Mary Swander, Iowa’s Poet Laureate and founder of the national organization Agarts will present two plays at Bowker Auditorium this spring as part of her artist’s residency centered around agriculture and the arts at University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The plays, Vang and Map of My Kingdom, both tackle urgent social, political, and economic issues facing America’s farmers today. Mary will accompany the productions and be available for talkbacks and class visits while in Amherst. The goal of this short artistic residency is to begin what we hope will be the first of many cross-disciplinary conversations and projects shared between the agricultural community and the arts. Swander’s visit is sponsored by the English Department at UMass, with generous support from The Stockbridge School of Agriculture, the Department of Resource Economics, along with the UMass Student Farming Enterprise and farm organizations in the Five Colleges and community at large.
A glimpse into the plays:
Vang
Tuesday, March 3rd at 8pm
Vang (meaning “garden” or “farm” in Hmong) was created in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Dennis Chamberlin and ACT Kennedy Center award-winner Matt Foss based on interviews with four immigrant farm families in Iowa: A Hmong family who fled Communist bullets and wild tigers through the jungle of Laos and across the Mekong River to the refugee camp in Thailand. A Sudanese man who was thrown into prison in Ethiopia for helping the Lost Boys and was left gasping for air through a crack under the door. A Mexican woman who taught herself English by looking up the meaning of the profane words that were hurled at her at her first job in a meat packing plant. A Dutch boy, dressed as a cowboy, who put the flag of the Netherlands through the paper shredder and declared, “I am an American.”
Together these stories challenge common stereotypes around immigrant farm labor to reveal how farming is actually practiced in the U.S. and how immigrants are part of the larger agricultural picture.
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Map of My Kingdom
Wednesday, March 4th at 8pm
Who’s going to get the farm? And what are they going to do with it? Will your future plans for your land create harmony or strife for your family? Or have you even started to think that far ahead? Map of My Kingdom, a play commissioned by Practical Farmers of Iowa, tackles the critical issue of land transition. In the drama, Angela Martin, a lawyer and mediator in land transition disputes, shares stories of how farmers and landowners she has worked with over the years approached their land successions. “Some people literally killed each other over this issue,” Martin says. Others almost came to blows, struggling to resolve the sale or transfer of their land, dissolving relationships. Others found peacefully rational solutions that not only focused on the viability of the family, but also of the land. Map of My Kingdom addresses the changing landscape of agriculture in America from the perspective of those families who have been farming for generations.
Tickets are available at the door, by phone at 545-2511 or 1-800-999-UMAS, or online at the UMASS Fine Arts Center https://fac.umass.edu/
Mary Swander is the Poet Laureate of the State of Iowa and Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University. She has published over thirteen books of poetry and non-fiction, in addition to plays, radio and television scripts and magazine articles. She has appeared in such places as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, National Public Radio, and Poetry Magazine. Swander’s plays Driving the Body Back and Farmscape have toured the U.S. and in 2013 Farmscape was performed for Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and his staff at the U.S.D.A. She is the co-founder of AgArts, an organization that imagines and promotes healthy food systems through the arts.
