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Workshop -The Birth of Stone People

3/5/2019

5 Comments

 
WHAT WE DID
When people arrived they were given notes of what we know so far about the world of the play. The intention was to go deeper into what we know rather than progress into any narrative. This led to a discussion. The evening was billed as movement, mime though I also brought some masks I’ve recently made to look like stone, which is where we began, looking at masks emerging from the rocks. The responses to the stone masks were emotionally compelling, as they pulled themselves out of the rock. They held the attention, even though I asked them to do very little. They moved slowly, I asked them to move with the tension of clay. They became aware of each other and formed into groups or families. One became isolated. They then became aware of the audience. The experience for the audience and the masks as they confronted each other was one of curiosity, and empathy. The masks were cautious but not over concerned. We explored how children might react.
 
We also looked at stone children wearing masks on the knee. The audience was more charmed and felt no threat from the stone children.
 
We then had groups creating what I call Problem Pictures. We molded the people in the groups into a living picture. The first resembled a Mother pulling her baby from the ground. We asked them questions while they were frozen in these shapes and then had a conversation with them in role. The group was a mother, husband and sister. It was their first child. The husband had several wives. This was his first child with this wife. The wife was happy, the sister was happy for her.
 
The second picture was a woman digging for her child and a group pushing goading her on. One who I assumed was the husband ordered her to dig. The wife was desperate, frantic in her digging. She split the child and abandoned it. She was pushed to dig deeper, She got more distressed she couldn’t find a child. This was followed again by the group who had been in the sculpture in conversation with the workshop audience.
Picture
WHAT WE DISCOVERED
 
The Stone People - Birth
NB. The Stone people being born from the earth is based on an Inuit myth
 
This has led us to think: Stone people are born as stone and over time become flesh. Theatrically that’s full mask to half masks, to forehead and nose or chin masks. The stone people have to go to ‘birthing places’ (areas of exposed rock) to find their children. Stone people can be born in rivers and oceans when they will reawaken as water creatures. Sometimes they will be dug out trees that grow out of the rocks. Toad Rock is a sacred ‘birth place’.

Women are obliged to dig for babies, “they’re waiting for us”. Their mothers are destined to find them; they know their own baby.  Families might consult ‘Finders’ who sense where the mother should dig for her child; children and parents are destined to find each other. When they Stone people die they become stone and return to the earth retaining their knowledge and memory of past lives.

When the woman digs for a baby she might accidentally split it so she then has to give it back where it reforms over several years. Babies don’t want to go back to the earth as they remember  “the long wait”.  

When rocks return or reawaken after the long wait they will have changed form, sparrows, toad, handsome men.   They may even be reawakened at different ages.  The earth then is imbued with intelligence, knowledge and wisdom far greater than our own. 

Stone People - Parents Men’s role is to collect insects, earth, and snakes to feed their families; they look after the insides of their children, while women look after their outsides. Conversely women look after the insides of homes while men look after the outsides.
 
Stone People’s Warning. The stones have come back to warn us about climate change/fracking. We don’t know what we take from the earth. Other cultures show gratitude and kindness towards nature/environment.
 
NB: Reference was made to the film Princess Mononoke from the Japanese Ghibli Studios about respecting the environment 
 
The Causes of the Eternal Wait -Some disaster in the past has caused the Rocks to be frozen for thousands of years, some in the process of being born. We don’t as yet know what event caused it. Potential suspects are
  • Climate Change
  • Fracking
  • The Fossil Hunter
 
The Fossil Hunter - One of the Stone people’s spiritual leaders was cracked open by a geologist or fossil hunter. Many of the leaders followers wear a mallet round their necks in memory of him.   Among the recorded Victorian names of rocks is The Bloodstain, known to other sources as the Bleeding Rock. It is generally understood as a spot where dripping water left an iron stain, but no site fitting this description can be pointed out today. It needs to be found. It could mark the place where the stone people\s spiritual leader was split.  
 
