Mount Ayr Record-News
Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa
Thursday, June 14, 2007, Pages 1 & 14

"Farmer Song," Ringgold county's own musical, is headed for the bright lights of New York City in August.

The musical, written about the farm crisis of the 1980's in Ringgold county and how farmers changed to survive, will be presented as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.

After winning the runner-up musical honors in the John F. Kennedy Center For the Performing Arts college competition earlier this year, the musical was invited to be part of the festival, which runs from August 12-18.

The musical is a HYNEK family affair. The talented Ellston-area family is responsible for creating the musical, with Joe HYNEK and his mother Anige HYNEK taking credit for the musical itself and three of the family members taking roles in the production.

Many of the cast members who have been part of the first two performances of the musical in Ames and at the Iowa State Fair are reprising their roles for the trip to New York City. Amy BURGMEIER, who has been seen in productions at the Des Moines Playhouse, will be taking the role of Becky for the new production and a new cast member is stepping in to play Latham.

Fringe festivals began as an opportunity for productions of new theater works to have the opportunity to be seen by wider audiences.

The concept began in Edinburg, Scotland, when new works couldn't find a way into the theaters in London many years ago.

This is the 11th year of the festial in New York City, and other big theater cities around the world have also added these types of festivals. More than 200 productions will be performed over 16 days in 20 theaters, a total of more than 1,300 performances in the largest multi-arts festival in North America.

Shows are running from two to midnight during the week and noon to midnight on weekends. They are scheduled so that several shows are running in each theater with a half hour break between peerformances. The shows are rotated through time slots, giving more opportunity to be seen.

HYNEK will be rehersing with the new characters through the rest of June and then after the Fourth of July the whole cast will be working to polish the show for the six performances it will have in New York City.

The cast has 15 minutes to set up the scenery and strike it after each performance, so HYNEK said the group would be drilling so that this was possible.

The Farmer Song crew, 15 strong, [Page 14] will be in New York City from August 12-18 for their part in the festival. Have recoreational vehicle and van, will travel.

Because there is no sound reinforcement in the theaters, the actors and actresses will be working to project their voices.

The accompaniment will be pared down to three instruments, with sister Amanda HYNEK playing bass along with a lead guitar and fiddle.

Tickets for the performances in the Fringe Fest are $15 each and will be available on the FringeNYC website later in the summer.

The 200 productions come from all over the world, but probably three-fourths of them are centered in New York City, HYNEK said. There among the Londs, Edinboroughs, Chicagos and the like is the lone smaller town production of "Farmer Song," hailing from Ames. Ames looks big to where it really hails from.

As well as having the productions run, there are lots of activities including workshops and chances for networking with other theater professionals.

There are also opportunities for people to go out on the street and perform songs and scenes from the play in parks and on sidewalks as part of an effort to draw an audience to their productions.

And there will be a bit of culture shock to deal with.

"We have a warning that we can't do any panhandling while we perform outside," HYNEK said. "We looked it up to make sure we knew what we couldn't do."

Some of the productions from the Fringe Festival each year are picked up for further runs in off-Broadway theaters in New York City. Then of course there are the shows that jumped from the fringe to the big time.

The organizers of the festival are very interested in having the "Farmer Song" production, because in some ways it's much different than many of the other productions that will be shown.

"The family-friendly story of farmers in small town Iowa is about as far removed from some of the normal fare in the Fringe Fest in New York City to make us quite different and on the fringe," HYNEK joked.

"We hope the exposure at the Fringe Fest gives us an opportunity for further productions," HYNEK said. "We'll have to see."

Wow.

"Farmer Song," the musical about life in Ringgold county written by Joe HYNEK and Angie HYNEK is going to New York City to be performed at the Fringe Festival there.

So is that a big deal?

Yet bit it is.

When your production is chosen as one of 200 shows to be included in a festival of new theater of all shapes and sizes, it's a big thing. The chances of someone stumbling upon a production of the musical in Ames are pretty slim. The chances of your play becoming famous at the Fring Fest may not be all that good. But they are much better in New York City than about anywhere else one could imagine.

