One of the Midwest’s most prolific and passionate songwriters, May Erlewine has a gift for writing songs of substance that feel both fresh and soulfully familiar. Her ability to emotionally engage with an audience has earned her a dedicated following far beyond her Michigan roots. She shows us her heartbreak, but she also shows us her empowered and emboldened spirit. In her quest to find her most authentic self, Erlewine gifts each listener with a powerful, emotional experience that immediately connects us.
Capturing Ptown: Quil Lemons Artist Talk
Quil Lemons is a New York-based photographer, originally hailing from Philadelphia. His visual language is distinct and interrogates ideas around masculinity, family, queerness, race, and beauty. Quil’s work dances the line between the fantastic and realistic, resulting in disruptive images that feel like pure imagination, while simultaneously grounding us in references to our current cultural climate. His images can be found in publications such as Allure, Garage, i-D, Shadowplay, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Variety, and W, among others. His clients include Burberry, Calvin Klein, Givenchy, Guess, Gucci, Moncler, Nike, Nordstrom, SSense, and Valentino, among others.
20S X Atmos | The Weather Station in Concert
The Weather Station is the project of Toronto based songwriter Tamara Lindeman. The last few years have seen The Weather Station release two albums: the career defining Ignorance (2021) and its ethereal, mostly live recording companion piece, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars (2022). In that time, The Weather Station have gone on to headline tours across North America and Europe, play major festivals, and perform on the televised Austin City Limits as well as Jimmy Kimmel Live. Ignorance was named Best New Music (Pitchfork), and landed in year-end Top 10 lists from The New Yorker (#1), Spin, New York Times, Uncut, Pitchfork, The Guardian, and many others. Called "a heartbroken masterpiece" in The Guardian, the record was a complex evocation of climate grief that struck a chord worldwide.
As a writer, Lindeman is known for her detail. “Her writing can feel … like the collected epiphanies from a lifetime of observing” (Pitchfork). Over the course of six albums, her music has moved from home recorded, mostly acoustic folk to the “ornate act of world building” (New Yorker) that was Ignorance. The throughline, though, is a focus on ideas; her lyrics walk the line between the personal and the conceptual, forever tying small moments to larger metaphysical quandaries. Nominated for three Juno Awards, a Socan Songwriting Award, and the Polaris Prize, her albums have made a mark both critically and conceptually.
20S X CCMHT | Revisiting 'Directions of 20th Century Architecture'
On August 18th, 1949, Forum 49 hosted a panel discussion called ‘Directions in 20th Century Architecture’ featuring architect Marcel Breuer, the artist and filmmaker György Kepes, and architect and journalist, Peter Blake, who was then curator for Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art.
All three speakers were engaged in the then-raging debate about whether modern houses should use the materials and methods of vernacular, regional architecture, or employ universal, standardized, machine-made components.
Breuer had just finished building his own experimental house in Wellfleet and one for the Kepes family not far away. Both houses were modest-sized, environmentally sensitive, outposts for art-making and creative congregation.
By coincidence this 75th anniversary of Forum 49 is also the year the Cape Cod Modern House Trust is seeking to purchase, restore and re-open Breuer’s house as a platform for scholarship and new creative work. By looking back at the Forum 49 discussions, this talk will explore the relevance of Breuer’s work today, as well as the process of preserving his summer house and the archiving of its contents.
20S X Atmos | Keynote: Bayo Akomolafe
The ecological crisis is only a symptom of a deeper spiritual disconnect, one that must be mended to heal the whole. What can we learn from nature about the processes of decay and renewal? What must be decomposed in order for our species to mend its relationship with the Earth?
In this keynote conversation bridging the spiritual and ecological, we will hear from Atmos editor-in-chief Willow Defebaugh and philosopher, writer, and founder of The Emergence Network Bayo Akomolafe, as they invite us into a deeper understanding about the transmutations and murmurations our world is faced with today.
