WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — This week, two bedrocks of the Upper Valley, farming and theater, will meet in “The Vermont Farm Project,” a new musical generated by Northern Stage.

Set over the course of one day, the play’s eight characters depict Vermont farming at a crossroads.

One couple, Kim and Glenn, are trying to figure out what to do with their farm after they retire. On the other side of that equation are parents, Matt and Kenza, who have their hands full raising young kids and managing their own farm. Gabriela, a migrant worker from Mexico, meanwhile, is torn between moving up the ranks at the large dairy farm where she works and being with her family back home. Summer farmhands Tara, Hunter and Mo are just alo ng for the ride.

Developed by director Sarah Elizabeth Wansley, her husband, the musician and composer Tommy Crawford, and playwright Jessica Kahkoska, the show is based on extensive interviews with Vermont farmers, starting in 2022.

“I think that Sarah and Tommy and I share an interest in capturing what is real and complex and frustrating and impossible about this world, while also foregrounding a sense of the love and the hope that you have to have as a farmer,” Kahkoska said.

Crawford and Wansley’s inspiration for the play grew out of trips to the farmers market after the couple moved to White River Junction in 2021 for Wansley’s new job as the associate artistic director at Northern Stage.

“We just kind of fell in love with the farming culture and the farmers markets,” Wansley said.

After getting the go-ahead from Northern Stage, the couple brought on Kahkoska, a friend and playwright who’s worked on several projects with them in the past and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Kahkoska often employs interview-based research in developing her work. Her theatrical concert, “Wild Fire” which premiered at Denver Center for Performing Arts in 2021, drew from the testimony of more than 30 residents who were affected by the deadly East Troublesome Fire the year before in Grand County, Colo.

“She brought a lot of experience in how to build a community-responsive play, and she really led that interview process as we were talking to farmers,” Wansley said.

In 2022, the collaborators visited Upper Valley farms such as Sweetland Farm in Norwich and Sunrise Organic Farm in Hartford, often during the farmers’ work day. Later on, they traveled to farms across Vermont, including Woodnotch Farms, a dairy farm in Shoreham, Vt.

Farmers’ camaraderie stood out to Wansley. “It’s such hard job, but I found that in almost every interview, we were laughing,” she said.

The collaborators also observed an unexpected parallel between farming and theater. Wansley likened how one farm would help another if they lost a crop to when Northern Stage borrowed equipment from the Weston Theater Co., in Vermont when their camera malfunctioned during the recent run of “Waitress.”

Farming and theater also share a degree of economic precarity, especially as federal budget cuts loom overhead, and “yet you keep going, and yet you feel like there’s value in it and you want to keep trying to preserve that way of life,” Wansley said.

That tenacity says a lot about farmers and theater-makers, but it also says something about the Upper Valley as a place that can sustain them.

While inspired by real people, no one in the play is based on a single interview or farmer, they’re all composite characters.

“It creates a little bit of narrative distance where we are creating original characters in an original show, but they are living in a real world and they are dealing with real problems,” Kahkoska said.

While the play is set in Vermont, the actors all hail from New York. In lieu of an orchestra, the actors perform Crawford’s Americana music on stage in a nod to the evening jams that took place at a couple of the farms the collaborators visited. Among the five of them, they play 13 instruments, ranging from a mandolin to a stand-up bass.

The show’s set continues to blur the lines between farm and theater. Designer Frank Oliva, who’s based in New York, wrapped the walls of the theater in purple-blue paper to evoke a cloudless sky, while 25 bales of straw and an old pickup truck are arranged on stage to give the set “a little bit of grittiness and realism,” Wansley said.

Wansley hopes farmers will see themselves reflected in the play’s characters, but at the same time “I think that folks even who have no relation to farming will connect to the parts of the story that are about getting up every day to do something that you love that’s really hard,” she said.

“The Vermont Farm Project” is in previews through Friday, opens on Saturday, May 10 and runs through Sunday, May 25 at Northern Stage. For tickets ($34-$74) and more information, visit northernstage.org or call 802-308-4342.

Art and wellness

A pair of exhibitions opens in the next few days at two of the Upper Valley’s longstanding visual arts organizations.

First, Newport’s Library Arts Center opens its annual Juried Regional Exhibit with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday evening. The juried show is a big one, and a good way to get a wide-angle view of what local artists are making now. On view through June 27.

On Friday, AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon opens Canopy, an group show supporting mental health awareness with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Perhaps because of its proximity to a major medical center, AVA has been a leader in exploring how visual art can improve well-being. The exhibition is on view through July 12.

Books and their authors

Looking ahead, Woodstock’s annual literary festival Bookstock starts on Friday, May 16. The festival will feature a series of readings, talks and workshops from writers and poets based in Vermont and across the country. Events are free, but visitors are required to register in advance. For more information, visit bookstockvt.org.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.