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MIRACLE TOMATO

Contents:

Why the Tomato?
In your Community
Supporting Materials

THE STORY
Miracle Tomato is a play for one actress and 303 tomatoes. Writer/performer, Jessica Cerullo has traveled near and far to interview people about this complicated fruit/vegetable and its effect on our lives great and small. The resulting play is presented by the character Angelina, a waitress-explorer, who is sent by her lover to travel the world and impart the history of the tomato to all who will listen. Angelina, the youngest of triplets birthed in the family tomato plot, reveals not only the history of the tomato, but her own, as she employs the assistance of her identical sisters Valentina, a bioengineer, and Josephina, a food activist. Projected slides assist in telling the history.

Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Why did the tomato appear in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893? How many slices of pizza does America eat in a second? Where are the tomatoes that taste good? How do we say goodbye to what is lost? And how do we hold on to what is left? Miracle Tomato is a comedy...but it is a serious comedy. In viewing history through the lens of this fruit-vegetable, Angelina takes the audience on a journey that examines vulnerability, appropriation, identity, mass consumption, cultivation, and the changing dynamic of food and family in Angelina’s hometown and in all the towns across the country.

The text is scripted, but what is said each night changes depending on the audience. As they nod, laugh, frown, celebrate; express interest, disinterest, confusion, etc., Angelina chooses what happens next. As Miracle Tomato tours the country a unique version of the show is created in each town.

 

WHY THE TOMATO
I am interested in theater as an art form that is vulnerable, non-repeatable and dependent on an audience. A few years ago, I began to see the tomato as something more than food. I followed this fruit/vegetable until little by little, it revealed to me its history, its nature and, surprisingly, its theatricality.

Miracle Tomato was made possible with the generosity of seed savers and tomato growers around the world. Each interview I conducted, whether with a farmer harvesting thousands or a home gardener with her precious few, was a gift from those willing to tell their stories. It was not long before their gifts reminded me of the gardens of my own upbringing. I was raised in an Italian-American family and food (often tomato based) was at the center of all activity.

At first I struggled to complete and perfect the script, but once I began to perform Miracle Tomato for colleagues and their friends, I stopped typing on my computer and started listening to the audience. Sometimes when performing I look into the audience and see an invitation to tell more, and so I do. And sometimes I see the invitation to tell less, and so I move on. Miracle Tomato is continuously evolving and exists as an ever changing discourse with the people who sit in their seats laughing, yawning, crying, questioning, looking…

Behind Miracle Tomato is my desire to transform my own joys, fears and confusions about the political, agricultural, and familial experiences of my life into a one-hour piece of art. In its most pure form I like to think of it just as I received it – as a gift. Like the stories I was told, like the seeds that were planted, like the plate of food that made its way from one end of the table to the other.

 

IN YOUR COMMUNITY
Performances of Miracle Tomato have taken place in traditional theaters, as well as non-traditional performance spaces such as lecture halls and restaurants. Miracle Tomato can occur as an independent 65-minute show or can assist in serving a larger initiative involving the local community. The show has also provided a venue for audience members to receive information (and food) from local farms and environmental organizations. Post-performance discussions, roundtables, lectures and farmer’s markets are just some of the ways communities have chosen to interact with Miracle Tomato. Miracle Tomato is open to the possibilities presented in each city and town that Angelina visits. Share your ideas and we will see what can happen.

 

Click on the image for more snapshots of Miracle Tomato on the road!

 

SUPPORTING MATERIALS
This list represents some of the research materials that influenced the making of Miracle Tomato.

FILMS:
The Future of Food a film by Deboarh Koons Garcia

BOOKS:
America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Explorer Became an American Hero --
by Claudia Bushman
Blood of My Blood --
by Richard Gambino
Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbia Legacy --
by Kirkpatrick Sale
The Essential Agrarian Reader- Edited by Norman Wirzba First Fruit: The Creation of the Flavr Savr Tomato and the Birth of Biotech Food --
by Belinda Martineau
The Italian-American Cookbook: A Feast of Food from a Great American Cooking Tradition --by John Mariani
It's a Long Road to a Tomato - - by Keith Stewart with illustrations by Flavia Bacarella
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong - -
by James W. Loewen
Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats - -
by Raymond Sokolov
Your Right to Know: genetic engineering and the secret changes in your food --
by Andrew Kimbrell

POEMS
Ode to a Tomato by Pablo Neruda
Prayer to Columbus by Walt Whitman

 

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Copyright © 2006 Jessica Cerullo. All rights reserved.