Cody Plays
Cody Plays is an experiment in creating a play in a matter of a few days with a rotating group of special guests and collaborators created by writer/performer Cody Sullivan. Where is the show taking place this week? What is happening in the world that day? Who can we beg to take a role? The answers to these questions are the frantic, immediate, ephemeral ingredients that Cody uses to facilitate the group creation of each Cody Plays. Cody started the show in Provincetown at The Gifford House, in June 2023. He continues to play in Provincetown and Boston.
“The results are outrageous and boisterous and harken back to Provincetown’s devil-may-care days.” – Chris Muller, The Boston Globe.
20S X Atmos | Queering Nature
As part of our 20S x Atmos weekend Pinar Sinopoulos-Lloyd, Sabrina Imbler, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, and Willow Defebaugh come together to discuss "Queering Nature".
The queer experience is rooted in expression and acceptance—a celebration of all the unique and individual natures that make up the whole of nature, a rich tapestry woven by biodiversity. In this panel discussion, expert voices from the field of queer ecology will explore wonders from around the planet that challenge our human notions of gender and sexuality, who gets to determine the narrative frameworks of biology, and the expansive nature of identity.
Faces of Celebration: Mike Sullivan & Friends in Concert
Mike Sullivan and friends in a concert featuring masked performances of Stephen Sondheim repertoire with other choral and musical theater works.
With performers wearing masks and custom clothing designs, Faces of Celebration meets at the intersection of music, fashion, and art, and explores the variety of ways in which we engage with storytelling and creative expression. The concert is performed in two acts, consisting of local and visiting singers and instrumentalists.
20S X Atmos | Going Back to the Land
Enjoy a session from our Twenty Summers x Atmos weekend of conversations at the Hawthorne Barn.
To rewrite our future, we must right the wrongs of the past and present—including the harm that colonization has authored upon the Earth’s original caretakers and listen to their words of wisdom. In this talk, Indigenous advocates, leaders, and visionaries will invite the audience into a discussion about Native sovereignty, stewardship, reparations, and the landback movement.
Bermuda Search Party in Concert
Experience an evening in the Barn with Bermuda Search Party!
Since their inception in early 2018, Bermuda Search Party (formerly known as The Q-Tip Bandits) have emerged into the Boston music scene as an energetic and vibrant act that continues to touch audience’s hearts while getting them up on their feet. Their smooth yet powerful sound is backed by the raw energy of rock and the coolness and colors of R&B and funk — with palpable grooves coated with savory, soul-inspired riffs, anthemic horns and meaningful lyrics.
Ecosystems & Imagination
Ecosystems and Imagination - an artist’s interactive approach to future/present visions of the sea coast in the face of sea level rise, and the vulnerability of public space.
What are the ecosystems near the water, both human and nature based/ What is public space at the coast for? How will we live here in the future?
Presented by Mark Adams, Traven Pelletier, and Center for Coastal Studies
Jeremy O. Harris & Ronan Farrow in Conversation
Join Ronan and Jeremy in conversation at the Hawthorne Barn celebrating the end of Season 11 with Twenty Summers on June 14, 2024.
Ronan Farrow is a contributing writer for The New Yorker whose investigative reporting has won the Pulitzer Prize for public service among other honors. Before his career in journalism, he was a State Department official in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Farrow is a graduate of Yale Law School, and received a PhD in political science from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of two books including Catch and Kill, and has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.
Jeremy O. Harris is an actor and playwright whom Out Magazine called "The Queer Black Savior the Theatre World Needs." His play, Slave Play, received 12 Tony nominations, and he has co-produced plays and television shows including Circle Jerk which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and the hit HBO series, Euphoria. Harris is a graduate of the Yale MFA Playwriting Program.
20 Summers Season Eleven Trailer
Twenty Summers Season Eleven was host to over three dozen cultural events, from artist talks, workshops and poetry readings, to panel discussions, live performances and field trips. We welcomed nine artist-in-residences, including our first dance collective, and showcased two site-specific art installations at the Barn by local artists. We also launched two new satellite ventures; with our friends at Atmos, the climate and culture publication, we hosted 20S x Atmos Gathering, three action packed days of illuminating conversations and performances exploring climate change resiliency and we opened our new year-round space at 494 Commercial St.
