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PERFORMING LANDSCAPES
Performing Farmscapes
Susan C. Haedicke
Performing Landscapes
Series Editors
Deirdre Heddon, Theatre Studies, School of Culture and Creative Arts,
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
Sally Mackey, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama,
London, UK
Performing Landscapes offers a critical study of generic and complex sites
for performance, including forests, ruins, rivers, home, fields, islands and
mountains. Distinctive to this series is that such landscape figures will be
located both on and off the theatrical stage, approached as both mate-
rial and representational grounds for performance-led analyses. With its
unique focus on particular and singular sites, Performing Landscapes will
develop in novel ways the debates concerning performance’s multiple
relations to environment, ecology and global concerns.
Editorial Board
Professor Stephen Bottoms (University of Manchester)
Professor Una Chaudhuri (New York University)
Dr. Wallace Heim (independent scholar)
Professor Carl Lavery (University of Glasgow)
Professor Theresa J May (University of Oregon)
Dr. Paul Rae (University of Melbourne)
Professor Joanne Tomkins (University of Queensland)
Performing
Farmscapes
Susan C. Haedicke
Department of Theatre and Performance Studies
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Performing Landscapes
ISBN 978-3-030-82433-4 ISBN 978-3-030-82434-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82434-1
Cover credit: A Field of Wheat: Arts and Agricultural Project. Branston Booths,
Lincolnshire, England. September 2016
Performer: Anne-Marie Culhane
Photographer: Nathan Gibson
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Series Editors’ Preface
v
Acknowledgements
Many people made this book possible from the artists whose work inspired
me and audiences who enjoyed it alongside me to scholars and colleagues
who critiqued my ideas and made valuable suggestions. A very special
thank you goes to Kristen Oshyn, the artist whose evocative pen and
ink drawings bring a unique resonance to the book. I am also especially
grateful to the many artists who generously shared stories, photographs
and unpublished plays with me for this book, who willingly answered my
questions in interviews and by email and who sometimes read drafts of the
sections of the book on their performances to check for accuracy or add
special information: Tess Ellison and members of the community cast at
Theatre by the Lake (The Shepherd’s Life), Ffion Jones (The Only Places We
Ever Knew and Ode to Perdurance/Awdl Amser), Ruth Levene and Anne-
Marie Culhane (A Field of Wheat ), Mike Pearson (Carrlands ), Mary
Swander (Farmscape and Map of My Kingdom), Octavio Solis (Alicia’s
Miracle) and Louise Anne Wilson (The Gathering/Yr Helfa). I want to
thank Sarah Harper, artist and close friend, with whom I have collab-
orated numerous times, for always finding the ‘wild card’—that unex-
pected ‘bit’ that makes her art so original. Thank you also to the Coalition
of Immokalee Workers for their incredible work in transforming migrant
farmscapes that I discuss in the book, but also for the time they have taken
to give me interviews, find information and photographs, and answer
questions, with special thanks to Greg Asbed, Marley Monacello, Julia
Perkins and Nely Rodriguez. My heart-felt thanks to all the women in
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
UK agriculture who gave interviews and tours of their farms for Who’s
Driving the Tractor?, a PaR project I created with Sarah Harper, as part of
the research for this book: Susannah Bolton (AHDB), Ali Capper (NFU
and Stocks Farm), Rosemary Collier (Warwick Crop Centre), Caroline
Drummond and Alice Midmer (LEAF), Emma Hamer (NFU and Mead-
owsweet Farm), Charlotte Hollins (Fordhall Farm), Sarah Pettitt and
Freida Pettitt (Franklyn Farm), Marion Regan (Hugh Lowe Farms) and
Becca Stevenson and Hannah Norman (Five-Acre Farm). I would like to
thank my friend and colleague Baz Kershaw for our numerous conversa-
tions that challenged and inspired me and for our collaboration on Prairie
Meanders in Iowa, an offshoot of his Meadow Meanders. A discussion
of Prairie Meanders did not make it into the book, but its practice-as-
research methodologies and thought experiments certainly did. I would
also like give a special thank you to friends and colleagues at Univer-
sity of Warwick who encouraged me over the years of writing the book:
Yvette Hutchison, who was always there for thrashing out ideas or just
sharing laughter, Tim White who has been a great friend for well over a
decade and has solved so many of my computer woes, Nicolas Whybrow
who listened to my ideas and helped me secure internal funding for Who’s
Driving the Tractor?, Silvija Jestrovic and Bobby Smith for our numerous
conversations that challenged and inspired me and who gave up precious
time to read drafts of chapters, Nadine Holdsworth for her wise counsel
and Rosemary Collier in Life Sciences who helped me understand the
agricultural side of the story. I would also like to thank Deirdre Heddon
and Sally Mackey, the editors of the series in which the book appears,
for their strong support, excellent editorial advice, faith in my work and
encouraging comments. I am so grateful for their insights and challenges
that certainly improved the book.
