Louisiana Flooding, Population 485 On Stage, Food Friday: Savory Stone Fruits

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We find out what it’s like to report on devastation in your own community when we talk with a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, journalist. Wisconsin author Michael Perry’s memoir Population 485 will be performed as a play at Big Top Chautauqua later this month. We find out what it’s like to see your characters on stage. And on this week’s edition of Food Friday, we look at savory ways to use the season’s best stone fruits.

Featured in this Show

  • Reporting On The Louisiana Floods As A Baton Rouge Native

    The Red Cross declared recent flooding in Louisiana as one of the worst natural disasters in the U.S. since Hurricane Sandy. From August 8-14 about 6.9 trillion gallons of rain fell on Louisiana, and 13 people lost their lives. We talk to a journalist who wrote about struggling to keep an emotional distance as a Baton Rouge native covering the devastation in Louisiana.

  • Michael Perry's Population 485 Comes To Life On Stage

    Wisconsin author Michael Perry joins us to talk about the experience of bringing his memoir Population 485 to the stage of Big Top Chautauqua.

  • Michael Perry's 'Population 485' Goes From Page To Stage

    One of author Michael Perry‘s earliest books is “Population 485,” a memoir that brings readers into life in rural Wisconsin. That book has been turned into a stage play that will be performed at Big Top Chautauqua in Bayfield on Aug. 28.

    The book has been out for 15 years, and the idea of staging it “has been percolating for a while,” Perry said. So he talked with Big Top Chautauqua and set a date, which he said gave him a much-needed hard deadline to get it done.

    Turning any piece of writing into a play script can be challenging, and there are even more when the original material is a memoir. Perry said that one of the biggest hurdles was cutting it down to about 15 percent of its original length.

    “That necessitates, then, a certain amount of composite characters and you have to do a few things out of order,” Perry said. “That’s a little tricky just because as a memoirist working in nonfiction I always do my very best to get my facts straight.”

    While it bothers Perry that the stage product may fall more into the realm of fiction because of those shortcuts that need to be taken, not everyone seems to be as concerned. He said that the needed brevity means that one of his brothers pretty much disappeared from the narrative.

    But happily, “he did not seem too troubled and just got back on his bulldozer,” Perry said.

    Perry has written frequently about his tendency towards being a loner, and especially to work in isolation. But the process of bringing “Population 485” to the stage has involved a lot of collaboration, and often a need to give up some control.

    “I’ve found that the best thing that I can do is to let the actors interpret the characters as they will, and let the director do the directing,” Perry said. “I have a quiet word here and there if I think that something needs to be changed for accuracy’s sake or to resemble the character more. But mostly, I think you just get out of the way.”

    Those attending the show will not only see Perry’s story on stage, but Perry himself.

    “In this particular production, budgetary restrictions coming to the fore, we’ve cast Michael Perry as Michael Perry,” he joked.

  • Food Friday: Cooking With Stone Fruit

    It’s stone fruit season, and we tasked Food Friday regular Lori Skelton with incorporating this fruit into her cooking. She shares what she learned experimenting with stone fruits, especially in savory dishes.

Episode Credits

  • Rob Ferrett Host
  • Veronica Rueckert Host
  • Haleema Shah Producer
  • Judith Siers-Poisson Producer
  • Amanda Magnus Producer
  • Julia Griffin Guest
  • Michael Perry Guest
  • Lori Skelton Guest

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