One of the very many beautiful things about Maria MacDonell’s new play “Life” is that there’s an invitation for the audience to draw during the performance.
If you’re extra clever you can book yourself a seat on the stage; and then you get an easel with beautiful paper and pencils and charcoal and pastels.
And I just love that…
I chose an easel with a view over the audience as well as the performers, and drawing this doubled my joy in the evening.
THIS IS THE RIVER OF TEARS
THIS IS THE SOUL’S DARK NIGHT
THESE ARE COUCH POTATOES
A POTATO IS A BEAUTIFUL THING (because I didn’t want to be rude about them)
THIS IS THE ENERGY OF A STAR
(because that was her character’s name - Estelle - and her glowing energy, as writer and performer, held the whole thing together)
When I was a child I was told I couldn’t draw, and I was told I couldn’t sing, and it was no good my thinking of becoming a writer because I’d never make a living out of it.
And I wonder what would happen if we encouraged and celebrated children’s creativity instead of going out of our way to destroy it.
Or if instead of subsidising arms manufacturers to create instruments of suffering and death
We invested in universities and the arts instead.
Because they both have the capacity to make human life so much better.
PS after a tour round small towns and villages in Scotland, giving immense pleasure and strengthening creativity wherever they went, Maria and her brilliant fellow actor Leo MacNeill are performing at the Scottish Story Telling Centre during the Edinburgh Fringe.
Buy tickets if you can - and ask for a seat on the stage…..