On a more personal note, I want to acknowledge the amazing love and
encouragement from my family without whom this book may never have
been completed. My sons and their partners all supported the project in
their special ways: discussing ideas and images, commenting on the art-
work, sometimes even reading drafts and always offering reassurances that
I would finish. I also want to thank David who has been by my side for
many years and whose patience sustained me. My sister Sally and my dear
friend and almost sister, Patricia, need special acknowledgements as they
always stand by my side. And a very special ‘thank you’ needs to go to my
first grandchild Torunn, who, although we lived eight time zones apart
during the writing of the book, made sure that we ‘played’ almost every
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
day once the pandemic changed our lives. Even though we could only
meet on a screen, we cooked together, read, worked on art projects and
celebrated ‘dress up’ days. And last but not least, I want to welcome the
newest members to the family, Olivia, Margot, Alisair and Eleanor whose
laughter and energy never cease to delight and inspire me.
Praise for Performing Farmscapes
“Fewer and fewer of us know how our food is produced, of the chal-
lenges farmers face, and about the impact of food production on nature.
Performing Farmscapes creatively interprets the considerable value of
performance as a means of raising our awareness of these issues and of
highlighting the influence that we, as food citizens, can have through the
choices we make.”
—Professor Rosemary Collier in Life Sciences, University of Warwick
xi
Contents
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
Bibliography 271
Index 293
About the Author
xvii
xviii ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fig. 1.1 Hills and Valleys. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn 1
Fig. 1.2 Meadowsweet Farm. 2017. Photographer: Susan Haedicke 8
Fig. 1.3 A PerFarmance Project West Midlands. 2016. Five-Acre
Farm, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, England. Performer: Juan
Manuel Aldape. Photographer: Susan Haedicke 22
Fig. 2.1 ‘Hello’. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn 59
Fig. 2.2 A placard on the mountain path. Ffion Jones, The Only
Places We Ever Knew. 2010. Photographer: Heike Roms 62
Fig. 2.3 At Taid’s stone in Cwmrhaiadr, the Jones’ sheep farm
in Wales. Ffion Jones, The Only Places We Ever Knew.
2010. Photographer: Heike Roms 63
Fig. 2.4 Walkers descending the narrow path down the side of The
Falls in Cwmrhaiadr. Ffion Jones, The Only Places We Ever
Knew. 2010. Photographer: Ffion Jones 65
Fig. 2.5 Who’s Driving the Tractor? Conversations with Women
in UK Agriculture. 2018. Performance photograph
showing sculptural storytelling on one screen; Freida Pettitt
on the other. Performer: Sarah Harper. Photographer:
Susan Haedicke 84
Fig. 2.6 Who’s Driving the Tractor? Conversations with Women
in UK Agriculture. 2018. Performance photograph
with Sarah Pettitt telling the story of purple-sprouting
broccoli on screen. Performer: Sarah Harper. Photographer:
Susan Haedicke 88
Fig. 2.7 A Binding Agent. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn 89
xix
xx LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 3.1 From and of. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn 97
Fig. 3.2 Peach tree installation. Hope is a Wooded Time. 2012.
Photographer: Susan Haedicke 106
Fig. 3.3 Participants walking on Watkin Path. Louise Ann Wilson’s
The Gathering/Yr Helfa. 2014. Hafod y Llan Farm,
Snowdon, Wales. Photographer: Lizzie Coombes 108
Fig. 3.4 ‘Tramway Walker’ ascending the ‘Tramway Incline’. Louise
Ann Wilson’s The Gathering/Yr Helfa. 2014. Hafod y
Llan Farm, Snowdon, Wales. Performer: Kate Lawrence.
