By Nancy Maes, Chicago Tribune
Aug. 18–Actor and farmer might seem like divergent career paths, but not for Eva Barr.
Barr, 48, a founding member of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Co., spends much of her time living and working on an off-the-grid, organic farmstead in southeastern Minnesota.
She has performed in many works at Lookingglass, most recently as the title character in “Still Alice” in 2013. She is set to appear in the company’s March 2016 production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Blood Wedding.”
Barr was born in Minnesota, where her parents helped found a community theater; growing up, she was involved in many theatrical projects with her siblings. “Theatre was in our family blood,” she says. “I felt a calling to performance.” She studied drama at Northwestern University and after graduation joined like-minded fellow graduates to form Lookingglass in 1988.
Feeling a need to experience a broader connection with the world, Barr left Chicago in 1991 to join the Peace Corps, where she met her future life partner Todd Juzwiak. After they returned to the U.S., they bought 60 acres of land near Wykoff, Minn., in 1995 and turned it into DreamAcres, a farm collective owned and managed with several others. (Barr returned to Lookingglass in 1996.) With help, Barr and Juzwiak built their timber frame house, where they pump water by hand, burn wood for cooking and light the darkness with oil lamps. Their two sons, Chester, 17, and Stanley, 14, have always called the farmstead home.
Although DreamAcres is off the grid, it is not isolated. They operate a Community Supported Agriculture business that lets neighbors subscribe and receive produce from the farm. And theater isn’t far from her reach there, either: Barr is artistic director of the Dreamery Rural Arts Initiative, which in the summer hosts performances by visiting artists, and Flourish, an arts and agriculture summer camp for young people. Barr describes DreamAcres as a place where plants and animals and human creativity are nurtured and thrive.
Following is an edited version of our conversation.
Q: What are the unique characteristics of Lookingglass Theatre?
A: We’re all strong personalities so working together hasn’t been without its challenges, but we have an aesthetic that is central to us all. We look for what is not apparent in the meaning of the story, we look for the story within the story and the story outside the story and the poetics of the story. And we always come back to the values of intimacy, collaboration and an element of inventive play that we often forget during the rudiments of everyday life.
Q: What do you see as the purpose of your work at Lookingglass?
A: Ideally the impact of our work is to inspire people to creatively engage in the world. I think we still need to invent a better world, and I know it’s lofty, but I think we’re only going to be better humans by figuring out how to understand each other and work together on this planet.
Q: What is the best way for non-theatergoers to discover the art form?
A: Seek out an interpretation of a fairy tale or folk tale, which are universally appealing and accessible and open the doors to the breadth of life experience, or choose a play with subject matter that appeals to you. At Lookingglass we tend to make pieces that are adaptations of widely known works of literature, so generally people will have read them or heard about them before they come and the plays will be more accessible. We also open our doors to school groups and social groups because we believe it’s important to introduce youngsters early to the experience of live performances.
Q: Why did you and your partner, Todd Juzwiak, decide to buy a farm?
A: We spent about five years with the Peace Corps in remote villages in Equatorial Guinea in West Africa and when we came back to the U.S. we both felt alienated from American society and wanted to understand what it meant to provide the essential needs for ourselves. So we worked on farms for two years and then bought a farm in Minnesota in a valley where my grandparents built a cabin in the ’40s.
Q: How did you learn the skills you needed to build your house and farm the land in traditional ways?
A: We used the internet and the library, but when you start from scratch you piece it together as you go and learn by the process of discovery. State inspectors and agents were extremely helpful in helping us figure things out, and we found people who could share their skills in the realm of building a timber frame house, farming with draft-animal power, blacksmithing and other lost skills.
Q: You are so immersed in nature at the farm. How would you suggest that city dwellers stay in touch with the natural world?
A: Grow things. It feels good. Get some soil, put it in a pot and plant some seeds. It’s easy. It just takes a little patience and a little love.
Q: Did you always intend to have arts activities for youngsters at DreamAcres?
A: I always knew I wanted a summer camp because I went to a language village camp at Concordia College in northern Minnesota where I learned German and found a part of myself that I didn’t necessarily have access to at home. I think kids can figure out who they are when they’re away from their families.
Q: From your experience with Flourish summer camp, what have you learned about the best way to teach young people?
A: I think kids have a hard time engaging with the world today. Each youngster at the camp has a one-on-one relationship with a mentor, which can be intimidating, and we soften that with small group and large group interactions so they all find a place where they are able to express their ideas. They’re between 11 and 15 years old so they’re very impressionable, so this is a safe place to release some of their deeper questions about growing up and to provoke their concepts of what live performance can be.
Q: What have you learned from the young people?
A: My role during the camp is to hold everybody together, but I learned about letting go from them and I think that’s important. It’s a very mutual learning experience and we all grow together.
Q: You have followed a number of different career paths. What advice would you give to people who can’t decide between two careers?
A: I’m a pretty decisive person so I would say make a decision and go with it and if it doesn’t work out you can readjust.
Q: Do you have a guilty pleasure?
A: I love to hike so I allow myself to take walks. I also like to read in the morning but I can almost never get that done.
Q: Do you have a favorite book?
A: I just finished “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” by David Foster Wallace. He’s just brilliant. He includes footnotes that kind of get to the core of our psychoses. There’s a great essay in the book about going to the Illinois State Fair that is about feeling humanity from the inside.
Q: Is there a piece of advice you received that still rings true?
A: My mother used to say “Go chase yourself” when she wanted to get rid of us when we were growing up. But the reality is that when you do that you figure yourself out. I feel my life has been a process of chasing myself.
Q: Do you have a motto or a mantra?
A: For what to have lived, but to try. It sounds like the verb tense is off, but it’s my own thing. I just continue to try and I fail very, very often, but you don’t know what will happen until you give something a whirl and if you fail you move on.
Maes is a freelance reporter.
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