Presented by All Together Now.
Saturday, October 5, 2019
Doors at 6 PM, Show at 7:00 PM
The Burren
Somerville, MA
Tickets
ATB on Facebook
Interview by Noelani Kamelamela
(Somerville, MA) Veronica Barron is a creator and performer in the Boston area. On October 5 at 7 p.m., Barron will perform in All Together Now #10 at The Burren in Davis Square with Just Felice, Amanda Shea, and Honey Cutt.
As a singer, composer, actor, choreographer, dancer, musician, clown and puppet artist, Barron said she has been focused on creating work that examines the feminine experience and makes use of common, seemingly mundane and fragile materials to explore the limits of storytelling.
In particular, Barron said she loves coaxing an audience into seeing familiar things from a different point of view. One critical function of the artist, she insists, is to “chew on a difficult concept, make sense of it and distribute meaning to the audience.” To gauge effectiveness as well as overall value, she said she still requires feedback from a receptive, critical audience.
Barron is hopeful that All Together Now (ATN) #10 on Saturday, October 5 may provide such an audience. She said that when Anna Rae, the organizer of All Together Now, put out a call on social media to find a puppeteer, friends and admirers of Veronica’s puppet artistry recommended her work.
As the first puppeteer asked to join in the series, Barron said she wants to be able to provide a variety of experiences to folks that may not have any context for the august history and diverse practice of puppetry. She may perform solo or not, but either way, she intends to keep her set simple and comprehensible.
Image via https://veronicabarron.com
She was pleased by the fact that the majority of her installment of ATN is female. “I feel like a lot of my work falls under this concept that I think of as #ReclaimFemme.” While there are many female artists she knows, there is a general sense that feminine artistic contributions are not necessarily as sought after even at the current woke moment we are living in.
Despite there being many female performers and artists, there is a lower percentage of women in leadership roles in artistic communities, particularly in professional theatre in Boston. “I really respect what Anna Rae is trying to do [managing All Together Now],” said Barron.
While Barron believes that most promoters, programmers, and venues have agreed that they want to in theory tackle white supremacy, end misogyny and create a safe space for people of different national origins, ages, genders, navigating that change in established performance spaces has been slow.
There is a lot of inertia surrounding who gets the privilege of performing, but in newer spaces and more recent event series such as All Together Now, performers and organizers can aim to be radically accepting. Beyond Barron’s standard excitement at bringing puppetry to The Burren, she said she’s also excited to see her fellow artists work some magic with sound and light as well as some actual magic.
Photo by Patrick Argirakis.
