Power & Lunch

Premieres at the Anacostia Playhouse then onto INTERSECTIONS Festival, March 2018

At midday, Washington political elites are having deal-making lunches while school kids are lining up for subsidized meals. What’s getting eaten? Who’s being served? That’s what this show is all about. Food Justice, Food as Medicine, the Fruits and Vegetable Rx program . . . policy and performance come together.

Performer Shae Lim joins the Power & Lunch cast!

This project began fall of 2017 when we took the rehearsal process all over town to get audience input. Development partners include: DC Greens, Capitol Hill Village, University of Maryland School of Public Health, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Parkdale High School, Georgetown University Drama Department, and the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

Offering a dance-based presentation that was truly open ended provided a totally novice canvas for a conversation about food policy . . . public health people need data AND stories. The story you told demonstrated the broad power relations, social dynamics, the issues of physical and emotional need, connectedness, etc.

– rehearsal participant

Documentary filmmaker Barr Weissman shoots rehearsal

The PerForum method grew out of an earlier project, Woman with Sword. Over the past two years it has addressed diverse topics across the human rights spectrum both here in the US and abroad. It is a deepening of Margot Greenlee’s audience engagement practices. Her facilitation style promotes individual agency, peer-to-peer dialogue, shared decision-making, aesthetic exploration, and physical expression. It fosters a safe space in which people learn anew.

Documentary film director, Barr Weissman created a short documentary about our PerForum method, going behind the scenes with Power & Lunch.

Photo credits: John Borstel