Photographer: Lizzie Coombes 113
Fig. 3.5 ‘This Mountain Has Secrets’ fissured-rock installation
and The Boy. Louise Ann Wilson’s The Gathering/Yr
Helfa. 2014. Hafod y Llan Farm, Snowdon, Wales.
Poem by Gillian Clarke. Performer: Meilir Rhys Williams.
Photographer: Lizzie Coombs 114
Fig. 3.6 Storyboard of upper Amphitheatre with Shepherds
and Band by Louise Ann Wilson. The Gathering/Yr Helfa.
2014 115
Fig. 3.7 Storyboard of lambing barn installation by Louise Ann
Wilson. The Gathering/Yr Helfa. 2014 118
Fig. 4.1 Horizon. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn 134
Fig. 4.2 The Inextricable. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn 149
Fig. 4.3 The Alternative Ploughing Match. A Field of Wheat. 10
September 2016. Photographer: Nathan Gibson 151
Fig. 4.4 Walking Middle Field on Lundgren’s farm. A Field
of Wheat. 24 June 2016. Photographer: Susan Haedicke 155
Fig. 4.5 ‘Field of Wheat Timeline’ created by Ruth Levene
and Anne-Marie Culhane with Jo Salter. A Field of Wheat.
2015–2016 165
Fig. 5.1 Impression Fallacies. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn 171
Fig. 5.2 People lost for the fields. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen
Oshyn 177
Fig. 5.3 Support. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn 200
Fig. 6.1 Denis Remy’s painting on the wall of the CIW community
centre. Photographer: Susan Haedicke 214
Fig. 6.2 Early Cartoon. 2002. Photograph by the Coalition
of Immokalee Workers 224
Fig. 6.3 Teatro about Wendy’s treatment of farmworkers
for the Encuentro 2018. Photograph by the Coalition
of Immokalee Workers 228
LIST OF FIGURES xxi
Fig. 1.1 Hills and Valleys. Pen and ink drawing by Kristen Oshyn
What do you see … and do? Are you walking in fields or pastures, gazing
at them from a distance, planting and harvesting, driving a tractor, maybe?
Can you smell the farm … hear it … feel it … taste it even?
Farmlands are inextricably linked to food production. Valued for
their productivity, farms exist to ensure the survival of the earth’s
growing populations. And yet, for many in the general public, farm-
lands are perceived as quintessential rural landscapes where pastures of
grazing sheep and cows or fields of grain blowing in the wind are
more picturesque than functional. Discarding this spurious dichotomy,
Performing Farmscapes replaces the word farmlands with farmscapes to
imply a hybrid of agricultural land that produces food and bucolic agrarian
scenery that is ‘visually’ consumed and to shift the focus away from the
land so prominent in the word farmland. In addition, I am using the
word farmscape to acknowledge the recent ‘performative turn’ in land-
scape studies that privileges the lived experience of a landscape over
a detached gaze (discussed later in the chapter) and, by implication,
suggests that farmscapes live in the words, experiences and encounters
of farmers, non-farmers and nonhumans; in the rhythms and repetitions
of seasonal farming practices associated with a particular place; and in the
traces and echoes left in the land by living creatures and natural forces
alike. As part of the Performing Landscapes series, this book pairs farm-
scapes with performing and, in so doing, proposes a potential agency
for the land to participate in the storytelling through its responses to
human and nonhuman interventions, such as grassy mounds chronicling
ancient burial sites, a wide valley traversed by a narrow stream recounting
floods of long-ago or a forest’s ‘wolf tree’ revealing its previous loca-
tion in agricultural fields through the growth patterns of its branches
(discussed in Chapter 3). Performing Farmscapes interrogates aesthetic,
political and environmental implications of this duet of farmscapes and
performing where human and nonhuman lives are entwined with the land
as vibrant lifelines and pathways overlap and tangle to weave dynamic
storied farmscapes.1 James Rebanks, author and shepherd,2 attests to the
interconnectedness of lives and land when he describes the sheep farm
landscape in the Lake District in England: ‘[t]he whole landscape here is a
complex web of relationships between farms, flocks and families’ (Rebanks
2016: 22). These relationships constitute embodied and visceral bonds
between humans, nonhumans and a particular piece of land. For the sheep
on the fells in the Lake District, this bond or sense of belonging is called
‘hefting’: a learned behaviour or ‘homing instinct’ of the sheep that is
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