Milton

A Performance and Community Engagement Experiment

Overview

Note: A copy of my book MILTON: A Performance and Community Engagement Experiment will be mailed to each reviewer.

Milton is a performance and community engagement experiment built for and with five small towns named “Milton” across the U.S. It involved multiple visits to these towns over several years to get to know the residents and the civic issues they were facing; PearlDamour then built a show in response to (and including) these conversations. The show was performed in three of the Miltons along with a range of collaborative community-engagement work led by the towns.

Background

In 2013, I began visiting five towns named Milton: in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Louisiana, Oregon, and Wisconsin. In each one, I met with a diverse cross-section of people, asking them questions about their lives and world views: How did you get to Milton? If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? Do you have advice for future generations? Why do you think we’re here on this earth? We built relationships with individuals, visiting their homes and learning about their towns. I partnered with projection artist Jim Findlay to film 24-hour videos of the sky over each Milton, often accompanied by engaged residents.

We began to see these five Miltons as an earth-bound constellation stretching across the United States, orienting us within the vast concept of being American. By traveling to towns we’d never otherwise visit and talking to people we’d never likely meet, my team sought order and meaning. Like the Big Dipper for a sailor out at sea, can this newly-born constellation help locate and guide us? What wisdom will we find there?

Finally, by creating a performance to share our findings with the Miltonians themselves, what new kind of community can form?

Milton, NC performance

Performance Description

Our experiences in each Milton inspired a performance we brought back to each town. The shows were intimate and took place in community spaces: picture a gathering of locals, with three performers of different ages and races speaking and singing amongst them, surrounded by video of the skies over Milton

The play brought all five Miltons into the room while shining a particular light on the Milton we were in. Sections of the play were rewritten for each town to speak to local issues. Each time we performed, I recast the play so the actors’ identities could best represent the demographics of that particular Milton. Finally, my direction stayed responsive to each local site.

Video links

3-Milton Sampler https://vimeo.com/945586978?share=copy (2 min 20 sec)

Full show, Milton, NC https://vimeo.com/945592956/70b571939b?share=copy

  • 00.00.00 – 00.6.20     Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour introduce the show

  • 00.06.25 - 01.13.00    Performance

CREATIVE TEAM

Created by PearlDamour 

Director Katie Pearl
Writer Lisa D’Amour
Sound Composition Brendan Connolly
Scenic Design Jim Findlay with Katie Pearl
Projection Design Jim Findlay
Performers Helga Davis, Vella Lovell, Mike Shapiro

Venues

In each town, I sought out venues where the most residents felt the most welcome. The first Milton was performed in the Milton, North Carolina Woman's Club in August 2014. The second show, in 2016, took place in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, at Mac High, the town's only high school. This Milton became a Spanish/English bilingual play. In 2017, we held our final Milton at the Milton, Massachusetts Public Library, a neutral meeting ground for the town’s racially diverse residents.

UPCOMING

Milton, Wisconsin, has plans to produce the show independently with our assistance in 2025.

Skies Over Seattle

In 2015-16, the Drama Department at the University of Washington in Seattle invited me to work with their MFA cohort on a community-responsive project inspired by PearlDamour’s Milton. Their interest was in bridging the university/neighborhood divide and giving their students a meaningful way to translate community-building into performance. 

We called the residency Skies Over Seattle. Over two semesters, students embedded with three different University District community groups: the Elizabeth Gregory Home, a woman’s day shelter; ROOTS, a teen overnight shelter; and the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, a needle exchange. They learned about the organizations, volunteered, and built relationships with the staff and constituents. Their experiences became the basis for performances presented privately for each organization and then publicly on the UW Jones Playhouse stage.

SUPPORT

Two separate National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grants made the project possible in both Milton, MA, and Milton-Freewater, OR, with additional support from several Oregon and Massachusetts-based foundations. A Multi-Arts Production Fund grant and a regional grant from the Dan River Foundation supported the project in Milton, NC.

COMMUNITY CollABORATIONS

Community collaborations in each Milton began differently and grew organically, based on each location's specific needs and interests. Each town demonstrated varying eagerness and interest in using art and conversation to bring their challenges into the open. Milton residents generated bold new ideas to explore, and although some aspects fell away, like with any first-time project, they made vital discoveries for the future.

