voices - The Commons

22 The Commons • October 2008 The Commons • October 2008 23
The Arts
FRoM
gut
tHE
Founding members
of GUtWorks, Daniel
Burmester, Jonathan Maloney,
and Kali Quinn (inset).
theater company incorporates multimedia
in mission to tell ‘visceral stories’
By caitlin Baucom
The Commons
aTHeNs—Theatergoers
around Brattleboro were recently
treated to the inaugural
performances of This Is the Place
of Parting, a new multimedia collaboration
by playwright Neil
Knox and gUTWorks, a young
theater company dedicated to
telling “visceral stories.”
Featuring puppets, film, a live
score, physics, and hand-held
lighting, the piece provided a
cinematic spectacle that one audience
member described as
a “choose-your-own adventure.”
Founded in New York, gUT-
Works, now based in athens,
recently transitioned to working
mainly in southern Vermont,
putting down new roots in the
thriving theatrical and artistic environment
of Windham County.
Committed to performing new
and innovative work, gUTWorks
has already established ties
within the community and hopes
to build a working relationship
with local audiences.
The three founding members
of gUTWorks met at the
Dell’arte International school
of physical Theater in Northern
California. Kali Quinn was there
working toward her MFa, when
Daniel Burmester and Jonathan
Maloney came out to attend a
workshop. They wound up moving
to Manhattan at the same
time, and in between working on
various other shows began their
first project together.
gUTWorks describes “Vamping,”
an original one-woman show
performed by Quinn, directed by
Maloney, and assisted by Burmester,
as “a dynamic multimedia
theater piece that explores the
struggles of senile dementia. It
is seen through the eyes of Julia,
an elderly woman confined
to a nursing home in her later
years, and the world that surrounds
her, both in reality and
her fading mind.”
The show had an extensive run
at a variety of venues, including
its premiere Off-Off Broadway at
HeRe art Center’s 2006 american
Living Room Festival. It has
also played in terraNOVa’s soloNOVa
Festival at ps122, at
the Dialogue ONe festival at
Williams College, and Luminz
performing arts studio in Brattleboro.
excerpts from the show
have been featured at various locations
around Manhattan and
Vermont.
critical acclaim
Quinn was hailed as “a talented,
immensely watchable,
and vibrant performer” by Nigel
Maister, artistic director of
the Todd International Theatre
program at the University of
Rochester.
“Vamping is a deeply personal
and impressively honest piece of
theatre that effectively captures,
with theatrical grace and wit, the
universality of love and loss,”
Maister wrote.
The show’s multimedia aspects
functioned differently from those
in “parting.” says Maloney: “We
had screens, but they acted more
as a setting. The show was about
dementia and alzheimer’s, and
the [multimedia] acted as a ‘lifeline’
to the audience, a way of
getting inside her mind.”
The set consisted of the screen,
an afghan, and a wheelchair,
which “shifted… it was only a
wheelchair for maybe five minutes,
then it took on the roles of
other props, objects throughout
[the rest of the show].”
This initial collaboration was
so successful that the three
decided to continue the partnership.
“We thought, why just keep
auditioning and trying things on
our own?” Kali says. “Of course,
we still do that, but we worked
together so well that we wanted
to keep doing it.”
The three come from diverse
backgrounds and disciplines,
including film and media, ensemble
and physical theater, and
clowning. This diversity serves
gUTWorks’ mission to “serve
theatrical story telling from a
multi-faceted approach in order
to reach a diverse audience.”
Their next show was the american
premiere of “No Man’s
Island,” a new play by celebrated
australian playwright
Ross Mueller.
Quinn directed Burmester and
Maloney in the two-man production,
which “plies the emotive
depths of two haplessly damaged
souls,” the company’s Web
site says.
“With the two locked in the
isolation of a cell together and
their crimes and sentences unknown,
we plunge to the core of
their confusion, need, and boiling
loneliness. Tim and Robbie
may have come to prison from
desperate parts of the outback,
at different times and for separate
felonies, but now their lives
are indefinitely converging into
one as they become striking reflections
of each other.”
This show is the only one
they’ve done that existed in a
finished form when they took it
on, and was more traditional in
setting, with no media and a full
set. Josh sherman of nytheatre.
com said, “Quinn, Burmester,
and Maloney have brought to
life a powerful new piece that deserves
a longer run and as much
attention as it can grab.”
coming to Vermont
soon after, Maloney and Quinn
came to Vermont to teach at the
putney school’s summer program.
Impressed with the area
and its artistic possibilities, they
decided to stay, and Burmester
soon followed.
“It’s so much easier here,” says
Quinn. “We’ve found jobs that fit
in with what we’re doing… it’s so
welcoming. space exists, people
want to help.”
They like the idea of a returning
audience, a core group of
people who are interested in
what they do and will come again
and again. “In a smaller community,
we can really show our
diversity over time,” says Maloney.
