On Sunday, Sept. 14, Sandglass Theater and Vermont Performance Lab present the first event of a two-week residency of Cry You One, a collaboration of New Orleans theater groups Mondo Bizarro and ArtSpot Productions.
The residency, part of Sandglass' “Voices of Community” series, kicks off with the Jumbo Gumbo Combo at Next Stage Arts Project in Putney.
The evening begins at 5:30 with a Louisiana gumbo supper prepared by the Sandglass board of directors under the tutelage of Scott Ainslie, local blues master and bayou cook.
Musicians from the visiting companies, Mondo Bizarro and ArtSpot Productions, will accompany with live Cajun music.
Following the supper, at 7, the Cry You One team will screen a documentary about Louisiana in the Next Stage Arts Project theater. The film, “My Louisiana Love,” follows a young Native American woman, Monique Verdin, as she returns to Southeast Louisiana to reunite with her Houma Indian family. She soon sees that her people's traditional way of life - fishing, trapping, and hunting these fragile wetlands - is threatened by a cycle of manmade environmental crises.
The flim takes up the complex, uneven relationship between the oil industry and the indigenous community of the Mississippi Delta.
It is directed by Sharon Linezo Hong, a co-writer and co-producer on the Cry You One project and the founder of Within a Sense, an independent production company aiming to create portrait documentaries taking up societal and environmental issues through personal perspective.
The dinner and screening are followed by a discussion with members of the Cry You One team of artists and creators.
Tickets for the Jumbo Gumbo Combo event are $20. For those wishing to see only the film without dinner, a suggested donation of $10 is asked.
On Friday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. the Cry You One actors and musicians will give a concert version of their show at Evening Star Grange in Dummerston.
The concert, including Cajun- and African-inspired music, is an opportunity for people to learn Cajun dance steps. Beignets and coffee will be available. Evening Star Grange is wheelchair-accessible.
On Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 20 and 21, Cry You One will be performed in its entirety along a one-mile hike through forest and field. The 2{1/2}-hour performance begins at 2 p.m. at Broad Brook Grange in Guilford.
The audience then will be bussed a short distance to the land where the walk will begin.
Cry You One says in its program announcement it “marries the spirit of New Orleans music, storytelling, and procession with the beautiful Vermont landscape and our own stories of Hurricane Irene.”
This event has limited accessibility, but organizers say conveyance is available for part of the trek for anyone unable to hike the full distance.