DAMASCUS, PA — You’ve been invited to a global conference on the greatest issue of our time. You will be given a name-tag lanyard and encouraged to participate but you do not have to speak. This, you agree, is best left to the cast of professional actors and musicians who returning audiences will recognize from previous Dream on the Farm productions. 

Halfway through a decalogue of climate change plays that began in 2020, Farm Arts Collective opened a stimulating “Conference for Those Still Living” last week at Willow Wisp Organic Farm. 

Performances continue at 6:30 p.m., Thursday through Sunday, August 15 through 18.

The play’s global cast of characters has been invited to the conference by a mutual friend—an elusive ornithologist named Benjamin Drake (Dan Lendzian) whose Godot-like delay prompts the refrain “What are we waiting for?”. 

Starting with conference organizer and corporate lawyer Gloria Meyers (Ginny Hack), the cast introduces themselves to music by Benjamin’s old band Jedling Smackjaw’s Narcotica Exotica Seasick Adventure Cruise and Karaoke Karavan (composer/lyricist Doug Rogers with Annie Hat, Pam Arnold and Melissa Bell).

Director Tannis Kowalchuk, who also plays saucy Italian chef Silvia DiFranco, keeps the show moving through inventive choreography that incorporates a wheeled podium, trailing suitcases and a revolving banquet table. 

Hardly acquainted, these strangers feel each other out as they pour coffee from opposite sides of the table. As anxieties grow and bubble over in the show’s final act, the table disappears. Fear and panic connect the characters and the audience as well. We need each other to face the enormity of this anxiety.

While not exactly a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story, audience members will be subconsciously asked to consider a number of questions during the evening’s entertainment. The conference theme—“Fight or Flight?”—hangs on a banner over the stage.

If you haven’t visited Farm Arts since last year, you’ll be delighted to find the company’s greenhouse venue replaced with a modern new theater barn funded by an ongoing capital campaign.

Act Two of the show begins when real Willow Wisp farmer Joe Powell arrives to take everyone on a brief tour of the farm just before sunset. The audience feels the energy of the living plants. sees rows of cucumbers affected by a fungal pathogen that traveled north on the Gulf Stream and understands the food sources we take for granted are at risk. Other crops fried in the dry, unseasonably warm temperatures of early summer, Farmer Joe tells us. We can’t deny we have a stake in this.

Instead of a traditional intermission, audience members returning from the farm tour are invited to browse the cast members’ carnival-themed exposition tents. 

Woodstock-nation’s Jane Livingston (Debra Thomas) shares collage art and sculptures addressing mental health out of discarded plastic pill bottles. Seriously stressed Rosy Finch (Rebekah Creshkoff) uses the Wheel of Fortune to reveal bird facts both hopeful and despairing—with carrots awarded to winning spinners. 

Hilarious Parisienne storm chaser and influencer Francoise du Chateau Maison Appartement (Lexee McEntee) thrusts a hurricane demonstration upon volunteers who despite the provided poncho don’t stand a chance against full fan force winds and pitchers of flying water. Chef Silvia’s blindfolded taste test compares bruschetta made with Willow Wisp ingredients to those purchased at Wal-Mart. 

If you stand still too long, you may be interviewed by earnest Anthropocene Times journalist Leon Fairchild (Hudson Williams-Eynon). 

Author of a fictional book about blowing up pipelines Berlin’s Werner Shreer (John Roth) lays out the distinctions between protest and resistance while distributing a handful of sandbag “explosives” to audience members. There’s a moment of quiet surprise when he slips his head into the “pipeline” with a flaming dragon mouth that hangs decoratively at the rear of his tent. As the puppet circles the crowd, Scheer asks those holding the faux explosives to choose. Bomb the corporate oil bullseye on the side of the puppet or stand inert? Though you know the prop won’t actually explode, there’s a hesitancy to play the role of revolutionary.

The audience laughs at the antics of these carnival games even as a fearful realization rises—if people don’t voluntarily make sacrifices, the crisis will continue to intensify, and people will become more desperate. Farm Arts Collective reminds us theatre has been used since ancient times to bring people together to experience difficult emotions in a safe space with the support of a community. Climate change isn’t funny, but spoonfuls of Ume Itose’s (Yurika Sasa) wild Japanese honey make the facts easier to digest.

“We don’t know what we’re doing/or how to do what we don’t know what to do,” the cast sings as it concludes that it’s not too late if we, as well as they, come together whatever the weather to seek innovative solutions.

Dream on the Farm #5: “Conference for those Still Living,” continues at 6:30 p.m., Thursday through Sunday, August 15-18 at Willow Wisp Farm. Tickets cost $20-$40 plus fees and include an offering of farm-fresh food. Reservations are recommended as tickets could sell out. Visit www.farmartscollective.org for details.

Alicia Grega prepared food for Farm Arts Collective during the first week of the show’s run. She worked on staff for 15+ years as an arts journalist/editor at The Scranton Times-Tribune’s publication electric city (2001-2016) and currently works as a freelance communications professor and theatre artist based in Scranton, PA.