Northern Stage’s World Premiere—A Musical About Vermont Farmers
May 7 through May 25
“There are no musicals about farming today.”
Until now. So said Director and show developer Sarah Elizabeth Wansley at a recent rehearsal for Northern Stage’s The Vermont Farm Project: A Farm to Stage Musical, set to open next week as the last production of the 2024-25 season. The storied Oklahoma! (must always include the exclamation point) may come close, but it depicts an entirely different era.
Wansley and her husband, musician Tommy Crawford, enlisted playwright Jessica Kahkoska in an effort to create a musical to tell the story of farming and farmers in present-day Vermont. Their research, which began in 2022, included interviews with 47 farmers throughout the state (and a few in New Hampshire as well), from small family farms to big dairy farms, to farms employing 25+ workers. They talked with old farmers and new ones, found some common rhythms, hopes, fears, and senses of humor. They even found parallels between farmers and theater folk. Both “get up every day and work very hard at something they love,” and share a can-do ethic often coupled with a formidable economic challenge.
The play follows eight farmers during a single day of work from sunrise to sunset. The cast—five actors playing eight roles—are all musicians, prompting comparisons to Northern Stage’s former production of Once.
Of potential star status in this production—aside from the actors—is a new turntable on the set, recently purchased from a car show in Las Vegas, repurposed, rewired, given a new life and, for its own life’s second act, an artistic purpose. Watch it help to deliver The Vermont Farm Project in its world premiere.
The Vermont Farm Project is on stage at Northern Stage’s Barrette Center for the Arts in downtown White River Junction, Vermont from May 7 through May 25, 2025. Tickets are available here.
(Rehearsal cast photos courtesy of Northern Stage)
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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.