When a young bi-racial Korean American violinist and her boyfriend leave New York City for the North Carolina mountains and the music of Appalachia, she finds herself facing the estranged grandfather she’s tried to forget. Will their shared bond of music bring them back together? Weston Theater Company presents “The Porch on Windy Hill” — dubbed “a new play with old music” — conceived, written and directed by Sherry Stregack Lutken, with music direction by David M. Lutken, on stage Aug.
22-Sept. 1 at the Walker Farm Theater in Weston. “If the familial troubles of Mira, her partner Beckett and her grandfather Edgar begin with edges jagged enough to draw blood, they end like sea glass, polished into a rough beauty by an eclectic mix of vocals, guitars, violins, banjos and an erhu, the last a Chinese two-string instrument that’s part flute, part violin and makes a wholly unique sound,” wrote Catey Sullivan in the Chicago Sun-Times, reviewing the 2023 Northlight Theatre premiere in Skokie, Illinois.
“It’s a play about America,” explained Sherry Lutken. “It’s a play about this country through the lens of music and a specific family torn apart a traumatic rift — and when the prodigal granddaughter returns to confront, to talk to, to find herself, and to have this moment with her grandfather to heal and hopefully move forward. “So, it’s really a play about race,” Lutken said.
“It’s about music, it’s about family, it’s about all of these .