Faith

This is the inspiration for the image we're trying to create after the Rio Grande Trail scene, when Allie will perform a monologue about her thoughts on the unbelievable faith of these Mexican immigrants. During her monologue, Lily and Whitney will join Beni behind the chain-link fence with wooden crosses.

Hooverville Fires

This is an image from the new scene we started working on today about the hardships faced in workers' camps (inspired by excerpts from The Grapes of Wrath). One of the white sheets (used in several other scenes) is here draped over one of the chain link fences to serve as a lean-to tent in one of these camps. Two actors will sit underneath it as a scene is acted out and a story is told. Later in the scene, this tent will appear to be lit on fire, with flames projected onto the sheet as well as other parts of the set.

The River scene

Amelia just sent this out to everyone, but I've posted it here so that it can be easily accessed in the future as a point of reference. This is a snapshot from the River scene. Beni holds a basket from above with a blue sheet that evokes the sense of the river flowing. Allie is lying on the largest crate, but we need something that's a better height for her.

Below is the excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath that we're using as inspiration for/incorporating into the scene:

"The men who work in the fields, the owners of the little orchards, watch and calculate. The year is heavy with produce. And men are proud, for of their knowledge they can make the year heavy. They have transformed the world with their knowledge.

And first the cherries ripen. Cent and a half a pound. Hell, we can’t pick ‘em for that. Black cherries and red cherries, full and sweet, and the birds eat half of each cherry and the yellowjackets buzz into the holes the birds made.

The purple prunes soften and sweeten. My God, we can’t pick them and dry and sulphur them. We can’t pay wages, no matter what wages. And the purple prunes carpet the ground. The meat turns dark and the crop shrivels on the ground.

And the pears grow yellow and soft. Five dollars a ton. We can’t do it. And the yellow fruit falls heavily to the ground and splashes on the ground.

Then the grapes – we can’t make good wine. People can’t buy good wine.

The smell from the ferment is not the rich odor of wine, but the smell of decay and chemicals.

Oh well, it has alcohol in it, anyway. They can get drunk.

The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop.

This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for debt will have choked the owner.

The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who have created the fruit cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten, where the hungry people can eat their produce. And a failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the study trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cats to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to the putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."

Court Hearing scene

Here's the link to the PBS clip which we've used as the basis for our court hearing scene:

Farm Workers Claim Slavery is Alive and Well in Florida » Market to Market

Singing Food!

For the fruit and vegetables!

Welcome!

Watermelon Season
Conceived, adapted, and directed by Courtney Ulrich (COL ‘11)
Advised by Professor Derek Goldman
Friday and Saturday, December 3 and 4 at 8 p.m.
DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE /$5 general
Drawing from contemporary accounts and ethnographic research of the migrant workers in our fields today, as well as accounts of injustice through history from Steinbeck, Agee, and others, Watermelon Season is an exploration of the displaced, hard-working people toiling in America’s fruit and vegetable fields. Engaging urgent questions surrounding immigration
law and policy, Watermelon Season depicts a troubling and enduring tendency to devalue the very workers upon whom we depend.

More information at performingarts.georgetown.edu