ArtsWest 2024-2025 Season: The Family of Things

Introducing the 2024-25 Season.
www.artswest.org/24-25-season/
GUARDS AT THE TAJ
by Rajiv Joseph
A Co-Production with Pratidhwani
September 12 - October 6
SNOWED IN (AGAIN)
by Corinne Park-Buffelen & Mathew Wright
November 21 - December 22
COVENANT
by York Walker
February 6 - March 2
ATHENA
by Gracie Gardner
In Collaboration with Salle Auriol
April 10 - May 4
THE EFFECT
by Lucy Prebble
June 19 - July 13
"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."
Mary Oliver is beloved as one of the great poets of the natural world. She found her place there early on, and throughout her life gave us messages in bottles about how we might find our place too. She admired the bird and the bear and the snake and the tree, pointing out that humans are the sole members of the natural world who have been blessed and cursed to ask questions like “Who am I?” and “Where do I belong?” Finding answers to these questions can seem like an impossible quest, but in Wild Geese, Mary Oliver gives us a place to start:
"You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."
This season is about some humans, the softest animals, striving to let themselves and each other love, which, as Mary shows us, is the only path to belonging. We’ll explore the love of two friends in a regime where beauty is for the few and lives are expendable; in a friendship where artistic success is on the line; in a culture where the wrong kind of love must remain secret; in a female friendship where proving oneself is a necessity; and finally in the context of a passion which verges on mania.
Through it all, we’ll hold the hope that love will show us the path to belonging and allow us each to find our place in the family of things.