THE SHOW PROPER

little child of miracle

a fantasia.

This is a show about birth/death/the spirit soul/the body/the world/each other

Note - Told in chronological order to make sense of the story as we devise, but the show will begin with the boy and the moon, who then reveals the story of his past to him, and then he runs away. The show outlined below is in sort of chapters, the idea being that of a FANTASIA, not only in aesthetic style, in that we aim to marry differing storytelling techniques but in that there are segments wherein ideas are presented which then make up the whole. Where ideas have been developed re: dialogue or conversation have included small snippets to illustrate

little child of miracle - a fantasia.

Characters -

The Prince who becomes the King

The Princess (His Daughter)

The Statue of The King

The Bird

(Their Son )The Little Child of Miracle aka THE BOY

The Moon his (other) Mother

The Star

The Man who is building a house

The Moth

Beginning

THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING.

Idealism vs Reality

The prince takes the throne as King and has big plans to correct the mistakes of the past and create a utopia.

In this perfect world, there is still a grief - his daughter the princess dies, and the king locks himself away.

THE STATUE AND THE BIRD

Thinking about what we see, what we don't see, others experiences and the value of others in our lives, one is rooted in one spot the other is flitting around

The Bird finds a friend in the Statue of the King - who looks upon the world he represents as it falls apart. The statue doesn't see though the things that happen all around him, and he can not move to stop the bad things. The Bird likes a place to centre/use as a home, as a creature of the sky she can go anywhere, but does she want to?

The people pull down the Statue of the King. The distraught Bird flies away, higher than ever before into the sky. She has taken a gem from the statues eye that she managed to salvage.

The bird in her sorrow does not realise she has left the earth and exhausted, falls into the celestial ocean and dies. The gem rises to the surface and there the Little Child of Miracle (the Boy) is born.

THE MOON AND THE BOY

The Moon see's this happen and raises the Boy.

The Moon talks about earth, and how on earth she sometimes appears during the day and people see this as strange and wrong, the moon is only associated with the night - but she has appeared in the daytime more days than those who think it abnormal have lived in their entire lives.

The Moon tells The Boy the story of his birth. “I am your mother, in as much as I am the mother of the stars, and of the sea. I am your mother because i have cared for you and watched you sleep and spirit something. Just as the sun is your father, as he is the father of the mountains and the trees, he has kept you warm, and watched you grow. But you have another mother also, and another father, from the earth behind me and across the sea of sky”

The Boy leaves, determined to find his way to earth to discover more. It sounds bloody strange.

THE STAR

Feeling alone/not being alone. Celestial Navigation. Guidance.

He becomes lost in an unfamiliar territory and The Star finds him and navigates him to earth.

THE MAN WHO IS BUILDING A HOUSE

About the way the world works. A sort of introduction to the idea of society and material goods and all that kind of stuff.

He meets a man who is building a house. The man already has a house but wants a different one.

“How do you build a house? I don’t have a house i just sleep in the stars”

“You take some wood and nail it together”

“Who makes the hammer, could you make a hammer?” (about how we rely on so many other people to bring our daily lives about, but the process by which we go about it alienates us from every individual in the line)

“I don’t think I would have the patience to grow a tree or the heart to cut one down”

THE MOTH

The boy meets a moth who is searching for stars but only ever finding lightbulbs. The pursuit of something huge and far away and the mundane reality. Or is it mundane tho are lightbulbs actually really cool? He is from where she wants to be.  They talk and from her he learns of time and via that - death. He doesn't understand either concept and so she takes him to the tomb of the Princess.

THE TOMB OF THE PRINCESS

In the tomb of the Princess the Spirit of The Princess arrives and they discuss the body, the spirit, time and death.

A monument/tomb is strength to remember a person, gives her voice, but this one is so lavish and heavy that it keeps her tied to earth. They ask her to call the spirit of The Bird.

The Spirit of The Bird comes and the boy wonders if they take her spirit and bones of the princess, they are the two things that create ‘life’. They take the Princess’ bones and try and attach them to the spirit and it doesn’t work and it’s really horrible.

Consider "invisible before birth are all things, after death invisible again, they are seen between two unseens, why in this truth find sorrow?"

The Boy argues that the sorrow is that his mother the bird is dead and he never knew her and in that truth there is sorrow - the argument of 'Be glad she lived' vs 'but I'm sad she died'

They think maybe the boy is/can be her monument in the world -her voice in the world. The Princess is his sister in that everyone is connected being humans and also their strange family tree/shared history, and everyone has a shared history and to steal a little from Yoko Ono there is a part here about how the sky isn't something hanging in the air above the earth -  it extends all the way to the ground and we are living in it -can we think of the spirit in the same way, we can’t see it or hold it and it seems far away but we’re actually standing in it - every time we lift a foot we are walking in the sky.

They leave the tomb, and The Spirit of The Princess asks them to burn it for her, so that she can depart - the Boy can carry her words/ideals and she does not need to be tethered to the earth with a mausoleum.

THE DAY

The boy, who has always lived by night, emerges from the Princess's tomb to a sunrise? Does he return to the sky or stay on earth?

The End

(The final ending is still in a real flux and yet to be entirely nailed down/structured)