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Date: 7/13/2022
AMHERST – The Ko Festival is preparing for its final summer season after 31 years of featuring performers from around the world.
Sabrina Hamilton, co-founder and artistic director of Ko, said that there was a myriad of reasons for shutting down the festival. It was not just the rising costs, 60-hour work weeks or losing their space at Amherst College, but Hamilton said she realized during COVID-19 that there were other ways to help and advance marginalized people in the theatre space and that she wanted to dedicate more time to that. She found that many artists needed help with learning to present and plan for tours, budget and write press releases.
“The subtitle of the first show we’re doing is ‘Make room for someone else,’ and I’ve listened to a lot of the discussions that happened after the murder of George Floyd and a lot of discussions in the theatre community,” Hamilton said. “I think part of the idea is indeed to make room for someone else. It’s not that Ko will disappear, but the festival will disappear.”
The festival will run July 18 to 31 with a theme of stepping up and stepping back. The first show runs from July 22 to 24 and is called “Flushing,” using puppets, songs and personal investigation to tell a story of how time brings us all to moments of truth and inevitable change. Hamilton has known the creators Linda Parris-Bailey and Eric Bass for years, saying they had been seeing each other at conferences and meetings for years before realizing they both grew up in Flushing, Queens, NY.
Hamilton said the festival centers on device theater, which is theater where the actors also created the play. “Flushing” starts with two theater directors passing leadership to the next generation and tries to spark a reflection on what it means to retire and inherit.
“At Ko, we always to post-show discussions after our performances and instead of having a discussion with an actor who read the script two weeks ago and went into a whirlwind rehearsal process, you have people who have been working on this material for years, so the level of conversation is really deep,” Hamilton said.
A six-day workshop led by Gerard Stropnicky leads to the story slam on July 24. Performers will tell true five-minute stories and the audience votes for their favorite. Hamilton said the festival also loves to save three wildcard spots for other people to join in and said that if more than three people want a chance then they all tell their first sentence, and the audience again votes for which story it wants to hear in full.
“Our story slam with have stories on that kind of a theme too about transitions, retirement, changes, stepping up for justice or a cause or idea, stepping back to make room for someone else so that will be the theme for our story slam which is always great fun,” Hamilton said.
The third show of the festival is called “Ezell,” and tells the story of a man trying to buy back his family’s farm. His family had lost the land and he tries to buy it back by selling fracking rights and encouraging others to sell fracking rights. Hamilton said the show will start at the box office with a welcome ceremony before trekking down the Hampshire College Farm Center on a ‘musical journey’ before arriving at the set and seating outside.
“It’s pretty extraordinary that so many of the people we have presented over 30 years have grown into big names,” Hamilton said “Even our former interns like the head of the [University of Massachusetts] Fine Arts Center is our former intern. One of the major players at the Mass. Cultural Council, their head of diversity is a Ko Festival intern. We have quite a legacy and quite a reputation nationally and even internationally but sometimes I feel like we’re the best-kept secret in the valley.”
Hamilton said she has been working to bring “Ezell” to the festival for three years but has had to cancel each time due to COVID-19. While the show isn’t directed at kids, it is family friendly. Tickets for all shows have a sliding scale to patrons can pay an appropriate price ranging from $12 to $32.
“I think that’s just a fair thing to do rather than just have it based on age or student status,” Hamilton said. “Sometimes, older people might be people with more financial resources, not less or vice versa. People can select their own price level and that feels like a right thing to do.”
Tickets and more information can be found online at www.kofest.com.
“Our metric of success is not how many, it’s not how much, it’s how sicky can we make it,” Hamilton said. “If somebody sees a show, as they’re driving home they’re going, ‘Huh.’ And the next morning at breakfast with their cup of coffee they’re going, ‘Huh.’ What’s really cool is when in a post-show discussion somebody brings up something from a show they saw last year, the year before, more years than that and they’re still thinking about, it’s still relevant to their thoughts, that is success.”