On paper, Fables From the Farm started in 2023 as a combination of performance art, dinner theatre, and farm-y flamboyance – which returns this weekend, April 18-20, with a new story called “Reviving Reverence.” Yet, the real start treks back several years to when co-creator Jade Fusco still studio’d at Museum of Human Achievement – just down Springdale from debut and upcoming Fables venue, Boggy Creek Farm.
“When I would take walks I would often stop into Boggy Creek just to sit under those pecan trees and marvel at the lush, fertile grounds teeming with life and fruits and vegetables,” Fusco reminisces over email. “[It] felt like this secret oasis in the middle of the city. I always thought to myself, ‘We should DO some kind of SHOW here one day. People need to experience the healing magic of this place.’”
Fusco then brought to Boggy Creek Farm venue manager Tracy Geyer an idea: a musical based around Boggy’s background that also promoted sustainable, regenerative farming practices. This show would be put on by Fusco’s other project, the Sublime Paradigm Supper Club, a production company and collective of “artists, farmers, chefs, earth-lovers, musicians, and local-food activists that would come together to put on shows … which invite people into creative relationship with their local food economy, and farmland through playful ritual theater and dinners.” Originating during the 2020s with Fusco and co-producer Iffy Roma, the creative collective’s goal was to “pluck people out of this tech-addicted frenzied reality, and drop them into an environment where they can remember what truly matters, the real substance of life, where we come from, and where we are all going,” which fit pretty well into the Boggy farm musical foray Fusco had thought up.
Fables’ return this weekend brings back previous players like Ley Line’s Emilie Basez while also introducing new friends such as actress-musician Savannah Welch (The Good Doctor, Boyhood) and country music’s Georgia Parker. They’ll bring to life “Reviving Reverence,” the second installment of the story Fusco says has evolved and thickened since its 2023 curtain call. “The Boggy Bards and the audience must join forces and embark on a quest to raise the levels of Reverence for Mother Nature,” she explains, “through playful ritual moments of connection, song, and learning the history of the land.”
Friday and Saturday’s performances involve theatre, music, and farm produce samples, but Sunday’s show is the only one with a sit-down, farm-to-table banquet, catered by local chef Ciara Blossom of Kaya Cafe. Describing herself as “enamored” with dinner theatre, Fusco says mixing a musical with a meal totally reinvents the process. “When we fold in the act of sharing a meal together in a setting that has become other-worldly,” she says, “we automatically meet the act of eating in a new way, and remember, perhaps, the ritual and ceremony that has shaped how we have shared meals for thousands of years.” The half-Italian artist describes childhood dinners with her grandmother being a big inspiration for Fables’ emphasis on locally sourced food. “It was normal for all the ingredients on the table to have been grown or sourced locally,” she says, “and back then my grandmother had personal relationships with the prosciutto purveyor, the pasta maker, the mozzarella man, the arugula lady. I want people to know that feeling.”
Interested guests should know, Fusco says, that “this is a rigorous experience!” Her advice for this mobile musical – as guests walk all over Boggy Creek along with the performers – is to wear comfy shoes, bring a water bottle, and let yourself participate in the Earth-loving spirit. “The more you give yourself to the experience,” Fusco says, “the more it’ll give back.”
Fables From the Farm: “Reviving Reverence”
Friday 18 – Sunday 20, Boggy Creek Farm
This article appears in April 18 • 2025.