DAMASCUS, PA - Farm Arts Collective artistic founder, Tannis Kowalchuk will perform her critically-acclaimed solo performance Decompositions at the Scranton Fringe Festival September 26-28. Back from a recent performance tour in Europe, Kowalchuk describes the performance as a “duet with a compost pile, a physical and musical exploration of how a compost pile and the process of decomposing is a perfect metaphor for the cycle of life.”  

Show times are Friday, September 26 at 8pm, Saturday, September 27 at 4pm and Sunday, September 28 at 4pm at Marywood University, Regina Hall.

Employing her devised theatre practice and her agrarian life as a farmer – Kowalchuk co-owns and farms on Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Damascus. Decompositions features a compost pile at center stage. 

The 60-minute performance begins with excerpts from the Gertrude Stein essay, providing an entry into the existential monodrama which explodes into an original song-filled, performance that digs into birth, death, farming, art, aging, and transformation.

Kowalchuk, is recently back from a European performance tour where she performed at Nisville International Jazz Theatre Festival in Serbia to critical acclaim. Chief drama critic, Ana Tasic of the newspaper POLITIKA writes 

“Tannis is a skilled actress with amazing transformation abilities, from theatrically comic, through finely ironic to subtly tragic expression; she captivates with brilliance in dramatic, physical, as well as vocal segments. The performance is genre-eclectic, including gentle elements of shadow theatre but also the rawness of performance, in the finale when she sprinkles herself with earth that occupied a central place on stage – a symbol of life, from which everything is born and where everything disappears. 

“Decompositions” is a memorable work because the authentic and concrete life experiences of one woman, actress, mother, who repeatedly encountered proximity to death, transform into the general, into a metaphor of all our existence, our struggles and searches for understanding the mysteries of life and death (of the body).”

 Decompositions is produced by Farm Arts Collective, an agri-cultural center on Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Damascus run by Kowalchuk and a collective of artists, performers, and farmers. Decompositions and created in collaboration with director Mimi McGurl, songs by Rima Fand, beats and soundscapes by Janhavi Pakrashi, music by the Farm Arts Collective. Technical director is Jess Beveridge.

For tickets and information visit https://scrantonfringe.org/.