Covenant

Set in a small village in 17th-century England, a coven of witch-healers and a group of idealistic peasant farmers forge a shaky alliance to take on a greedy landlord and halt the privatization of the Commons. Based on witch trial documents and tracts by the radical anti-property sect, the Diggers, Covenant draws out a buried story from the time of capitalism's emergence, highlighting the people who early on saw a different path. The play’s themes of women’s bodily autonomy, capitalism’s directive to sever people’s connections to each other and to the land, and the hysteria of the state are hauntingly present in our current moment. The composer, Leslie Allison, has drawn on incantation and contemporaneous ballads to compose original choral compositions.