“It’s exciting that the same
people will continue to come,
they’re supportive and interested.
In New York, you are what
you are and people come or they
don’t… there’s no community
that returns, is invested.”
This is particularly helpful
given their practice of holding
“talk-backs” after the shows. The
sessions afford audiences the opportunity
to offer criticism, ideas,
or thoughts on the piece they’ve
just witnessed.
“Our projects are completed
when we show them, but then
again we’re always looking to
shift, to improve it,” says Maloney.
“Theater and film usually
can’t show process, so talk-backs
really let the process come out
for the audience to see.”
“It is hard,” says Quinn. “Having
to talk about something
you’ve just seen can be difficult.
Often people want to ask
questions instead of offering constructive
criticism, or it’s hard
for them to speak up at all. But
when we did ‘parting’ in Bellows
Falls, over 50 people stayed and
they really were frank… they had
no problem telling us what they
thought.”
“This Is the place of parting”
is the first work they conceived
since the three came to Vermont.
It started with a script by Neil
Knox, who met Quinn while in
graduate school at sarah Lawrence,
where she was a teaching
assistant. after Knox graduated,
he looked for a company
to produce his work and noticed
that Quinn had co-founded
gUTWorks.
“He sent the play, and it was so
cinematic and seemingly impossible,”
Quinn says. “That made us
really want to do it.”
They began collaborating
remotely with Knox, sending
ideas back and forth. “He would
send us a bunch of ideas, we’d
say ‘Well, we like this and this,
maybe we could change this and
then do something else here,’
and he’d respond again. He’d
send us these huge long descriptions,”
Quinn says. “The piece
was quite modular, and then we
extracted what became the final
performance.”
This was the first show they’d
worked on which involved a
number of other people. “It was
a relief to have all of those extra
minds,” says Quinn. “This is
something we could never have
done in New York… to bring in
three other actors and two designers
and house them. It was
great. They were all people we
knew individually, and just knew
they would be great together.
We’ll definitely work with them
again in the future.”
They plan to take “parting”
on tour, after further revisions,
taking into account feedback received
at the talk-backs.
The trio is now in residence
at Vermont academy in saxtons
River for the school year, where
they teach film and theater, book
shows, create a scene shop, and
collaborate on new work. This
semester Quinn is also directing
“Little shop of Horrors” on
campus.
“every single thing we’ve done
has afforded us with a better
opportunity,” says Quinn. “everything
has been successful.”
“We’re still figuring out our
place; we don’t want to define
ourselves as doing one kind of
theater,” she says. “everything
we’ve done has led the way to
something new.”
Life & Work
Primal food
enjoys a
resurgence in
Vermont
ode to dairy
I
Brattleboro
aM sitting at my table eating
a piece of cheese,
peaked Mountain Vermont
Dandy, made in Townshend,
and it has that distinct nutty,
sweet, complicated quality that
I associate with the taste of
sheep milk.
Cheese is one of my very
favorite foods, and is a direct reflection
of the milk from which
it is made. I have never particularly
enjoyed just drinking
milk, but that transformation
from milk to curd to cheese has
always delighted me. as I sat
there very much enjoying my
piece of cheese, I started thinking
about milk.
Milk is such a basic food. For
most of us it is the first food
we eat as humans. Milk is also
deeply woven into the literature
and lore of our civilization. Milk
represents kindness and plenty,
beauty and motherhood.
Milk is an “old fashioned”
food that conjures up long-ago
days when the “milkman” came
to your door. The image of those
glass bottles, cream risen to
the top, clinking softly as they
were carried inside, speaks of a
quieter time when life was easier,
simpler somehow. Lovely
complexions are referred to as
“milky.” Cleopatra, among others,
was said to have bathed in
milk to retain her dewy youth.
gO TO THe supermarket today
and stand in front of the dairy
case. You will be faced with milk
of all sorts, real and otherwise,
colored, flavored, reduced, enhanced,
organic, lactose-free,
cow, goat, sheep, local, or highly
processed. Milk has become big
business and like so many foods,
has become politicized in the
process.
Before the advent of refrigeration,
a lot of milk went bad
or was contaminated by microorganisms
that caused all sorts
of disease. The process of pasteurization,
developed by Louis
pasteur in the late 1800s, provided
a means by which the
potentially dangerous microbes
in milk could be destroyed by
heat.
Two methods exist. slow pasteurization
heats milk to around
The World on
My Plate
CHRISTOpHER
EmILy COuTAnT
144 degrees and holds it there
for 30 minutes. Fast pasteurization
heats milk to 166 degrees
for 15 seconds. The first method
is said to have a less adverse effect
on the flavor of the milk,
while the second is favored by
most commercial producers
because of its speed. Ultra-pasteurization,
mostly of cream,
involves heat of 280 degrees for
one second.
Homogenization is another
process designed in France
around the turn of the last century.
When left alone, whole
milk separates, creating two distinct
layers: one very rich cream
layer on top, and a less fatty milk
below. Once separated it is hard
to mix the two together again.
