There has been a lot of that going on this week, which has resulted in a profound cyber silence from me. I have spent the week chasing young teenagers around a large space while creating some theatrical pieces in english. I now feel as though my brain has been beaten all over with sticks and then rolled flat like pizza dough. The difficulty was, ten people who all wanted to play the lead character in a play which, for the boys, involved murder, blood, horror and cannibalism, and for the girls was centred on pop singers and hairdressers. The final scene came to me as I was giving Porridge a quick walk up the hill after letting my subconscious deal with it for two days…
I think you only need to know that the ending was happy, a supergroup was formed and no one was eaten. Not for the first time, I am amazed that boys and girls are of the same species.
The wonderful part of improvised theatre is the way that underlying wishes and fears are expressed. The only black child who participated kept insisting that we called the sinister kitchen servant his slave. I feel that I may have had more input into their ideas than I realised when I noticed that all three managers of artists in the play were obsessed with money and trying to cheat their respective artists*
There is the scent of changing seasons in the air. Porridge is losing hair at such a rate that I could have knitted a second dog with what emerged after yesterday’s grooming.
The family all return next week to break my solitude. I have enjoyed it, but it will be lovely to have them all back again.
* Sandra, this is in no way aimed at you! But I think you will agree that as a sub-species, there are many with teeth that are very sharp and bitey...
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