Images above were taken months after the performance at the sites where events unfolded.

Three Larks: Performance for Laurie

During three moon cycles from March through June 2020
Walla Walla, WA
Ideated & Choreographed with Kathryn Padberg

Three Larks, Performance for Laurie was the second performance in the ongoing project For You (and Us), a performance series created with and for an audience of one. Kathryn Padberg and I created this durational performance in collaboration with Laurie, her shared community members, and one of the natural forces that guides her, the moon. Woven into her life at a time when she was experiencing major life transitions, the performance became a companion that that witnessed her travails —her relationships, communities, and sites that are significant to her—culminating in an experience that falls somewhere between everyday life and performance.

Kathryn, a dancer and choreographer, knew Laurie before me. In all of our meetings with her it was clear that Laurie conversed with the natural world. In an untended field she would stop to identify the plants around her, chewing on leaves to confirm her suspensions. At the banks of a river she would hand us the bud from a weeping cottonwood and say, “Oh, this is the smell of spring. Can you smell it? It subtle but surrounds you.” And when we told Laurie that through the process of making this work we wanted to ask questions with her she said, “Oh I know my question for you.”   

Three Larks, Performance for Laurie unfolded in three acts in Walla Walla, WA over the course of one moon cycle, commencing on Feb 9, 2020 and culminating on the March 9th supermoon.

Act 1 began on Feb 8, the eve of the full moon. Kathryn and I delivered a package containing a score that she was instructed to enact days later. While enacting this score she received a phone call from astrologer and artist Renee Sills. Renee also sent Kathryn and I a reading laying out the way the moon and stars were set to interact with Laurie’s life for the coming months. The performance events that followed were scripted based on the movement of the moon through the sky. 

Act 2: On the new moon of Feb 23, Laurie received another package, this one without a scripted score but rather just objects and texts that served as an invitation to research. 

Act 3: Act three began here at the start of MeadowLark Trail on March 9th, a half an hour before a full supermoon broke above the horizon. A cellist, perched on a hill among the trees–still in hibernation from winter–played for her as the dusk settled in. She entered a clearing where 10 performers walked among the tall brown grasses, leading her through the valley accompanied by the sound of the wind and gently singing bells. One performer, dressed from head to toe in rusty yellow, led Laurie off the main trail onto a deer path and past a thicket where she was instructed to sit under a tree. 

Alone, as the full supermoon rose in the sky, Laurie was left to examine a miniature world created for her. Set aglow with tiny lights, hundreds of objects embedded with meanings (some of which Laurie knew and others which she could only infer) were meticulously placed beneath the tree’s branches.  After sometime, Laurie’s daughter and niece, two of her most creative collaborators, joined her to examine the world, eat, and drink tea made from berries harvested from nearby seasons before. They left in the dark, exiting a natural portal to walk home with a sky aglow in the light from the brightest moon of the year. 

The post performance act was a quiet period that Laurie identified as crucial to the experience. She called it “a collective consciousness space” that spanned what astrologers named “the season of supermoons” beginning March 9, 2020 and extending through the initial onset of the pandemic. 

Three Larks, Performance for Laurie  was produced in Walla Walla, WA during one moon cycle from February 9 to March 9, 2020 with post performance happenings through June 2020. Second performance in the ongoing project For You (And Us). Created and performed by Tia Kramer and Kathryn Padberg in collaboration with Laurie and Margaret Thomas (creator of fairyland), Liz Phillips (cellist),  Laura Jessich, Caspian Pimpan, Izzy Mullins, Eva Coulon, Anna Johnston, Haley King, Nidhi Jaltare, Peter de Grasse (performers,) Luna and Lane Avery Fairbanks, Halah, Freya (family,) Augusta Farnum & Fields Ford (photographers,) Lucy Evans Rippy (stage manager) and Rebecca Cooley (logistics.) Created with the support of the Whitman College Spring Studio Series, Walla Walla, WA. 

The framework of creating a performance for an audience of one prevents anyone beyond the solo audience member from experiencing the performance as a whole. For audiences like those of you reading this webpage these performances can exist only as fragments. To honor the intention of these performances the images you above were not taken during their performance but rather months afterward at the sites where events unfolded. All images by Tia Kramer.