What the Coulee Keeps

The play

The Ostroms have milked 120 cows in Hollow Springs, a farm town folded into the coulees of the Driftless region, for four generations. In one February week the milk check shrinks again, the barn cleaner breaks at 4 a.m., and a large operation from two counties over makes an offer for the land and the herd. Arne Ostrom wants to sign. His daughter Kate, home from school with an agronomy degree and a spreadsheet, wants to try one more year. Her grandmother wants everyone to stop shouting in the milkhouse.

What the Coulee Keeps is by Ruth Ekdahl, a playwright who grew up on a farm in the region, and it is the program’s contemporary drama for the season. It is quiet, specific and occasionally very funny about the economics of milk. Faculty at the University Farm consulted on the staging, which is why the calf-feeding scene is correct.

Dates and tickets

The Black Box, Applied Arts Building Room 118, set up in an alley configuration with the audience on two sides of the farmhouse kitchen. Each performance seats 96. Tickets are $12 adult and $5 for seniors 65+, youth and other colleges’ students, and free for Porter students who reserve. Seven performances at 96 seats each means this one sells out, so reserve at the box office when student seats open on January 28.

Running time and content advisory

Running time: about 1 hour 40 minutes with no intermission. No late seating, because the only entrance crosses the playing area.

Content advisory: strong language; a sustained discussion of suicide in the context of farm stress (it is discussed, never depicted); grief and the death of an animal (offstage); an unloaded rifle is handled in one scene and no shot is fired; a scented haze suggesting a barn, which is milder than a real barn. Recommended for ages 14 and up.

The program lists support resources, including the campus counseling services and crisis lines. A counselor is in the lobby after every performance, and the cast and crew have had the same support training offered to residence staff.

The company

• Director: Ingrid Weaver, professor of acting and directing
• Scenic and lighting design: Gustav Cho, with student designers from Scene Design
• Costumes: Sofia Escobar, with barn coats and chore boots, most of them donated and some still faintly authentic
• Sound: a student designer recording milking parlors at the University Farm at hours she describes as “unreasonable”
• Cast: six, chosen at auditions on November 9–10 (see auditions). Two of the roles are written for actors over 60, and the production is casting one from the community.

Why this play, here

Porter County still has more dairy herds than stoplights, and a good share of Porter students grew up on or next to a farm. The play went into the season after a student reading last spring, when the talkback ran longer than the play. Students in agriculture-related programs can get a free ticket through their advisers for the February 12 performance, which is followed by a conversation with University Farm staff. In May, Shift Change moves into the Black Box with stories from the town itself.