October 2014 Milton Newsletter

Sky Over Milton | Project News | Feature Story | Profile of the Month

Project News

What was the process of writing the play?

by Lisa D'Amour, co-creator and author of the play On one of our trips last year to Milton, LA, Ashley and I stayed with Wilma Landry, a lifelong Milton resident. It was so wonderful to be hosted by someone who knew so much about Milton -- and who was such an amazing cook! During our trip, Wilma kept saying -I want you to meet my next door neighbor, he's a woodworker, he makes chairs out of salvaged materials and he has some of them in his garage. Ashley and I were quite busy on our trip, and didn't have a whole lot of time to think about that neighbor, or what he had over at his house. Finally, on our last day in town, Wilma said "come on, you all have to come see this!"

And so we walked about 20 steps next door, and into the side door of a large garage and - WOW - there we saw, arranged in a circle, 10 chairs handmade from OLD WATERSKIS. It's hard to describe how cool and beatiful these chairs were --- the neighbor obviously thought carefully about coordinating colors, which style of skis to use -- they were really stunning, and you could just feel the personal touch. All this creativity, inside a single garage in Milton, LA Katie, Ashley and I discovered SO MANY of these hidden treats on our trips to Milton. When it came time for me to write the script for the performance, I felt COMPLETELY overwhelmed. How could I write an hour long script that would reflect all of the rich details we had encountered? When we take our trips, one way we keep track of what we have encountered, we record ourselves on our phones creating what we call a "Sometimes" list: Sometimes someone shows you the grave of Thomas Day....sometimes someone tells you about being the only female welder at her job....we saw this list as "glimpses" into the Miltons that would help jog our memory when we were ready to make the performance. Ultimately, I decided there may be a way to theatricalize this list -- and I started editing the list and weaving details from the 5 Miltons together. At the top of the show, three actors of different ages and races start speaking this list of details -- and it seems as though the list might go on forever. This was intentional, as PearlDamour really felt like there was no

What's Up In Milton WI

The 100 Women Campaign set out to find 100 women willing to contribute $1,000 within 5 years to support the Milton Public Library renovation. So far, 148 women are participating! Click here to learn more about their success!

MA

Celebrate Milton's annual gathering was Sunday October 5th at Pierce Middle School.

Thousands of people came from across the city to celebrate Milton’s diversity. Click here for a short news report about this community celebration!

NC

StoryCorps / The National Library of Congress conducted two interviews about historic Milton (past/present/future) on Friday, October 10th in Danville, VA. The interviews featured Mrs. Cloeta McCain Jeffreys and Twinkle Richmond-Graves.

LA

Ms. Nola Broussard, age 99, passed away on Monday October 27. She is one of the featured voices in our performance and it is with sad hearts that we extend our condolences to her granddaughter Rennie and son/caretaker Wawee. Ms. Nola was an amazing Cajun woman and we will miss her.

OR

Library Bob retired recently! We are sad to see him and uncertain about the future of the Oldies Night at the Library program. We are looking forward to getting to know Erin Wells the new Library

end to the fascinating details to be discovered in each Milton.

An infinite list is fun to think about -- but of course I wanted to find a way to vary this list over the course of the hour. So I began experimenting with letting the list transform into a monologue describing one detail from a Milton -- almost like a close up. And then sometimes, that close up would transform into a voice coming out of a speaker -- a recording of one of our many interviews. In this way, I hoped to bring the audience very close to a moment that Katie and I experienced, and then pull us back out into a bigger picture.

In the end, I knew it was impossible to fully recreate our experience of learning about these five different Miltons. In fact, at one point the actors even say "Sometimes you realize that all you will ever get is a glimpse - a piece - of the whole picture." I see this line as a call to action of sorts --- to challenge the audience to go out and catch their own glimpse of something new about their town, or perhaps another town, and to continue to search for complexity behind the glimpse that they find.

Feature Story

PearlDamour's recent trip to Milton, Wisconsin

by Katie Pearl, co-creator and director of the play When we’re not in production mode, the project moves forward with site visits to each of the Miltons, where we continue to build and deepen relationships, learn about the community, and identify partners for bringing the show to town. Katie was representing PearlDamour in Milton, WI this month, finally making our second visit there.

I drove into Milton on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon: bright blue sky, leaves turning colors, and cornfields either tall and golden or newly harvested and stubbly in the fields that patchwork through town. My first stop was going to be the Milton Family Restaurant, where I wanted to reconnect with Abib, the owner, and set up an interview with him later in my visit. I got out of my car and paused to take a picture of the Milton Junction strip, where many of the businesses are in historic buildings. The one I was photographing had a FOR SALE sign on it, and as I snapped the picture a man came out of it and jokingly asked if I wanted to buy it. I told him why I was there and what I was doing, and that began a whirlwind 4 days of fascinating conversations with a wide range of Miltonians (both old and new acquaintances), as well as meetings with nonprofits, consults with the mayor, and hang-outs at community events. Here are a few highlights: Interviews with folks like Brad Dutcher, who, as head of the local chapter of the UAW a few years back, was in the national spotlight for months fighting to keep the GM plant open in nearby Janesville (you can watch a clip of him on the Ed Show from that time here); In depth conversations with leaders from The Milton House, The Gathering Place, and the Milton Public Library about ways the project can be a partner in programming.

A workshop with students at the alternative

Director and learning about her plans for community programming at the library. It is a fantastic facility and hub in the community of Milton-Freewater

High School, MECAS, where they made profiles of each other like this.

Consultation with Mayor Brett Frazier about strategies to get the show to town.

A tour of the Milton College Main Hall museum

by Judy Scheehle, a brilliant and passionate keeper of Milton College history and president of the Milton College Preservation Society; and a tour of the high school theater auditorium with the school’s drama guru (Steve Dorn), as we discussed the plans to work with him to do the show in that space.

This trip was a great measure for me of how we’ve come along in terms of meeting and engaging people about the project. As I write this, I am thinking back to PearlDamour’s very first visit to a Milton—Milton, MA, over two years ago. We were very shy about approaching people at that point—we hadn’t quite figured out how to do it or what exactly we wanted to be talking about—in part because the project was still so abstract. It is such a pleasure to introduce people to MILTON now, and look forward with them towards the ways the project can be situated meaningfully within their own communities. Thanks, Milton WI, for such an inspiring, fulfilling visit! For a slide show of the visit, click here.

Profile of the Month Diane Biggs takes care of the Fraiser Farmstead Museum. Learn more about her work in MiltonFreewater, OR here.

About the Miltons Visit the Sky Over Milton Website and see information and historical facts about the five towns involved in this project: click here!

Participate If you live in one of the Miltons, click on these buttons to answer the question of the month or share pictures of the sky from your Milton.

Sky Over Milton | Skies | People | Questions | PearlDamour |

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