Powered by
  • Home
  • About the Project
  • Blog
  • Cast and Crew
SPARE A DIME
Please visit cosacosa.org and get social with us!

Spare A Dime character profile: The Farmer

2/7/2013

0 Comments

 
The seeds of hope necessarily cultivate, sustain, and nurture our lives.
Picture
WWI and the roaring 20s brought increased demand for American grain worldwide.  The government encouraged farmers to grow more and expand their land holdings.  With food prices on the rise, they willingly complied, taking out large mortgages for new land and new equipment.  Even when, after the other nations of the world recovered from the war and were able to grow their own food, grain prices fell, American farmers continued to borrow money; credit was easily had.  Once the Depression came, farm foreclosures became everyday events.  In the Midwest, the farmers' dire economic situation was exacerbated by the Dust Bowl.  

FDR's New Deal attempted to remedy these problems through multiple programs.  The WPA provided jobs for those who had lost their lands.  The Civilian Conservation Corps restored farm lands devastated by dust storms.  The Farm Security Administration experimented with resettling sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and submarginal landowners into group farms on viable lands. 

Those farmers who were able to retain ownership of their land survived the Great Depression growing their own food and trading goods for other supplies they needed, like our Spare A Dime character The Farmer. Our Farmer survives on hard work and hope.  She sings about those two essential qualities of American life in Promised Land, (the duet with The Immigrant described yesterday).  In the second half of Spare A Dime, she sings Voices Raised, an anthem to both individual rights and mutual aid.  The Farmer is based on Director/Composer Kimberly Niemela's paternal grandmother, a first generation American who raised ten children on a Pennsylvania farm during the Great Depression.  She is also an homage to Philadelphia's determined urban growers, especially those in COSACOSA's partner communities of Passyunk Square and Nicetown-Tioga.  As one North Philly elder told us, "You have to nurture hope just like seed for it to become what it's supposed to be."  Join us at PIFA 13 and help nurture the hopes of communities all over our city!

Tomorrow's post is our final character profile: The Mother!

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    SUPPORT THE PROJECT

    Archives

    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    Bok Tech
    Bonus Army
    Cast And Crew
    Characters
    COSACOSA
    Education
    FDR
    Federal One
    Great Depression
    Great Recession
    Interviews
    Multimedia
    Music
    Photography
    PIFA
    Recipes For Hard Times
    Storytelling
    Time Travel
    Visual Art
    WPA

    cosacosa.org

    Spare A Dime
    is a project of
    COSACOSA art at large, Inc., workshopped at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.

    ©2012-2018 COSACOSA, Inc.
    All rights reserved to all content.

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.