’s asparagus to hit the Co-op produce department. We know our farmers, but we probably don’t know enough.
The Vermont Farm Project: A Farm to Stage Musical has just opened at Northern Stage. Directed by Sarah Elizabeth Wansley, with music and lyrics by her husband Tommy Crawford and book by Jessica Kahkoska, this is a world premiere of an inventive work that sets out to depict the reality of local farming in modern times.
A cast of five musicians portrays eight characters. Glenn (David M. Lutken) is taciturn and old-school, while his wife Kim (Emily Mikesell) pushes him to take action to make sure the farm can continue under a land trust once they retire. He’s not eager. Kenza (Angel Lin) and her husband Matt (Rob Morrison) are the brand new farmers coping with the first-year blues, finding a shoulder and a helping hand from their older neighbors. Gabriela (Raquel Chavez) is a migrant worker far from home. The “kids” are Mo, Tara, and Hunter (portrayed by Chavez, Lin, and Morrison) who are seasonal hands, each there either because they love it, might love it, or because their mother made them do it.
Uplifting, but not overly-romanticized, the play takes the audience through a single day in the lives of the characters, beginning at 5:00 a.m until the long day’s end. Whiteboards on which chores are assigned at Glenn and Kim’s direct what comes next: the birthing of a calf, competitive weeding, bringing in the crops for sale. The chores by the “kids” seem exactly what they are: exhausting.
What is on a farmer’s mind? Plenty, including succession planning, use (or not) of plastics, whether or not it will rain, whether and how to keep going, ICE.
The actors are convincing, the music is integrative to the story and performed with spirit, their singing voices have an ordinariness that fits the setting. A comedic through-line is watching the garrulous youngsters trying to coax more than a word or two from Glenn. Lutken manages to bring a fully realised Glenn to the stage with minimal dialogue. You can feel the history in him when he observes, “ . . . in this barn I can hear my father whispering.”
The set by Frank J. Oliva is an imposing set of rising rafters of a barn, bedecked with the expected ropes, buckets, toolboxes, pitchforks, and several bales of hay. That pick-up truck? It’s the real thing. (Remember Miss Saigon and the live helicopter on stage?) The set cleverly converts to a farmers market when needed, where Rob Morrison belts out a show-stopping ode to kohlrabi.
The Vermont Farm Project is on stage through May 25, 2025 at the Barrette Center for the Arts in downtown White River Junction, VT. Tickets are available here.
And an announcement on Facebook from Northern Stage: “Last week, Northern Stage learned of the abrupt, mid-contract cancellation of two grants we had received from the National Endowment for the Arts. Development of our world premiere production of THE VERMONT FARM PROJECT: A FARM-TO-STAGE MUSICAL was supported in part by a taxpayer-funded $20,000 grant from the NEA. In addition, the NEA had committed to supporting another world-premiere musical commission with a grant of $30,000. With funding commitments secured, we signed contracts with artists, and they've begun work on this new project.”
As Northern Stage continues to fight this cancellation, it is asking you to contact your representatives in Congress to urge them to support the NEA and oppose reduction in funding. Please support Northern Stage and other arts organizations who are facing similar issues.
(Photos by permission of Northern Stage. Top, David M. Lutken, Emily Mikesell, and Director Sarah Elizabeth Wansley; middle, Raquel Chavez, at Northern Stage, The Vermont Farm Project, rehearsal 4/24/25)
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.