FARMED X PTOWN: A Live Podcast Concert
An evening of original music and interviews inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Provincetown edition with special guest Jay Critchley.
FARMED x PTOWN a live concert by multi-disciplinary performer Truth Future Bachman, with special guests Jay Critchley and Kristen Becker, is part of a concert and interview series inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Through a suite of songs and deep community partnerships, FARMED conducts interviews with leaders of grassroots movements. Highlighting revolutions happening all around us, the interviews are set to music by Truth Future Bachman and their company of singer/musicians.
20 Summers Season Ten Trailer
Watch the trailer for Twenty Summers' 2023 Season Ten. This year alone we welcomed Margaret Atwood, No-No Boy, Kat Wright, Truth Future Bachman, Pascuala Ilabaca y Fauna, Geena “Horse Barbie” Rocero, Antoinette Cooper, Oshima Brothers, Ruth Ozeki, Chef Jon Kung, Gin Stone, and Kit Zauhar, amongst dozens of other courageous artistic voices.
Commodity: Gin Stone Installation & Artist Talk
Artist talk & reception celebrating "Commodity", art installation of life-size animals created by the local artist Gin Stone.
An allegorical art installation employing life-size animals created by the artist Gin Stone in a ‘diorama’ that explores the environmental consequences of patriarchal-driven capitalism through human evolution. The unfolding artwork advances its timeline with each consecutive install location it occupies, the results of which are an evolving narrative. In three acts, the installation creates an apt metaphor for the exploitation of living beings, the environment, and ultimately, the planet. The Hawthorne Barn is the setting for the initial installation or 'act'.
Gin Stone was born in 1971 in Binghamton, NY. She now lives and works in studio based on coastal Massachusetts. She is a transdisciplinary artist using sculpture, installation and science to convey themes regarding nature and myth. She attended the Hartford Art School.
With work that conveys environmental activism while incorporating material based sub-text, animals become allegorical characters used to highlight - and reject- women and nature as commodities exploited by a largely patriarchal capitalist society (ecofeminism).
Stone’s creatures are created with materials including commercially fished line, ghost gear, recycled and antique textiles as well as found objects. Her work has explored the myth of ancient religion and goddess worship, channeling her immense interest in myth and mysticism. The resulting effect is a cocktail of politics, culture, history and ritual, inhabiting the space of its viewers with intrigue while inspiring thoughtful dialogue of how texture can be both physical as well as abstract. The beauty inherent in nature is brought to life to craft a portrait of meaning and movement, while building chapters on evolution and ecology.
Margaret Atwood, Vivian Gornick, and Katha Pollitt in Conversation
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Here novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the Maddaddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry in a decade, followed in 2022 with Burning Questions, a selection of essays from 2004 - 2021. Her next collection of short stories, Old Babes in the Wood was published in March 2023. Atwood has won numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright, and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.
Vivian Gornick is one of the world’s most distinguished and respected women writers and feminists, very much in the first person. She has written several books, including two memoirs, Fierce Attachments and The Odd Woman and the City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987 and 2015), the biography of feminist revolutionary Emma Goldman (Emma Goldman. Revolution as a way of life, Yale University Press, 2013) and three collections of essays, two of which, The Men in My Life (Mit Press, 2008) and The End of the Novel of Love(Beacon Press, 1998), were finalists in the National Book Critics Circle Award. She teaches creative writing at the New School, writes for various media, and still lives in New York. In 2017 Vivian Gornick won the prize for the Best Work of Fiction awarded by the Gremio de Libreros de Madrid for the Spanish-language version of Fierce Attachments (Apegos feroces, Sexto Piso, 2017).
