Event

South Dakota

South Dakota

Written by R. W. Weingartner
Starring: William Green, Bill Griffin, Nathanael Harting, Lindsay Tanner, and Elizabeth Spano
Directed by Mitchell Conway
Music/Sound by Luke Santy

On a farm in Faith, South Dakota, a family is inextricably linked by the land to a fate they do not fully comprehend. Curly leaves to fight in Afghanistan after September 11th; Priscilla loses her parents and one of her eyes in a car accident; Bud buries things in the cornfields; Judd camps outside the farmhouse like a lost coyote; the ghost of a young Lakota girl, killed at Wounded Knee Creek, keeps a curse in the dirt.

The result is a story with the epic scope of a Greek tragedy - taboo familial love, a hero running off to war to escape his destiny, and vengeance visited upon future generations. Quietly personal language is grounded in the characters' lives and their relationship to the land, offset by the chaotic dance of their inner struggles. It is a Rock & Roll Ghost Dance, shepherding the audience across centuries and continents to arrive at a new understanding of what it means to have roots, to come "from" somewhere - specifically, from South Dakota.