New Nostalgias

“Wouldn’t that be a terrible way to go? Cut off with a means to connect?”

In a now-distant time, nature was the thing we humans were amazed by, we were dependent on and even worshipped. Some of us made the choice to suppress it.  Nature became less (natural) amazing and we built up technology to amaze us in its place, to provide for us in a way that centered our control and stability.  This is where the story of New Nostalgias begins, with lacking respect for nature and the people who are its stewards.

New Nostalgias is an interactive presentation that depicts three overlapping stories in Forks, Washington in 2012. The three main characters of the stories woven in New Nostalgias, Lara, Serena, and The Blockbuster Employee, are longing to be made whole in the wake of a great shift in the economy of their town caused by an onslaught of shallow tourism from the Twilight book series, which is set in Forks, Washington. Lara, born in La Push Washington is by birth part of the Quileute tribe, the people who have always lived in this part of Washington State. The natural order of time and space have been obliterated by technology it seems we cannot step back from.

New Nostalgias invites us together to interact with our shared and not so distant past. In 2019, the play received a reading at WOW theater Cafe (EBP) to focus on the text of the piece and consider how individuals look back into the past about how a new culture of nostalgia can help us or hurt us in centering the rich and vital cultures that stand apart from mainstream American media.