Molly Wilson
From left: Sean Porten as Jed, Arthur Grothe as the Beagle, Amber Dernbach as Lisa and Michael Perry as the Narrator/himself in Population 485.
Mike Perry stood straight up on the seat of a 1970s Massey Ferguson tractor, opened his arms to the zero-degree winds that slashed across the surrounding snowfields of Chippewa County, and began to read some verse aloud. It was a perfect portrait. The farmboy-poet making his mark against all odds and elements.
It was the winter of 2003, at a farm tractor dealership outside New Auburn, Wisconsin, the setting of Perry’s 2002 breakout memoir, Population 485. Together with videographer Wendy Woodard, we had just shot a scene in one of more than 40 short, feature films the three of us produced for Wisconsin Public Television.
I know you’re concerned right now about the state of my freezing toes that day. I don’t know the precise moment when my toes got involved, but my feet had lost feeling three takes prior. Mike wanted to do another take. I wanted my mommy. Or at least a shot at going indoors to thaw.
We did another take.
If there is a single, most important thing to know about essayist, novelist, musician, registered nurse, volunteer firefighter and now playwright Michael Perry, it’s that he doesn’t clock out until the job is done. Forget rural mysticism. Deadlines and mortgage payments have always been his muse.
Take this-self-imposed deadline: Aug. 22, 2016. That’s the date he booked the Kjer Theater in Eau Claire for the premiere of his first play, a stage version of Population 485. As of June 2016, he hadn’t written a single word of the script.
The act of re-inventing 485 into a play wasn’t even his idea. Credit that to his longtime friend and Fall Creek neighbor Justin Vernon (the musician and Bon Iver founder who Perry also collaborates with on the Eaux Claires Festival project). Vernon goaded him to do the stage adaptation right after the book came out in 2002. Perry shelved the notion until last summer when he said to himself, “If I don’t get this done, it’s never going to happen.”
So in classic Perry style, after he booked the world premiere of the play he had not yet written, he packed up his laptop and motored to Door County to compose the script of the play. Perry’s writing brims with his primitive, beautiful sense of place. The exploration of place in his literary world reflects a near obsessive appreciation of special places in his private world.
For example, the Door County spot to which he escaped last summer to script the play? The chicken coop-turned-writing-room that once belonged to gritty Chicago expatriate/Door County scribe, the late Norbert Blei.
“I locked myself in Norbert Blei’s coop, and after three days I came out with a play that was 90 percent complete.” The final script was the aerobic act of cutting down 80 percent of the book into a manageable 90-minute production.
For some, Perry’s method may seem haphazard. The reality is that he works as a writer the way crab fishermen catch their quota: He puts a lot of pots into the water. In addition to touring with his new play, which starts a three-night run at the Stoughton Opera House on Aug. 18, Perry has two new books out this fall: a book of essays called Danger, Man Working and a tome of clodhopper philosophy called Montaigne in Barn Boots.
He also writes a weekly column for the Wisconsin State Journal, still takes occasional EMS calls and, working beside his wife and two daughters, looks after the chickens, pigs and vegetables at his Fall Creek farmstead. It’s on land he and his wife kept in her family when he moved in 2007 from Main Street in New Auburn, where he wrote Population 485.
But never, ever, call Perry a farmer: “A true farmer assumes all the risks inherent. Whereas if a raccoon gets my chickens, or my little patch of corn washes out, I’ll just write an essay about it.”
His father is the farmer. Perry’s dad moved Mike and his mother to a Chippewa County plot in 1966 where his two younger brothers were born and where his folks still live today. The household practiced their faith within what Perry describes as “an obscure Christian sect.”
“My parents tried to teach us two things: charity and humility. I was raised on a principled but compassionate Jesus who — if I retain any ability to interpret Scripture — didn’t conduct a means test before sharing his loaves and fishes.”
That quote proves two things about Perry. One, he talks just like he writes. And two, he witnessed charity and humility, ideals that flow from his books, up close and personal. By Perry’s estimate, his mother, also an R.N., took in more than 100 foster children during his childhood, most of whom struggled with disabilities. Medicine and I.V. lines were part of his vocabulary long before nursing school.
It’s Perry’s mother who you’ll meet in the play. She appeared in the very first scene of Population 485, racing to the same roadside emergency call that Perry answered. Her character will be played by Amber Dernbach, an actor and Eau Claire school teacher. In fact, every member of the cast of seven is “local,” including director Jake Lindgren, who lives on a farm just down the road from Perry.
Perry plays the role of, well, Michael Perry, the narrator — which gets him off the hook for memorizing lines. “I carry the book all through the play, so I have a lovely little cheat sheet right there for me.”
It had been a while since Perry and I talked at any length before we connected to discuss the play. Inevitably, we reminisced about our filmmaking days together. He favored a scene we shot where he was again reciting poetry, not on a tractor seat but this time inside a manure spreader.
“To me that summarized my entire career,” he says. “The metaphor for that one can shoot in 16 different directions.”
Population 485 runs at the Stoughton Opera House from Aug. 18-20.
