Dust can't kill me

Elliah Heifetz/Abigail Carney

NYMF, JUNE HAVOC THEATER

2016

Directed by Srda Vasiljevic

Choreography by Jennifer Jancuska

Music Direction by Max Gordon

Set Design: Reid Thompson

Costume Design: Stephanie Levin

Lighting Design: Oliver Wason

Sound Design: Max Gordon

Photographs: Karen Santos

Actors: Michael Castillejos, Richard Crandle, Elizabeth Davis, Adrian Enscoe, Kathryn Gallager, Paul Hinkes

This new musical was produced as part of the New York Music Theater Festival in 2016. The story centers on the dust bowl in 1936 Rolla, Kansas and way out in the desert. Director Srda Vasiljevic staged it as part concert, part staged scenes. The actors also were the instrumentalists, and used the instruments as props. We made the set entirely out of shipping pallets and some 4x4s, which as part of the festival had to be assembled and struck by the actors at each performance in a tightly controlled time frame. At the top of the show, when the characters are in the town, it set as an outdoor concert stage set-up, with hanging bulbs. As the characters leave town and find their way to the dessert the pallets reconfigured into a more natural landscape with campground. A semi-mythical Tree Of Life appears at one point when they go to the dessert, dripping with peaches. Our version was made with dowels and glowing liquor bottles for the "peaches".