The performance, Scattered Seeds of Troy is the new theatre project in development by Farm Arts Collective in 2026. The devised performance will be created collaboratively with four actresses of Farm Arts Collective and directed by artistic director and farmer, Tannis Kowalchuk. The performance is inspired by the classical Greek play The Trojan Women, (5th century BC Euripides tragedy). 

Our story departs from the original tragedy and begins with the question: What seeds does each woman of Troy take with them when forced to leave their homeland? The women have been stripped of their autonomy, social positions, family, loved ones, homes, and many are being takes as slaves. We are interested in looking at how four female characters each finds their power in a search for hope in a hopeless situation.  

Each actress will play one of the classic Greek Trojan women characters, Queen Hecuba (Kowalchuk), Andromache (Ginny Hack), Cassandra (Costanza Bugiani), and Helen (Jess Beveridge) in a contemporary and imaginative exploration of four women’s journeys and the seeds that they decide take with them.

The play will also look at the history of migration (of both seeds and humans) and investigates how migration has been a key element in our evolution. For 10,000 years humans have grown plants, cooked, made art, and war. Culture, plants, language, food, ideas, books spread when people move or are forced to move. How has the concept and public opinions of migration changed over the years? Passport controls were only introduced after 1914—imagine a borderless world? 

In our play we will also explore the empowerment that four women discover in the very act of controlling and planting their seeds. This will be a motif and metaphor for the geo-political and the personal struggle for agency in today’s corporatized, authoritarian, patriarchal, militarized and migratory world. Vandana Shiva will be the Goddess of Agriculture in our play’s mythology. She is a contemporary Indian activist and modern-day hero fighting big corporations like Monsanto on behalf of agricultural agency and farmers rights in India and around the world. 

Director Tannis Kowalchuk will work to create The Scattered Seeds of Troy in her unique devising theatre method.  In creative rehearsals she will collaborate with the actors who will be asked to develop their characters through actions, improvs, choreography, texts, and songs. 

Tannis will weave together, lead the writing of the playscript, and direct a completely original, and visually spectacular theatre performance from the material generated by the performers. A sound artist, lighting designer, and a costume designer will join the creative team to build a production that is limber and can be easily toured to festivals and host theatres across the USA, Canada and Europe.

As founding artistic director of farm Arts Collective, Tannis is dedicated to exploring performance themes and community projects in an agri-cultural context where theatre, farming, eco-justice and food intersect in profound and meaningful ways.