Anne Galjour returns to the Hop for “Work in Progress” this weekend.
Photo: Courtesy of the Hopkins Center
The Upper Valley seems like that picturesque community nestled in the hills where all idyllic, heartwarming stories begin and end. However, as Anne Galjour’s work-in-progress will show Hopkins Center audiences on April 4 and 5, the Upper Valley is not immune to nationwide problems arising from class and economic status differences. Galjour’s piece is a solo play, yet to be titled. The Hop commissioned the work to be part of its Class Divide Initiative, which brings to light the troubles associated with class distinctions in the Upper Valley region.
The playwright, originally from Louisiana and now living in San Francisco, spent a three-week residency in Lebanon,N.H., Hanover and in the surrounding communities in New Hampshire and Vermont researching the topic of class divide.Galjour conducted story circles with workers at the Hop, with Lisel Murdock ‘09 and her sorority sisters at Epsilon Kappa Theta, with seniors at Hanover High School, senior citizens at the Peabody Library in Vermont, and with church groups and farming communities in Burlington and Brattleborough, Vt., in order to gain the material she needed to better understand the problems in the region and the spirit of the people who face them.
“People at the bottom feel invisible and even people at the middle feel invisible. When you feel invisible, you get angry, and I heard that in the story circles.”
Galjour’s play weaves together the storylines of three different households in the Upper Valley region.
Renowned for her portrayal of several multidimensional characters in her solo plays, Galjour appears to be a kind of artistic schizophrenic at first glance. She slips seamlessly from role to role, performing both monologues and dialogues between characters, while typically clad in simple clothes with only a sparse setting in which to work.
“I think of what I do as traditional story telling, which is very ancient,” Galjour said. “It allows me to draw from myths that speak to the soul, not the intellect…I give you the words, and you make the movie in your mind. That really engages the imagination in a way a Steven Spielberg movie can’t.”
The Class Divide Initiative, which receives funding from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Creative Campus Innovations Program, is a three-year program that showcases speakers and performances centered on social issues and reaches out to the community surrounding Dartmouth through the arts. Galjour’s play “Hurricane,” which explains the struggle of six Cajuns fighting against nature in the Louisiana bayou, was also shown in February of last year as a part of the Class Divide Initiative.
“I think the light [on social issues] is shining brightly through the Hop’s extraordinary initiative,” said Galjour. “It’s the best place because it’s through an educational institution. It’s not just an impact on an audience; it’s an impact on students who are learning something.
“This initiative is drawing out in each of us a knowledge and understanding that class is a fiction. It’s an imaginary thing; it’s a construct. Yes, we’ve built up a construct, but we can erode it if we want to.”
