Meet the Composer

Everyday Uses for Sight No. 6: Disfarmer will be a full-length puppet theater work about the life of American photographer Mike Meyer (1884-1959) created by theater artist Dan Hurlin, composer Dan Moses Schreier and playwright Sally Oswald. Meyer, who later changed his name to Disfarmer, created a series of mid-twentieth century photographs from his Heber Springs, Arkansas studio that are revered today both as unsentimental portraits of rural Americans and as photographs expressing tenderness and longing. Hurlin will use “tabletop” puppetry—an American style of Puppet Theater which uses a long, narrow table stretched across the stage which acts as a floor for the puppets with curtains at either end that form a proscenium arch. Standing upstage of the table, the puppeteers directly manipulate the puppets. Schreier has unearthed haunting and oddly funny recordings produced by antique recording formats and will re-contextualize these to create the sound score which will be heard throughout the piece.