akashiver | Postiness

I intended to post earlier, but my conscience got the better of me. Basically, it told me that I was procrastinating (which i was) and that I better finish all that other stuff before posting.

(Damn you, superego!)

So anyway. I'm back on the wet West Coast, which is gamely trying to be both westerly and wet.

Highlights of the weekend included attending a Spring Arts festival downtown, where I got to a) walk through the DTES and reacquaint myself with some notorious intersections b) help make a pebble mosaic (which was surprisongly pretty and cool) c) watch several fairly good theatrical performances. But my favorite moment was the revelation that

One of the theatrical performances was a puppet show called Sycroux's Story. It was a post-colonial prequel to The Tempest put on by a very earnest young artist who was determined to Make Symbolism Work.

Unfortunately, the Earnest Young Artist overestimated the theoretical literacy of her young audience. The whole "Earthmother shrieking at the WhiteMan's scattering of tiny black dollhands" thing went right over the heads of the five-year olds. The adults were equally baffled. My favorite, though, was the little kid who started crying at Sycroux's creation of the island and ended the performance by asking his mother "what just happened?"

"I don't know," murmered the mother, staring at the form of an Earthmother cradlng a pierced Moon cutout while a cackling WhiteMan puppet rode off into the distance, "I just don't know."

..which, between the postcolonialism and the audience reaction, pretty much made it my favorite performance of the day. :)