Reviving Shallot
a
multi-modal drama exploring masculine-feminine
dynamics
and the subtle abuse of power
by Lisa Anne
Lindberg
- - staged 2005,
San Francisco Bay Area - -
"The Lady of Shallot"
John William Waterhouse, 1888
Tate Gallery, London
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WELCOME TO OUR PLAY
Welcome to our art studio where, as you can see, our specialty is weaving.
If you look closely at our tapestry, you will see that
we have woven it from fibers of many juicy art
forms: a mythologic story, paintings, music clips,
video clips, non-fiction proclamations, puppetry -- and
baton twirling ! !
See how our tapestry undulates around the room, starting right here beside this entry door,
flowing along all the walls, in some places as uneven
and bumpy as the
terrain it covers. See how our tapestry explores our
world's mass consciousness -- how the current imbalance in masculine and feminine
dynamics has resulted in horrific damaging
violence. See also how -- in
addition to the usual thinking of masculinity and femininity
as associated with the male and female
genders -- these qualities are actually within every individual person.
About the story : over the years, many people have
told us
their stories about
their lives. From these, we have created composite,
mythologized, archetypes: masculine and feminine
represented by the starring roles of the Lady in White
and the Man With the Carpet Roll of Secrets -- plus a handful of helpers.
Look around the tapestry and see the
glimmering silver and gold threads of their Greek-style
soap opera -- and in Pre-Raphaelite period costume, no
less. Follow along their high drama, scintillating
dialogue, passion, lies, betrayal, pain. See how the
feminine archetype becomes mystified by turns of events,
succumbs to despair, and goes into a Persephone-like
descent to the underworld. See how as the Lady in
Rags,
she sits for years in her Winter Garden, sad, feeling
the bright lights of her heart and soul to have
dimmed. See how in her depth of despair she decides to Lady-of-Shallot
herself down the river. . . . Then ! ! See how she revives
herself ! !
re-discovers a living, whole place in her heart -- redeeming herself to
herself -- and re-claims her post as The Lady in White,
Weaver and Boatswoman.
Her story of
emotional and spiritual suffering could be dismissed as
merely soap operatics -- as self-indulgent, self-consuming,
psychic pain, which, in
comparison, pales beside that of, say,
victims of blatant, violent terrorism, torture,
limb-severing. And one must, of course, distinguish among degrees of suffering,
and keep a sense
of proportion about this whole mess of life. But
horrendous examples of the blatant mis-use of power are easy to
point out, whereas -- despite the havoc its wrecks -- subtle emotional
manipulation is harder to get a hold of. And so we are
offering you a story of subtle mis-use of power -- because in its
very nature of hard-to-pin-point subtlety lies its great, insidious
strength.
Accordingly, we
are offering you an inside-out tapestry, using a bright lamp to shine through the fibers,
exploring this great theme: "If all politics
is about power, and all politics is personal -- rooted in
our own personal emotions -- and if we all possess
the choice to either use power well or to mis-use it,
then in what lies the choice to use power one way or another
way? From where arises the need to
thieve power from others
-- to exert power-over in order to feel
power-full?"
See how our tapestry wends its
way all around the room and back to this doorway, then
-- irrepressibly -- keeps going right on out the door and down the road, unrolling
its multi-layered, multi-fibered,
multi-dimensionality. See how it carries us down to the
sea and into the future, unrolling a feeling
about being alive here on this Earth, a feeling that is deep and rich
enough to give hope that life on this
planet actually
has a chance to continue, a feeling about being alive
that :
- Welcomes and values the entire range of human
qualities
- Offers the prospect of resolution of opposites without
having to compromise and feel "less than"
one's whole self
- Can help fulfill humanity's quest for wholeness and
integration
- Can say, "It's a big life" -- embracing it
all