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What Five Towns Named Milton Tell Us About America

A preview of the performance project MILTON

  There are more than 20 towns and cities in the United States named Milton—from the 200-person Milton, North Carolina, to the 25,000-person suburb of Boston called Milton, Massachusetts.

The new experimental performance project MILTON looks at what five of these places tell us about what it means to be an American. The piece combines spoken word and song inspired by in-depth interviews with local residents, artifacts from each town and scale models of their important landmarks. The performance will be staged in each town before expanding to bigger cities.  It makes its world premiere in Milton, North Carolina next weekend

Guest host Phoebe Judge talks with Katie Pearl, co-artistic director of PearlDamour and co-creator and director of the play; Jean Scott, author of the “Milton Memories” column in the Caswell Messenger, and longtime Miltonian Vanessa Richmond-Graves, also known as Twinkle. 

Historic downtown Milton in Milton, North Carolina.
PearlDamour /
Historic downtown Milton in Milton, North Carolina.
An old house in Milton, Louisiana.
PearlDamour /
An old house in Milton, Louisiana.
The Blue Hill Meterological Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts.
PearlDamour /
The Blue Hill Meterological Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts.
The headquarters of the Milton Courier in Milton, Wisconsin.
PearlDamour /
The headquarters of the Milton Courier in Milton, Wisconsin.
Skies over the Blue Mountains in Milton-Freewater, Oregon.
PearlDamour /
Skies over the Blue Mountains in Milton-Freewater, Oregon.

Copyright 2014 North Carolina Public Radio

Anita Rao is the host and creator of "Embodied," a live, weekly radio show and seasonal podcast about sex, relationships & health. She's also the managing editor of WUNC's on-demand content. She has traveled the country recording interviews for the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps production department, founded and launched a podcast about millennial feminism in the South, and served as the managing editor and regular host of "The State of Things," North Carolina Public Radio's flagship daily, live talk show. Anita was born in a small coal-mining town in Northeast England but spent most of her life growing up in Iowa and has a fond affection for the Midwest.
Phoebe Judge is an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured on a numerous national radio programs. She regularly conducts interviews and anchors WUNC's broadcast of Here & Now. Previously, Phoebe served as producer, reporter and guest host for the nationally distributed public radio program The Story. Earlier in her career, Phoebe reported from the gulf coast of Mississippi. She covered the BP oil spill and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for Mississippi Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio. Phoebe's work has won multiple Edward R.Murrowand Associated Press awards. Phoebe was born and raised in Chicago and is graduate ofBennington Collegeand theSalt Institute for Documentary Studies.