Farm Arts Collective presents new show
Damascus. A new musical by collective member Mimi McGurl is “Lucy Joseph”
Farm Arts Collective is presenting a new show, Lucy Joseph, by Mimi McGurl at the collective on Willow Wisp Organic farm from June 5 through 8.
The musical performance features Jess Beveridge, a founding member and company manager of the collective, as Lucy Ann Joseph Israel Lobdell, a 19th Century gender non-conforming pioneer. McGurl directs. Local author William Klaber contributed story and texts and historical texts by L. A, Lobdell are incorporated.
Other performers are Doug Rogers, Pam Arnold, John Roth, Samantha Mehlman, Annie Hat and Laura Moran. Dramaturge is Mark Dunau.
Performances are at 7 p.m. each day.
The historical figure at the center of the play is Lucy Ann/Joseph Israel Lobdell, aka The Female Hunter of Long Eddy, who lived in the Delaware River Valley in the mid 1800’s. During Lobdell’s well-documented years, colorful labels were attached to them in newspaper articles, histories, and medical records. Raised as a girl, Lobdell, by 30, clearly preferred to live as a man. Lobdell’s life speaks volumes to the cultural shifts that squeezed through so much religious and political turmoil during the nineteenth century.
McGurl meticulously researched the story and the play captures the historical times while drawing parallels to contemporary socio-political arguments, how, nearly two centuries later, there are still powerful and influential people who insist that genetic markings at birth remain forever the essential truth of who we are. Lobdell’s life stands as a beacon of exactly how much more work still needs to be done for all of us to have the freedom to determine, for ourselves, our own gender identities and our own personal truths.
Tickets are $30 and can be purchased at www.farmartscollective.org
A limited number of Pay-What-You-Can tickets are available for all shows this season.
Photos by Irene Soloway
3) Jess Beveridge and Samantha Mehlman