Homogenization was designed
to evenly disperse the fat
globules throughout the milk.
This is accomplished by passing
the milk through a small
pipe under high pressure so that
it sprays onto a hard surface,
breaking up the fat into smaller
particles that are more uniformly
distributed.
aT THe TIMe, these two developments,
along with the
invention of commercial refrigeration
in the late 1800s, allowed
for the mass distribution and
processing of safe milk to a population
that now had the means
to preserve it at home. Mass
distribution meant mass profit,
and like many agricultural enterprises,
the dairy industry saw
itself quickly overtaken by huge
farms and mighty lobbies. We
need only look around at the
fields and farms in our own state
to see the ramifications.
according to the Vermont
Dairy association, in 1950 more
than 11,000 dairy farms operated
in Vermont. Today fewer
than 1,500 do so.
But the amount of milk
produced has actually risen,
because the average cow now
gives more than three times the
amount of milk its foremother
produced in 1950. Cows have
been bred to produce more
milk, not tastier milk. The finances
of the Vermont dairy
industry are locked into the nationwide
push for mega-farms
and the export of dairy knowledge
and cows. China, a country
that has no history of dairy farming,
is eager for both cows and
farming knowledge. They fully
expect to become one of the top
exporters of dairy products in
the next two decades, thanks
in part to the help they are receiving
from the Vermont state
Department of agriculture.
elsewhere in Vermont we’ve
all seen a huge growth in organic
dairy farming, from only
three certified organic dairy
farms in Vermont in 1993 to 209
in 2008.
That same Vermont Department
of agriculture that sends
heifers to China is also trying to
help local farmers retain their
dairies. Vermont is filled with
organizations that help support
small farmers: the Vermont
Farm Bureau, the state agricultural
Outreach programs, the
UVM extension service, and
Center for sustainable agriculture,
the Vermont Land Trust,
the Women’s agricultural Network,
and the Vermont Organic
Farmers association, to name
but a few.
eNOUgH pOLITICs. My piece
of cheese is gone, and I am hungry
again. Luckily I can ride
down the road to Lilac Ridge
Farm and buy a few quarts of
farm-fresh raw organic milk.
Vermont dairy farmers can
sell a limited quantity of raw
milk directly from their farms,
provided they do not advertise
in any way other than word of
mouth and have no promotional
signs at the dairy. and I am not
limited to cow milk in my quest
for taste.
goat milk, with its slightly
higher and chemically different
fat content and smaller fat globules,
is easier to digest than cow
milk and makes cheese with a
piquant, acidic quality. Try a Hillman
Farm disc made in nearby
Colrain, Mass. for the perfect
example of a goat milk cheese.
Nothing could be creamier or
have a better balance of sweet
and tart.
sheep milk has an even
higher fat content, 6.7 percent as
compared to goat’s 3.9 percent
and cow’s 3.5 percent. sheep
milk also has much more protein
and lactose than either goat
or cow milk. This gives sheep
Ricotta cheese
milk a complexity and richness
that is reflected in cheese made
from it. For an aged sheep milk
cheese try peaked Mountain
Vermont Dandy, Bonnieview
Farm Ben Nevis, or classic Vermont
shepherd, all supremely
delicious and very much about
the milk.
WITH MY QUaRT of local raw
organic cow milk, I am making
ricotta. Now this isn’t traditional
ricotta, which is made from the
sheep milk whey that drains
away from curd in the making of
cheese. But it is one of the best
ways I know to retain the sweetness
and flavor of milk.
Ricotta is luscious on its own,
dressed with a bit of olive oil,
salt, and pepper, or sweetened
with some fruit or a drizzle of
local honey and toasted nuts. It
can also be called upon to top
your favorite pasta, seasonal
vegetables, or a toasted piece of
bread.
Ricotta is simplicity itself to
make. eat it the day you make
it, and when that first spoonful
slides onto your tongue, think
about the milk of human kindness.
We can use all we can find
of that these days. n
Christopher Emily Coutant
(christopher@commonsnews.
org) writes about food every
other issue.
• 2 quarts whole milk – local, raw, organic if you can find it
• ½ tsp. salt
• 3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
• Large sieve lined with fine-mesh cheesecloth placed over a
large bowl
Bring the milk and salt slowly to a boil over moderate heat.
Stir to prevent scorching. When the milk begins to boil, turn
down the heat to low and add the lemon juice. Stir constantly
for about 2 minutes, until the mixture curdles.
Remove from heat and gently ladle the mixture into the
cheesecloth. Leave to drain for at least an hour.
Gather the cheesecloth by the four corners so that the curds
form a ball inside, and twist the cloth above the ball to apply
a little pressure. Then gently unwrap the cloth and empty the
ricotta onto a plate.
The ricotta can be refrigerated for a few hours, but I recommend
eating it immediately. Get your spoon.
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