We engaged in three large-scale community collaborations:

  • Talk Play Dream~Hablar Jugar Soñar in Milton-Freewater, OR

  • Milton Reflecting in Milton, MA

  • Milton Street Fair in Milton, NC

Milton-Freewater, OR:  Talk Play Dream~Hablar Jugar Soñar

The Need

Milton-Freewater, Oregon (pop. 7,000) is about 50-50 white/Latinx, and most adults speak monolingual English or Spanish. Many locals, including those at City Hall, felt that the two communities needed to unite for the city to thrive. In addition, local artists wanted to make themselves seen, and residents wanted more art events in town so they wouldn’t have to drive to the larger, more cosmopolitan Walla Walla, Washington, for their “culture fix.” Our local partners wondered with us: what can be done to bring the two sides of town together and energize local cultural and community development efforts?

Developing the Idea

First, we looked around for events, organizations, and people already active in town and asked how PearlDamour could work with them. One of our first partners was the Milton-Freewater Downtown Alliance (MFDA), a small, lively community development organization that hosted an annual Cinco de Mayo Festival. Using the festival and our show as anchor events, we worked with the MFDA and other key partners to develop bilingual, family-friendly creative activities throughout the year. We called the series “Talk Play Dream–Hablar Jugar Soñar.” The events were designed to unite local citizens to “talk, play, and dream” about the town's future, such as our “Dream Tent” seen here. Set up during the Cinco de Mayo fest and at our show, people celebrated making cloud hats and writing down dreams for Milton-Freewater.

WATCH VIDEO: Milton-Freewater residents talk about their experience working with PearlDamour.

Milton, MA: Milton Reflecting

The Need

Milton, Massachusetts (pop. 27,000) is known primarily as a wealthy suburb of Boston. Our conversations here were about the realities of rapidly changing racial demographics in a town led primarily by the white “old guard.” Our local stakeholders are eager for consistent, creative opportunities for nuanced, ongoing conversations about race.

Developing the Idea

Our project partners shared a desire to celebrate the diversity and multiplicity in town by facilitating relationships among Milton’s different ethnic groups. The planning group initiated a program called "Milton Reflecting" to unite Miltonians of all ages for a full year of creative activities, all designed to encourage reflection and activate the extraordinary diversity of the town. The scope of the program was ambitious: installations in the library, a series of story circles, playwriting workshops in elder residencies, the production of our play, and a program called "Sacred Conversations" (later renamed "Courageous Conversations") spearheaded by the Milton Interfaith Clergy Association. All these activities were designed to provide a safe, facilitated space for people to discuss race.

Events were listed on the Milton Reflecting website, a hub for the project. You can visit the website here.

WATCH VIDEO: Milton Selectman Tom Hurley narrates this summary of Milton Reflecting for a grant proposal I wrote with the town.

LIBrary Installation

A Milton, MA resident listens to voices from Milton-Freewater, OR, during our installation at the Milton Public Library. The installation included artifacts from all five Miltons, voice recordings, photos, and model buildings of the show venues (all used in the show itself).

For further information on Courageous Conversations, click here.

Milton, NC: The Street Fair

The Need

Milton, North Carolina, is a town with a population of 300 people. Milton’s business district, which lines three blocks of Highway 57, includes three restaurants, several antique and craft shops, a museum, and an art gallery. It’s a busy road, and vehicles barrel through without stopping. There is also a lack of foot traffic—with no gas station, grocery store, post office, or library, there aren’t many reasons for people to come to town. It’s hard on business and hard on morale. How do we make people pay attention to Milton, its artists, and its businesses? How can we make Milton a destination?

Developing the Idea

After an enthusiastic town meeting during which residents expressed a desire to showcase their town’s art and history, the planning team began working on its vision: the 1st Annual Milton Street Fair, a weekend-long community event that would bring vendors, craftspeople, musicians, tourists, and residents together to enjoy and celebrate their town.

The Street Fair was thrilling. We’d visited Milton many times, and that day, the streets were more packed than we had ever seen them. PearlDamour set up a display showing off our play and the five Miltons. We taught a cloud-making workshop and hosted an elder story circle to capture town history, embedding Milton in an ecosystem of arts and community. As we built the street fair with the town, their trust in us grew, making it easier to move forward together.

Presence in the Field

Press

Book Review

Megan Sandberg-Zakian. “Milton: A Performance and Community Engagement Experiment.” Stage Directors and Choreographers Association Journal p.76, Vol. 10 No. 1, Spring 2022

Play review

Joyelle Ball, “Review of Milton.” Theatre Journal, vol. 69 no. 1, 2017, p. 94-96. 

Features