Prescott audiences will soon encounter a kind of theatre rarely seen in Arizona. Decompositions, a one-hour solo performance by Pennsylvania theatre artist and organic farmer Tannis Kowalchuk, comes to the Hazeltine Theatre November 7–9. At its center is an unlikely co-star — a compost pile. Through it Kowalchuk explores cycles of life, illness and transformation with a mix of story, dance, music, and humor.
For Kowalchuk the work emerges directly from the life she leads. She is both a farmer and an actor, cultivating cut flowers at Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Damascus, Pennsylvania, while serving as founder and artistic director of Farm Arts Collective, an “agricultural” center that fuses farming, art, food and ecology. “I wanted to create work with my community,” she explains, “and since we live in a rural farming area, our plays inevitably reflect people’s connection to the land and to each other.”
Since 2018 Farm Arts Collective has become known for Dream on the Farm, a ten-year cycle of original plays about climate change staged outdoors each summer. But Decompositions is a more intimate project, one Kowalchuk has been touring around the country. Prescott will be the first Arizona stop.
The piece is structured in ten scenes, each tied to a stage of composting: germination, decay, necrosis, rot and finally transformation. At each step, Kowalchuk parallels the natural process with human experience. “Life is always about losing something,” she says, “but it’s also always about building something else. Compost teaches us to accept what is messy, even rotten, and allow it to become fertile ground.”
For audiences that metaphor unfolds on stage with theatrical flair. Kowalchuk plants crop markers in the compost pile to announce new chapters, dances with shadow puppets, sings and builds flower bouquets while telling stories drawn from her own life. Humor is central. One moment recalls her breast-cancer diagnosis: she pulls pink boas and gowns from every corner of the stage to lampoon breast-cancer branding, dances to The Guess Who’s “She’s Come Undone,” slices lemons, and ultimately downs a cup of pure lemon juice. “Sometimes when life gives you lemons,” she deadpans, “it’s just f---ing lemons.”
It’s the kind of darkly funny, deeply honest theatre Prescott rarely sees. While most one-person shows lean on spoken word or standup, Decompositions is fully theatrical — rehearsed, choreographed and layered with movement, music, and design. At center stage the compost pile remains a partner, both literal and metaphorical. “I want to be as courageous as the compost pile,” Kowalchuk says. “It doesn’t resist change. It transforms elegantly. That’s the heart of this play.”
This will be Kowalchuk’s first trip to Arizona. “I’m super excited,” she says. “I’ve never been to Prescott or the high desert. I can’t wait to see the landscape and meet the community.”
For Prescott audiences Decompositions offers something new: a performance that is part confession, part ritual, part comedy and part ecological meditation. It asks viewers to consider not just how life breaks down, but how it builds again.
Decompositions by Tannis Kowalchuk will play at the Hazeltine Theatre, 208 N. Marina St., Prescott, November 7–9.
