For more pictures of the production, see here.

DAMASCUS, PA – A middle-aged Johnny Appleseed stands face-to-face with the barrel of a rifle as a settler commands him to get out of the area.

That was one of the scenes at this year’s Dream on the Farm produced by the Farm Arts Collective, which will run from July 30 to August 9.

Guests sit on hay bales outlooking the river as a settler explains to Appleseed that they are taking over the land, and everyone else must vacate the area or face consequences.

“You can’t just kill an entire village,” Appleseed stresses.

This scene is one of Farm Arts Collective Director Tannis Kowalchuk’s favorites.

“We’re seeing their [Native people’s] genocide but at the same time we’re looking at the point of view of the settler,” Kowalchuk told the River Reporter. “The crime wasn’t coming here; the crime was killing them and kicking them off the land.”

Johnny Appleseed was produced largely in part due to a $20,000 grant the Farms Arts Collective received from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), according to Kowalchuk. 

The NEA is an independent federal organization that supports various arts organizations and projects nationwide by assisting with funding.

Those funds go to paying all the artists involved in the project equally, Kowalchuk said.

Kowalchuk shared that last year the collective did not receive NEA funding, which led to some financial strain for the production.

“We received it [the funding], we signed the contract, and then we got a notice in May, after putting five months of work on it, that they were taking our money because we didn’t align with the president's new guidelines, because we were talking about climate change,” she commented.

Dream on the Farm, which has been produced for 7 years, has traditionally been about climate change. Previous shows include Paradise Lost: Scavenger Hunt, Conference for Those Still Living, and The More Things Change.

Producing Johnny Appleseed, a 7-month-long project, was Kowalchuk’s way of still getting to talk about the land and rivers without hitting on climate change specifically.

The seeds of change

Half an hour before the 7 o’clock show, guests can visit the Museum of Curious History indoors, which features items like Appleseed’s severed toe in a mason jar, a replica of the last tree Appleseed planted and a map of the Ohio frontier that Appleseed traveled to plant apples.

Johnny Appleseed is an American folktale based off of John Chapman, a real person from Massachusetts who did plant apple orchards around Pennsylvania and Ohio. The play is funny and has some serious themes, but it is enjoyable for all audiences. 

Throughout the show, audience members physically walked from scene to scene on Willow Wisp Organic Farm as they watched the story of Appleseed's life, from a young hopeful Appleseed trying to sell seeds to settlers (played by Jess Beveridge) to a middle-aged Appleseed discovering that the settlers have harmed natives (played by Jim Sullivan).

While the show starts off humorous with an older Appleseed (played by John Roth) cracking jokes about how his appearance is like “the devil wears prairie” and singing with other folktale figures such as John Henry and Paul Bunyan puppets on brooms, Appleseed quickly realizes apple-planting is not what he thought it’d be.

Appleseed faces much discouragement from Mrs. Ely, a local woman who tried to give Appleseed a job, played by Ginny Hack, and Mr. Crawford, an apple orchard owner who mentors Appleseed. Regardless of this discouragement, he pushes on, insisting that he wants to “plant my [his] weight in appleseeds” and that “God is in this appleseed.”

The puppets towards the end of the play become more serious and less silly as a funeral procession is held for Appleseed, which Kowalchuk said was intentional. Instead of broom puppets, Appleseed has turned into a mannequin-like puppet. 

“This production is truly [a] collaboration,” Kowalchuk beamed. “We know each other really well,”

Tickets for Johnny Appleseed can be purchased here.