DECOMPOSITIONS, a song-filled monologue by Farm Arts Collective founding artistic director Tannis Kowalchuk

On Saturday, October 14th, The Cooperage Project is thrilled to host Farm Arts Collective founding artistic director, Tannis Kowalchuk, performing a new solo work entitled Decompositions.

Written and performed by Kowalchuk, the song-filled monologue explores decomposition as a metaphor for life. 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.

Employing her devised theatre practice and her agrarian life as a farmer, Decompositions is an original song-filled, multimedia performance that digs into birth, death, farming, art, decay (ageing) and transformation. 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.