We are just home from our 3rd visit to Milton, LA. Some highlights: Wilma’s bread pudding with rum sauce, a leisurely time with Mary Jane and Liz touring their pet cemetery, pecan orchard, and cracking-and-shelling barn (we won’t mention the part where Katie stepped back to take a picture and planted herself right in the middle of a fire ant pile! Those bites still itch…), and learning to card wool and use a cotton gin at Elaine’s house. We also dropped in on Enola and Bobby Bernard who sent us off with a jar of freshly canned figs, and made a quick visit Nola Broussard, who at 98 is still lively and chatty. It felt especially good in our ears to hear some French and Creole again.
In a few days we head to the American Theater in Higher Education (ATHE) conference in Orlando, FL where we will be leading a workshop in some PearlDamour performance-making practices, and presenting a work talk concluding with our first sharing of the Milton performance. We are thrilled to take this first step of bringing the Miltons and our experiences in them to a wider audience!