Welcome!

 

When I discovered The K of D just over a year ago, I had my bags packed for the third and final installment-of-adventure on an almost four-year commitment that is now coming to a close, my TCG fellowship. That particular segment included a connect the dots summer tour of three as-far as-you-can-get-away-from-one-another festivals in Europe and a trace the topography back-packing trek of every whim in-between. They were disparate dots; they perhaps did not make logical sense to an outside eye, but they made sense to me.

 

The official trip started in Lisbon, Portugal to witness the FIMFA International Puppetry Festival. Carving and painting wooden puppet heads along with being a master bookbinder had been the creative art of my German Opa; whereas poetry was the muse of my mathematically-minded Oma. I then aimed to hunker down (for four days!) in Sibiu, Romania at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains to drink in the darker veiled history of the conquered masses in Eastern Europe (what was the homeland of my Hungarian grandfather- a military officer who escaped the communists and fled with his young family to Germany and then to America). And finally, I was planning to bathe in the sparkly carnival magic, of the night circus of Cornwall - England's Kneehigh Theatre ensemble of players who perform spirit-lifting nomadic theater in a tent called “The Asylum” (to absorb once again the energy of company creating together inspired by the sea). Sound like someplace else you know? (The latter did not come to fruition because Kneehigh was closed for the summer season, so I attended their latest Bollywood musical in London. This was spectacular!)

 

But this exploration was to be a meaningful turning point for me. Eleven countries in five weeks. Whew! Not a quiet tour, but my intention was to more-or-less stick to my awesome itinerary and uncover clues to fit the pieces of an episodic history that resided within me together peacefully.

 

So how did we end up in rural Ohio? Well, Laura Schellhardt's story is just plain good. When it was offered to me to read, I felt I had found a tale I wanted to tell. Haunting, healing, communal. Yes, I had originally thought a play would emerge from my ancestors' cultures. But it turned out the play that presented itself was one with homage to my own home.

Mostly, truly, both the play and the trip have meant coming home inside.

 

Tonight, you will hear a story set on the the marshy edges of a lake, not unlike the murky water that fills the creeks on their way to Lemon Bay and then to the Gulf on the west coast of Florida. We canoed those waters a lot when I was a kid.

Tonight, you will peer in through the windows of a small public high-school in a blue-collar, slightly old-fashioned town not unlike Anytown, USA. I went to school there. Maybe you did too.

But I welcome you to sit on the verge between truth and exaggeration, between fact and fiction, between what is and what could be. We all live there.

And that is where the magic continues to happen for me!

 

Thank you,

~Christina

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(Program Notes 2013)