There is trouble in the spirit world.
They are sick, those beings who look after us in the space at the heart of things.
Sickened by the poisons we humans have poured out into the world,
Weekend by the fact, their names are being forgotten and no one invokes them.
A sick boy has been brought into their realm.
And should he live?
Or should he die?
His father is a mine owner whose works workings are poisoning the land.
Some say he should receive a dose of the poison his family is spilling out over the world and should die.
Others say he's only a child and he should not suffer for the sins of his father.
And as the debate moves back and forth, the child dies.
This is the story of a play. I'm watching in the University of the Philippines.
A play written in Tagalog with the title “Sa Gitna na Digmaan ng mga Mahiwagang Nialalang Laban sa Sangkatauhan” byJoshua Lim So.
Apparently he began writing the play when he was seriously ill; I, too, remember in my illness how I felt like helplessly in the power of forces outside my control…
And the mythological world this beautiful play inhabits is actually not that unfamiliar to us.
I remember as a child being convinced that everything was alive. trees, especially, each had their own life and personality. Some were good, some were bad, and I always tried to avoid the ones that were bad.
I never spoke about these things, because I knew I’d be laughed at, just as I never spoke about the fairies who I was sure danced in fairy rings…
Shakespeare inhabits this world too; and in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” he’s exploring similar connections when he describes the consequences of the quarrel between Oberon and Titania:
“Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge have sucked up from the sea
Contagious fogs, which, falling in the land,
Hath every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.”
(Act 2 sc 1)
What’s for sure is that we have to listen to the voices from this world; and to the indigenous cultures that inspired them.
Whether here in the Philippines, or in North America, or in Australia the message from the First Nations is the same:
Listen to us. Change your ways. Respect the earth…
The play was part of a double bill with “Climate in Crazies”, devised by the company from David Finnigan’s “Scenes From The Climate Era” - a series of short plays or sketches, some funny, some hauntingly terrifying.
I recognised myself in the student residence being buried in debris from the takeaway deliveries…
And was haunted by the scene where the mother in India was trying to cope with temperatures of 50 plus degrees - with the whole family crammed into the only room with air conditioning.
And then the electricity failed…
Or the one about the man in Oregon who thought he’d achieved safety through being self sufficient in the forest…
…Only to realise, too late, that the answer lay in community action as his house and smallholding were destroyed in a forest fire…
All the scenes were presided over by Mebuyan, the Goddess of Death and Fertility, whose many breasts were fashioned from trash and who ended the play lamenting she had no songs left to comfort her children.
That’s the task confronting us artists in these terrifying times:
To find the songs that bring comfort and strength.
Strength to confront our desperate situation and change it.
Right now this is something our theatre is conspicuously failing to do.
As is our culture.
We don’t want to confront the fact that our values and way of living are destroying the world we inhabit.
it feels so much safer to argue over what it means to be a man and a woman and cause suffering to our trans siblings.
Meanwhile, as we indulge ourselves in these hate filled arguments, the child dies.
The world burns.