The Toad - The lost Ritual  The Toad was present at the time of creation shaped by the ice man but that story has not yet been fully discovered never mind told. The Toad is an important symbol to the Stone People. We think there was a long lost ritual when they paid honour to the toad, in a manner similar to the present day well dressers of Derbyshire. The ritual would have marked their gratitude for water and the natural world.
If we were to revive the ritual it may be a way to reawaken the stone people to tell us their stories
 
Viv said there was a well in Eales Terrace under her house and her neighbors. Discussed significance of frogs in relation to the health of the planet, ecological issues, conservation and Acid rain eroding stone.
 
The Sounds of the Stones: David Brett, wooden poles knocked against rock.

Karen Gardner suggested this short film as a stimulus for future workshop. Take a look

5 Comments
Sue Holmes
3/8/2019 01:24:11 pm

I really enjoyed last night and love the way that the play is evolving. It is so rich in ideas.
Needless to say my imagination ran riot over night: the ideas are not a direct reflection on what was discussed last night, but more a development of the world of the play triggered by what people discussed.The earth is full of knowledge and information but it is not sentient.

> The Oracle could be a portal to this knowledge and so are the unborn children of the Stone People.
> As the children develop/gestate in the earth/womb they assimilate the earth's knowledge.
> For humans this knowledge would be seen as the geological strata, the roots of plants, the DNA of life forms, fossils etc.
> The longer a Stone Child gestates the more knowledge it assimilates but the deeper it will slip into the earth. Digging deep for the child is not to do with gender but to do with seeking lost knowledge.
> When a Stone Child is born, although it has the knowledge of the earth, it has no language and has not developed the skills to process the knowledge. As it matures it acquires these skills and there will come a time which is optimum for when its language and processing skills are developed enough to share the knowledge. All children have a 'coming of age' ceremony when they reach this stage. Thereafter the earth's knowledge in the child begins to fade but the Stone People acquire new knowledge from their environment.
> The Stone People have no written language or form of record keeping and for their survival it is necessary for them to return to the earth and to take with them the new knowledge which will be passed onto the next generation by the earth along with the ancient knowledge. Music is their only form of record keeping and like 'Folk Music' it is carried down the generations and is constantly evolving.
> Humans are a threat to the Stone People. Humans take information from the earth and they do not return it. Sometimes they destroy it by moving earth, tunnelling, quarrying, mining etc and of course 'Fossil Hunting"

Reply
Sonia Lawrence
3/11/2019 05:06:45 pm

I very much enjoyed the workshop on Tuesday at The Rusthall, Jon, and was inspired to write the two enclosed poems, so I thought I would send them to you. I won't be at all offended if you don't like them.

DIGGING IS OBLIGATORY Sonia Lawrence
Every way we went we met women digging
hands and flat stones scrabbling, scrabbling,
some with less vigour but all shared a purpose.
The digging was alarming, almost unbearable.
We averted our eyes but didn’t move on.

‘Digging’s a duty’ the women said, ‘we can’t help it,
the fox, the badger, the weasel and rabbit
they all do it and so should you.’
But when they looked up and saw who we were
They quickly changed their tune.

We asked the women,
‘Why do you dig for so long so often?
Why don’t the men dig?’
Exasperation showed in their eyes
‘These fleshlings’, they said ‘know nothing at all.

‘We are finding our children who wait below ground,
they wait and wait until they are found.’
‘How do you know your child from another’s?’
‘Do you mean you don’t easily recognise yours?
Any mother worth honouring knows her own child.’

All at once there was no more digging
they all stood up and eased their backs
as one woman raised a compact bundle
revealing her new born baby.
‘Is it a boy or is it a girl?’

The women raised eyebrows in disbelief.
How stupid they think we are, we thought.
The mother spoke softly, ‘Of course it’s a girl,’
she said with delight
‘I didn’t dig deep enough to draw up my son.’


