Theatre: Milk-n-Honey -- food politics and fair trade snacks at New York's Lightbox Theatre

If you're in New York, this show runs through this weekend at the Lightbox Theatre:

Part fiction, part documentary, and based in part on interviews conducted with people whose backgrounds are as diverse as farmers, food scholars, hunters, waiters, ad men, immigrant workers, diabetics, and dumpster divers (known as "freegans"), MILK 'N' HONEY is a large-scale multi-media play that looks at food and appetite in the 21st century:  the play's interweaving storylines follow a couple whose marriage is at stake as they differ about what food to put on the table, a grocery store clerk who forages through dumpsters, immigrant farm workers, a family that struggles with diabetes, a flavor chemist who attempts to capture the flavor of light, et.al.

The themes of food and consumption will be underscored in MILK 'N' HONEY as an actor consumes an entire meal -- from soup to nuts, from "curtain up" to "lights out" -- on stage as part of every performance of the play.

MILK 'N' HONEY was developed in part through LightBox's participation in several recent food conferences including Princeton University's Food, Ethics & the Environment Conference; The Foundry's Food 101 Conference on food policy in New York City; and W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Food and Society Conference.

Following each performance of MILK 'N' HONEY, the 3LD space transforms into the After-Show Cafe, where audience members can eat free locally made food and participate in discussions, cooking demos, book signings and other activities led by LightBox partners, including Slow Food, Just Food, FoodChange, the Small Planet Institute, World Hunger Year, Good Food (arts engine) and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The After-Show Cafe will be run by the Lower East Side Girls Club, with coffee donated by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.