Katha Pollitt is a poet, essayist and a longstanding columnist for The Nation, where she writes about feminism, politics, and culture. She has won many prizes and awards for her writing, including two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her most recent book of poetry is The Mind-Body Problem; her most recent book of prose is Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights. She lives in New York City with her husband and cat.
Kat Wright in Concert
Kat Wright, whose voice is both sultry and dynamic, delicate yet powerful; gritty but highly emotive and nuanced, has been described as “a young Bonnie Raitt meets Amy Winehouse”. Add to that voice enough stage presence to tame lions, and the combination of feline femininity proves immediately enchanting. There’s soul flowing in and out of her rock ‘n’ roll with a serpentine seduction. Some of soul music’s sweet, grand dames belt, shout, seethe, and succumb, while Wright sings gently like a heartache’s apology. It’s funky in spots and beautiful all over. And it hurts a little … like it should.
Twenty Summers from Today, Climate, Community & Queer Futures
For the past twenty years, the unique queer and artistic enclave of Provincetown has been threatened by the forces of climate change, gentrification, a lack of affordable housing and the homogenization of culture. Join Marc Norman, Dr. Mika Tosca & Jay Coburn in imaging a more equitable and sustainable future for Provincetown, and beyond, that preserves the people and this place for generations to come.
Marc Norman is an internationally recognized expert on policy and finance for affordable housing and community development. Since July, 2022, Marc has been the Larry & Klara Silverstein Chair of Real Estate Development & Investment, and Associate Dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at NYU. Trained as an urban planner, he has worked in the field of community development and finance for over 20 years. With degrees in political economics (University of California Berkeley, Bachelors of Art, 1989) and urban planning (University of California Los Angeles, Master of Art, 1992) and experience with for-profit and non-profit organizations, consulting firms and investment banks, Norman has worked collaboratively to develop or finance over 2,000 units totaling more than $400 million in total development costs.
Dr. Mika Tosca is a climate scientist and Associate Professor, having completed her Ph.D in “Earth System Science” in 2012 at the University of California, Irvine, and her postdoctoral work at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. In 2017 she took a faculty position at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in addition to her ongoing work investigating the link between climate and wildfire, she imagines ways that artists and designers can collaborate with climate scientists in an effort to better communicate and conduct climate science research. She has written about the emerging synthesis of art and science and has been invited to speak on the ways art-science collaborations can help us build post-climate change worlds, including a role as Plenary speaker at the 2022 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. In 2021, Mika was named to the Grist 50 Fixers list and in 2023 she was interviewed by both the BBC’s Science in Action and HEATED’s Arielle Samuelson about her work and activism. Mika works with young artists to push the boundaries of collaboration, including a new project that explores the potential of Solarpunk. She continues to be vocal about the urgency of addressing the climate crisis.
Jay Coburn has had an unusual career as an advocate, community activist, and chef/small business owner. Since 2012, Jay has served as President and CEO of the Community Development Partnership – the non-profit community development corporation serving the eight towns of lower Cape Cod. He oversees the CDP’s affordable housing and economic development programs designed to build a diverse year-round community of people who can afford to live, work and thrive here. Jay lives in Provincetown and on winter weekends he can be found on the Alpine and Nordic ski trails of northern Vermont.
Journaling and the Writing Process with Ruth Ozeki
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest, whose books have garnered international acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, religion, environmental politics, and global pop culture into unique, hybrid, narrative forms.
“Ever since 1996, when I started working on my first novel, I’ve kept a detailed process journal, where I analyze and develop ideas, and write informally about writing. I think of my journal as a friend, one who never tires of listening to me whine, boast, complain and vent, who is a little bit wiser than me, and often finds solutions to the problems of plot or character that I’m struggling with. I will do a reading from my novels and share some of the corresponding excerpts from the journal. This is not material I usually share with the public, but I think the focus on process might interest the writers and other creative artists in the Twenty Summers community. It’s always fun to see the gears and cogs malfunctioning and to expose the ridiculous amount of effort it takes to make the work seem effortless!”