Homegrown Happy Valley

Once upon a time there were two hens.

The first is Battery Hen. “I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch my wings,” writes Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns in Thinking Like a Chicken: Farm Animals and the Feminine Connection. “I am forced to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into my feet.”

Hen number two is Granny Black. Unlike Battery Hen, Granny Black is a free bird who spends her days snuggling with her chicks. Granny is a character from a book by Mary Gage, a local screenwriter, playwright and former Penn State professor. Back when she was living in  Australia, Gage took in some battery chickens, introduced them to Eden (a.k.a. her backyard) and became fascinated with their personalities. The result is Praise the Egg!, her book about life through the eyes of chickens.

Writes Gage, “while they waited for the sun to go down again, [Granny] told them about the great big world outside the chick run, or the days when she was a chick, or the story they liked telling best of all - her Miracle story about Eggs. How the broken fragments they had hatched from were once smooth, complete shapes; how every chicken that ever was had hatched out in exactly the same way; how only chooks (an Australian term that’s slang for chicken) could lay such beauties; and how every time they did, they were so filled with joy that they could not stay quiet, but had to burst into song…”

Should we care if the eggs in our Easter basket come from a Battery Hen or a Granny Black? These authors clearly think we should. After Gage heard that Davis, who campaigns for the humane treatment of chickens, had quoted her book at a lecture at Yale, she decided to turn the book into a musical and tapped some locals to help with the production. Richard Biever from Singing on Stage provides the music; Elaine Meder-Wilgus from Webster’s directs; artist and PSU professor Harriet Rosenberg designed the set; and Jill Brighton from the Central Pennsylvania Dance Workshop is choreographing. The result is a fantastic display of some of the area’s best talent.

Set in a chicken run, “Praise the Egg!” features a cast of characters who, says Gage, “believe Man and Woman serve them because of their magical eggs.” Expect a lot of song and dance and a message that should appeal to all ages.

Says director Meder-Wilgus: “It’s not only about chickens but also about our human nature, our stewardship of the planet, and our love of other creatures—both with and without feathers.”

Praise the Egg! is playing Saturday April 3 at 3 and 7 p.m. The State is also showing it to middle school and high school students during matinees on Monday April 5 and Wednesday April 7^th. If you can’t make the Saturday show, call the box office about available seats for the matinees (unlike the Saturday show, those tickets can’t be purchased online). Just be prepared for a lot of kids!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Events, Kids, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.