Event

Black River Falls

Gary comes back early from Black River Falls, his hunting trip cut short by an ominous feeling. It's Thanksgiving weekend, 1978; Jim Jones and his followers have just drunk the Kool-Aid, and Gary wants to see his little sister Laurie. All the teenagers in Dousman, Wisconsin, are finding out that closeness with each other is sometimes wanted and not simple, and sometimes not wanted and very simple. In their tiny midwestern small town world, masculine violence and an inchoate longing towards something that might be peace infects them all.

A disarmingly poetic evocation of teenaged monosyllabicism, Black River Falls blends naturalism with a kind of small-town mysticism, where quiet anarchy and blowhardy bullies are in conflict. The adults can only stand by and marvel at the microcosm of violence and transcendence their children enact.

Performed by Matt Rieger, Maci Greenberg, Sam Liss, Diane McNulty, John Machesky, Nick Leininger, Stephen Walker

Directed by Jenny Magnus