2009
SHEARWATER RIVER
three plays by Edward Mast
Three short plays with masks and movement,
about exile, home and the longing for return.
Written by Edward Mast
Directed by Carmel Baird
Character designs by Lisa Bade
THREE NIGHTS ONLY
Friday - Sunday
May 15-17
7:30 pm
The program will last about an hour.
at
THE MOVEMENT STUDIO
2011 1st Ave North
corner of 1st N. and Crockett, top of Queen Anne Hill
The Studio is on the first floor of Queen Anne Baptist Church - enter through triple doors on 1st N.
Parking can be challenging on Queen Anne, so allow extra time.
Free admission but SEATING IS LIMITED - CALL OR EMAIL FOR RESERVATIONS:
(206) 774-6438
shearwaterriver@gmail.com
The flood was only water, they say.
The flood that crushed my city.
But the flood left bullet wounds.
And someone else lives in my home.
THE PROGRAM OF THREE PLAYS:
PRELUDE: music by Majid Ghorbany
TWO CHILDREN BY THEIR MOTHER’S CORPSE,
ARTICULATE BEYOND THEIR YEARS,
DISPUTE A MATTER OF SOME IMPORTANCE
movement:
Juliana Meira Do Valle
voice:
Ricky Coates, Porter Jones
INTERLUDE: music by Mike Lengel
MOONLIGHT AND RAIN
movement:
Ricky Coates, Juliana Meira Do Valle
voice:
Carmel Baird, Edward Mast
INTERLUDE: music by Ava Chakravarty, with Sam Tsohonis
SHEARWATER RIVER
music by Steven Flynn
movement:
Charlotte Campbell, Taryn Collis, Julia Evanovich,
Yusef Mahmoud, Juliana Meira Do Valle,
voice:
Ricky Coates, Lauren Hayes, Rich Hawkins,
Porter Jones, Meg Savlov, Retha Tinker
from the playwright:
Floods, earthquakes and hurricanes can destroy cities and drive people out of homes, but only human decisions can prevent those people from returning to rebuild. Unwanted people from New Orleans to Thailand have been victimized first by natural disasters and then by political choices to upgrade neighborhoods by keeping the unwanted from moving back in.
Wars are sometimes presented as inevitable disasters, like tornadoes or typhoons. They are not. Wars are created by humans, for the profit of some and the suffering of others. And wars are sometimes used to mimic natural disasters, so that unwanted people can be driven out and kept from returning.
May is the month when Palestinians remember al-Nakba, the Catastrophe of 1948, when over 800,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homeland.
“Come to me wherever you are
Whatever you have become
And return color to my cheeks
And meaning to my being
Return and take me into your eyes
Take an olive branch
Take a verse of my tragedy
A toy
Take a stone from our house
So that our descendants
Will remember their way home”
-- by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish
