BRAMBLY HEDGE

 

‘He placed the forefinger of his left hand under the ‘fly,’ and with the same finger of his right hand, he gave her a squeeze on the back of the chest.’* He peered through cracked spectacles at her beauty- the fine features of the ‘White Admirable’, (Limenitis Camilla) kaleidoscoped through shards of light. The species is sometimes called, ‘The Glider’ for the effortless way she moves in lightly shaded woodland.

        He’d been chasing her for some time, studying her from different angles. She was quite unaware of this of course, although they’d been a moment in late May when she almost caught a glimpse of him. The Bramble was blossoming, a wedding dress of cream and pink.  From the darker side of the hedge he admired her secretly, her whole body focused on the sensuous task of imbibing nectar. He’d had that funny feeling in his groin that reminded him of a childhood memory. Whilst out looking for butterflies in the woods, he’d come upon a couple embracing passionately. He’d hidden behind the Bramble hedge to watch; the man’s bottom, coal-grubby cupped in tight trousers; the women’s breasts tumbling out of her dress, like new-born Labradors.

    He turned her over on the bench, took the pin, one he’d made especially for the purpose in his lab, and ran it in one smooth incision from her neck, through her body.  Her chest parted, exposing a heart still beating and lungs pulsating. His breath grew shallower. He plunged his right hand inside her and pulled out her organs, slopping them into a kidney dish. Then he took a needle and threaded it with fishing line, and meticulously sewed her up, as if he was embroidering a cushion cover. He took out a luggage label, wrote down her name ‘Camilla,’ and tied it loosely round her ankle, placing her in a glass cabinet, next to the rest of his collection.

 

Janet Daniel

*Quotation from Wilkes, The Admirable Butterfly, 1742.

SOLD

'SOLD,' is a Theatre Versus Oppression production, created by Jennifer S.Hartley. |I saw it at Chapter Arts Centre on Saturday. 'It was written after a period of consultation and counselling of trafficking victims. It tells the story of 6 individuals who have suffered at the hands of traffickers. . . their stories collide at a bus stop in Bute Town, Cardiff.' The subject matter is particularly relevant with the recent discovery of  enslaved people found on a farm outside Newport, working as forced labour.
    You would expect to be moved  by these stories of human misery but overall I wasn't emotionally involved. The problem with the play for me is that there no deep communication and engagement between the individual characters. It is a collection of stories rather than a study of relationships. There is no dialectic to provide tension and different views other than these victims.  Although there were some good performances I'm not sure that the faux Eastern European accents worked well.  The only hope for change was the baby born to an abandoned trafficked victim. The audience was left with the characters' despair and no hints of how change might or could happen. Given that TvO is a charity, 'dedicated to using Applied Theatre to bring about positive change and development,' I left Chapter feeling un-empowered to do something positive,  just thinking, 'Isn't it terrible?'  I think this play would work much better as a starting point for work-shopping and as a piece of theatre in education.
The play is touring Wales til the 9th of November 2013. For further info www.theatreversusoppression.co.uk

CHIMERICA

Last week in London, I saw a 'not-to-be missed' moving play, called Chimerica by Lucy Kirwood and directed by Lyndsey Turner.  The starting point is the photograph by Jeff Widener of the unnamed hero who stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square in Beijing to stop further killing of students protesting against the regime. The play questions how meaning in imagery can be skewed or used according to an individual or organisation's own agenda, and the complexity of heroism. Set in Beijing and New York, in a rotating set that gives pace to the piece, a photo- journalist sets out to find 'Tank Man'. He eventually does find his hero but in his search, he falls in love, and finds that there is another Tank Man, ignored by the Western press.
   Chimerica is on at The Harold Pinter Theatre;  Headlong& Almeida Theatre co-production. www.atgtickets.com

WRITING INTHE MUSEUM & BEES AT CHAPTER

Summer's over.  It's been a wonderful enriching time for which I'm really grateful. I didn't plan to do so much air travel, but both our children have moved abroad and alternatives were so expensive and unfeasable. In the past few months we've been lucky enough to visit Portugal, Switzerland and Singapore.
       Now it's autumn, the 'season' has started. I've enrolled on a new writing course-'Writing at the Museum,' using artefacts from the National Museum of Wales. This term's theme is the use of colour in bugs and butterflies. Science meets art. It's made me think about the nature of collecting. Seeing rows of royal blue tropical butterflies in glass cases, pinned with fading labels; caught, killed, classified and named after Victorian Lepidopterists or Taxonomists. Now these species are probably very rare. Their enthusiasm to share species from exotic lands with the British public could never have foreseen that their activity contributed in some small way to the extinction of the species. Now, the rapid destruction of rainforest by man for commerce and profit, climate change, changes in farming practice, etc, etc, have fast-forwarded the extinction of such beautiful creatures.
      Sue Richardson, Eco-Poet is organising an evening of poetry devoted to Bees- some species are dying breeds. Proceeds will go to Friends of the Earth. The evening starting at 7pm is on Friday 25th October at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. All welcome.

SINGAPORE WILDERNESS

I stood over her, curious. She was large and yellow, crouched in a corner behind the swimming pool; the first ‘wild’ creature I’d seen in the city since arriving.

      Later, I sat on the lit balcony of the 11^th floor apartment my daughter and her partner are renting. The air was humid after monsoon rain. I scanned the landscape-a mixture of Gotham City and a Cubist painting -mountains of high-rise flats and futuristic office blocks.    Something was missing and it wasn’t Batman.

       I listened and looked up at the balcony light. No flying cockroaches, no whining mosquitos, no killer bees or Kamikazi moths. This was tropical Asia. I didn’t get it. Yet the part of me that didn’t want to be bitten or stung, rather liked this new experience-for a while.

     ‘They spray everything here,’ my daughter told me as we sipped our G & T.  ‘They’re afraid of Denge fever.  Last week, they injected clouds with chemicals so it would rain before the Grand Prix-they can’t afford to chance it during the event- it would be a financial disaster.’  

      ‘How do you cope with it?’ I asked. ‘It’s challenging,’ she said. ‘But, there’s a new development, ‘Gardens in the Bay,’ we haven’t seen ourselves. Do you fancy it?’

       We took the boat down the cleaned-up Singapore River, past the statue of Raffles, the First Governor of the Island, a wild-life enthusiast.  A plant that only flowers once a year, the ‘Rafflesia’ was named after him. On we floated towards the modern development of Marina Bay, with its metallic arts complex and Eden-type project with cool houses.  Against the backdrop of the financial quarter stand ‘Super trees’- huge metal constructions towering over the gardens. Climbing plants threaded into the artificial ‘trunks.’ While in close-by Indonesian Kalimantan, I thought, deforestation marches on, raping the rainforest.

       ‘Where does interfering with nature stop?’ I asked. ‘Man-made rain, man-made trees, gassed insects. When will they start making artificial insects, beetles and bees that will replace the natural species they are so keen to destroy?’

      ‘Perhaps ‘they’ already have,’ my daughter said.

       Back at the apartment block, I looked again at the large yellow Cricket by the pool.

      ‘How did you survive?’ I asked her.  There was a deafening sound. ‘They’ were testing the sirens in case of a nuclear war.  But she stayed perfectly still and kept her escape plans to herself.