Photo by Brian Dorsman
What’s the inner life of a cow?
Clouds/Cows explores the pastoral timescale and the endangered art of zoning out. Part one, Clouds, combines live, choral performance with large-scale, living sculptures, immersing audiences in a collective daydream. Part two, Cows, presents a funny and tender portrayal of a year in the life of three domestic bovines. At turns arresting and irreverent, Clouds/Cows pokes subtle fun at the way humans organize their lives, and invites us to ruminate on the velocity of our contemporary culture.
Attention is something that we pay—it’s a currency. It can be borrowed, spent, and stolen. We live in an age of unprecedented demands on our attention from sources that yield less and less in return. Clouds/Cows is a diptych portrait of two commonplace subjects, one meteorological, one animal, that explores the transformation of perception that occurs when we shift our focus from that which clamors for our attention to that which simply exists.
“It is hard to believe that a life could be so simple, but it is just this simple. It is the life of a ruminant, a protected domestic ruminant.” – Lydia Davis, “The Cows”
"Skin Horse pushes more envelopes than the Post Office." — New Orleans & Me
About the Artists
Award-winning New Orleans theater artists Nat Kusinitz and Veronica Hunsinger-Loe are co-artistic directors of the groundbreaking Skin Horse Theater and recent artists-in-residence with the Live Arts Bard program at Bard College.
Performers: Lucy Kaminsky, Melissa Krodman, Madeline Wise
Choir: Rachel Holt, Laurel Herdman, Sarah Kessenich, Marilyn Kirby, Melody Newcombe, Davida Lumanibes, Michaela Talley
Cloud Artist: Jessica Vogel
Wall Engineer: Jason Hunsinger
Costume Designer: Veronica Hunsinger-Loe
Sound Designer: Nat Kusinitz
Music Director: Rachel Holt
Lightning Engineer: Brent Watson Boyett
Lighting Consultant: Evan Spigelman
Technical Director: Peter Mills Weiss
This project was made possible by the generous donations of: Claire Bangser, Allegra Barlow, Susan Beckerman, Ellen Braud, William Brown, Elizabeth Catto, Don Downey and Kathleen Loe, Shannon Flaherty, Rebecca Frank, Micky Geller, Carol Goldman, Erica Gorochow, Naomi McDougall Graham, Mack Guillory, Glen and Julie Hayes, Anna Henschel, Chris Kaminstein, Kevin, Sue & Meric Kusinitz, Matthew Kusinitz and Marilyn Geller, Dan Leininger, John and Leigh Loe, William and Catherine Loe, William A. Loe, Jill Nicoll, Loretta Park, Barbara Keith Payne, Kent Reed, Kate Rogovin, Daisy Rosato, Madeline Schlefer, Nick Slie, Evan Spigelman, Laurie Sprague, Alison Stewart, Ian Turner, Katie Waterson, Courtney Williams, Katherine Wright, Pamela Wye-Hunsinger