THE STONE PEOPLE Sonia Lawrence
We are the Stone People we live in the rocks.
Life was simple here before you came.
Toad ensured the water was clean and the air pure.

We could touch the stars,
the almanac of life’s activities,
their movement describing the turning year.

the Milky Way, a dazzling arc,
far more resplendent than rainbows,
only the Moon now emblazons the night sky,

such majesty will not reveal itself again
unless you deliver us from pollution,
global warming and acid rain.

Reply
Karen Gardner
3/26/2019 12:18:07 pm

Dialogue between three rocks stuck in transition:
​"Those two legged clothed ones were fine, leaving us alone, finding us perfectly useless to them... other that sheltering under our overhangs until just five, or was it six? millenniums ago. They's when they found your sheered off fallen off behind on their path and got the idea to cut us up into pieces."
"Wait a century! Are you suggesting that all this is because I was falling apart? I couldn't help it if a flying creature blown in from the West wind dropped an unusual seed between us, grew into a tree with roots that insisted themselves into my veins. Of course I'd crack up! And where were you, leaving such a gap between us for this to happen?"
"Never mind you two, that's not going to help us out with the state we're in now. We have to warn the fleshlings and in the meantime they're forgetting to tap into the knowledge source. What are they doing up there? It's been only a few decades, but what are they up to?"

Reply
Alison MacKenzie
3/27/2019 12:10:01 pm

Such an interesting music/sounds workshop with Jon and David on Sunday. Thank you.

And then yesterday quite by chance I came across this poem in a First World War Poetry anthology which coincidentally arrived by post Monday morning which I thought I'd share.

Men Fade Like Rocks W.J. Turner

Rock-like the souls of men
Fade, fade in time.
Falls on worn surfaces,
Slow chime on chime,

Sense, like a murmuring dew,
Soft sculpturing rain,
Or the wind that blows hollowing
In every lane.

Smooth as the stones that lie
Dimmed, water-worn,
Worn of the night and day,
In sense forlorn,

Rock-like the souls of men
Fade, fade in time;
Smoother than river-rain
Falls chime on chime.

[W.J. Turner (1889-1946) came to England from Australia in 1906 and served in the Royal Garrison Artillery 1916-1918. He was music critic of the New Statesman 1916-1940, drama critic of the London Mercury 1919-1923, literary editor of the Daily Herald (succeeded Siegfried Sassoon in the post in 1920), and literary editor of The Spectator 1942-1946]

Reply
Paul Fisher
3/28/2019 11:05:57 am

the content away lacking as it does the gravitas of Inuit ledgends and Creation myths.It is meant to be lighthearted and God knows we could do with some humour at the moment!.

The Giant slowly awoke,a bird had been pecking the lobe of his right ear for some time and flakes of stone dandruff were scattered around his head.Somehow he seemed to have become seperated from the rest of his body and turned to stone.He could see one of his arms embracing a tree root and what looked very like his nose under a bush.
He was and had become petrified,if only he had his hands he could attempt to piece himself together,he vaguely recalled an argument with a local Wizard,"John of the wood"a flash and then nothing until the bird tapped him back to life.As the light increased he could see that he was surrounded by the body parts of other Giants who had plainly lain there for some time.Snot like Lichen trailed from a Nostril over there and closer he could see an Ear sprouting Ivy.
Some way away he could make out a large and fully formed Toad frozen in time like himself but garlended with flowers and free of vegitation.He suspected that the little people who lived nearby in rows of cottages and who had often complained that his farts blew the slates off their roofs,venerated this Toad.Perhaps there was hope for him?,the Wizard bearing wood might relent and restore him otherwise he would join the cast of the Legend of the Rocks.

Reply



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Claque Theatre Limited & Claqueur Impro
(Formerly Colway Theatre Trust) Established 1979
Registered in England Company Registration No. 1464536 Registered Charity No. 279311
Artistic Director: Jon Oram   Board of Directors: John Harries – Chair, Andy Brett, Brian Blunden
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    • What is a Community Play?
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