Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

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Volume 11 Number 3, December 2010

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JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS

Visible Fictions Theatre from Scotland

at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, 2010

 

they’re really just boys playing those two men on the stage

men playing boys playing with their toy trunk, action figures

of the Argonauts (with Spiderman thrown in here and there)

and their huge wagon that turns into whatever is needed

like ship and jail cell and dragon’s lair

 

yesterday’s snowfall stayed thickly on the ground

and in the morning, Michael told me, my granddaughter

of four threw herself into it and made angels

and at Shabbat dinner my grandson of six

having heard that ginger is good for you

wanted to have confirmed that this extended

to his gingerbread man he was having for dessert

 

Robert Jack and Tim Settle of Visible Fictions

excited us all kids and adults in the audience

embodying Bacchic pretence and letting go

into another world where you can be yourself

your friend, Jason and all the Argonauts

and Medea and Kings and servants and and and

and your friend can be all of those too

as long as you take turns and the story moves forward

 

and I went backward to my old backyard

with my teepee and its small fire place

and listening to Radio Luxembourg

on the transistor radio my father built for me

and going on dangerous scouting missions

in the fields behind our house

being prepared for new houses

with cavernous foundation holes

that could swallow you up and dissolve

you in their mud

 

just two of them there, Jack and Settle

on stage reminding us, showing us

that Dionysus can still hold us in his thrall

and when we let him have his due he will

fill us with awe and the sense that the possible

can be made visible right here right now

 - P.K. Brask