Mischief and Justice

February’s members’ Open Mic marked the mid-point of our term on the theme of ‘Justice and Mischief’.

In the first week we created several short drama pieces using everyday objects, such as a hat, a bottle or a chess piece, for inspiration.  ‘Justice and Mischief’ emerged as common threads in the pieces. Our group, for example came up with a piece based on a globe, about the theft of a diamond, with a subsequent round the world police chase, before the perpetrators were finally brought to justice. In later weeks, we worked again in small groups to produce a selection of plays based on the ‘Queen of Hearts’ as well as other nursery rhymes and a fairy tale.  The groups were somewhat fluid, and in some cases the people who performed roles at the Open Mic were different from those who had developed them in earlier weeks.  I apologise if I have not credited some of the people who contributed, either in the creation of the pieces or by performing on the day!

True to form, there was plenty of humour, as well as mischief, murder and mayhem. In one version, the bullying King of Hearts (Dylan, who last term played a dolphin eaten by a crocodile) was murdered by the queen (Peter) in cahoots with the knave (Thomas).  Excessive taxation was the justification for the theft of the tarts in two of the plays. There was an exciting heist scene (with musical backing) in which the knaves (Jamie and I) had to get past the palace guards, and a twist in the tale, when the spoilt queen (Emily) was deposed in favour of the knave, who shared a love of dragon watching with the king (Graham). There was high comedy with the pairing of Starco as the Queen of Hearts irritated by the extravagantly colourful character of Amon playing the king. Cecelia played the knave who tried to bribe the police inspector (Robin) with jam tarts! In another version, Jotie’s witty line, about wanting to be seen as the ‘people’s queen’ was unfortunately omitted from her group’s final performance, but there was a nice piece of restorative justice when Emma as queen made the knaves bake some more tarts and do the housework!

In the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ piece, Humpty (John) was portrayed as an aggressive and greedy person who stole from the poor (Emma, Dora and Billy) and was punished by being knocked off the wall by a hooded executioner (Graham). At the end of the play the audience was expected to approve the lynching “Turn him into scrambled egg!”. Members of the group also wrote limericks, all saying how bad Humpty was, and how he deserved his punishment. I found the punishment very harsh, far more than would be justified by the idea of justice as something that restores balance. It seemed more like vengeance than justice to me.  As an interesting aside, it was Lewis Carroll who made Humpty into an egg in ‘Alice through the Looking Glass‘. He also made the Queen of Hearts into a very vengeful character (“off with his head!”) in ‘Alice in Wonderland‘.  An earlier origin of Humpty may have been a cannon mounted on the walls of the besieged city of Colchester, which, when damaged by the Roundheads, couldn’t be put together again by the Cavaliers (“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men”).

The ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ piece challenged prejudice against the feared other.  A larger than life ‘Incy (played by Amon, dressed in a creatively improvised crown with streamers for legs) was just accessing the “World Wide Web” when he was flushed out by an arachnophobe (Dylan), but then rescued by the Spider Protection Society.

Goldilocks and the Three bears’, was presented  in song up to the point where the three bears (Anthony, Jamie and I) discovered Goldilocks (Starco).  The bears, alarmed by finding a dangerous intruder in their bed  (“Do you know what humans do to bears? “) called the police.  Inspector Fox and his side kick, a chicken, charged Goldilocks with trespass, theft (the porridge) and criminal damage (the chair). We could have presented the story from another point of view, e.g. Goldilocks may have been lost, afraid or seeking refuge or perhaps  trying to find where she fitted in (too big/small, hard/soft, just right) i.e.  in need of kindness, friendship and a helping hand. To quote from Pygmalion “The difference (…) is not in how she behaves but in how she is treated.”

In the second half of our open mic we had several nice musical performances, and one poem recital.  Jotie produced a fantastic light box puppet show based on the story of Heer Ranjha, a kind of Punjabi Romeo and Juliet.  She had changed the ending to a happy one and accompanied her performance by singing and playing ‘It must be Love’ on the ukulele.  It was lovely and very appropriate for the run up to Valentine’s Day.