There's a list of success stories on the New York City's festival website. A musical that made it to Broadway and toured the United States. A list of plays that were picked up to run off-Broadway in full-fledged productions. Tours and runs, even a feature film. A list of plays that were published. Plus a host of of connections made, collaborations fostered, partnerships begun. That's the lure of finding a way to keep your theater dream alive.

After hearing about the production there, I have begun wondering if Valle and I shouldhead east instead of west of a vacation this summer. We had thought of heading to see the Sequoias in California, but we hear the waterfalls have stopped running and the rivers are shallow because of the lack of snowfall in the mountains there.

Maybe seeing the mand-made mountains of New York City might not be a bad replacement trip. I'm a sucker for the theater and to actuallygo to the places where it is best known to see Ringgold county's own musical might be quite a kick. After all, we traveled to Florida to see Peggy WHITSON rise into space on the Space Shuttle. maybe we would see history of a different kind being made and be able to report it to our readers.

Joe HYNEK mentioned that the festival folks were intrigued by a musical about life in a small town in the midwest and how different and strange it seems to folks in the big city.

Having looked through a listing of some of the plays, I can see why the HYNEK'S play would be out of the ordinary in the fringe festival world.

Here are a sampling of some of the blurbs about other productions, that will be part of the festival. You can search for the titles by first letter in the title, so I just picked out a few. And thes were the ones I could print in a family newspaper.

A -- "An Air Balloon Across Antartica" Description: "One air balloon. Cpntents: One explorer, exceptiona. One hanster, obese. One urn, full." It won a writing award in Australia so there must be more here than meets the eye.

H -- "Hamlet -- A Stand Up." Description: "The entire tale of Hamlet. he mimes, talks, sings and dances his way through Claudius' murder of his brother, Ophelia's despondent character and the stunning duel between Ophelia's brother and Hamlet, solo. One actor - one musician, directly from Stockhom, Sweden." I think Hamlet was Danish so I'm not sure if a Swedish actor can pull this off. I hope it's in English or the audience could really get mixed up on its nationalities.

L -- "Lucid." Description: "It takes eight minutes for the sun to reach the earth. Every sunset you ever saw, you missed. Sitting on the windowsill of his consciousness, the Brooklyn science teacher uncovers the link between dreams, dark energy and his dead wife." I wonder how big a windowsill of one's consciousness really is? Will it really hold a science teacher or does it depend on what size.

P -- "Princess Sunshine's Bitter Pill of Truth Funhouse." "Princess Sunshine, NYC's own burnt out performer for kids. The Princess and friends teach and sing about broken dreams, fairy tales that lie and politics in a show for adults. Live music, puppetry, mixed-media. Darkly vaudevillian, campy and fun." Where are the "lightly's?"

S -- "Sustained Winds." Description: "Katrina: Before, During, After. Episodes of an American tragedy mixed with satire and in your face *%#! Multi-disciplined Louisiana artists expose, criticize and embrace their hurricane culture. Captures the isolation and joie de vie. Now. Evacuate of celebrate?"

This is only the other production from what New Yorkers must think is an out-of-the way place -- Lafayette, LA. Making fun of a hurricane -- now that's an idea. I'm not sure this is quite "Oklahoma" or "Les Miserables."

V -- "Vampingo. . . a comedy with bite." Description: "This semi-normal young woman's comic trek to sanity begins with 'Suicidal Tendencies' meetings. her Dionysian dance toward clarity leads her to encounters with a singing eel, a seductive devil, some snippy little demons, and a very strange, heroic flamingo. Cheers!"

All I can say is "Farmers Song" is looking beter all the time. Maybe if we go, we'll just watch it several times.

NOTE: Ringgold County's production of "Farmers Song -- The Musical" opened the newly renovated Princess Theater in Mount Ayr August 21 - 24, 2008.

Transcription and note by Sharon R. Becker, August of 2012