Reflections - 9- Theatre

In summer i work at Edinburgh fringe festival, this is the world largest arts festival. Its 1 months of plays , comedians, flims, exhibitions.  Some of these things have been great to watch but some of them were just plain weird.

Here is one of the plays i saw that covers the topic of memory.

Beaulah. 

This is one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen!
The show is inspired by William blake and talks about the topic of dreams, death, society, memory, age and love.

There are no actors just 2 men who tell the story through songs and props.

the story starts with a boy who meets a girl ( these are represent but a dress and a suit that are hung up on the wall)
they then go on to talk about time and how if you are born on a 29th of February  you only have a birthday once every 4 years so should be able to live 4 times as long.

the boy in the story is born on a leap year and when he meets the 23 year old girl he is only 5 years old (20 in real time )  the girl says that its imposible for his to be that young and the boy goes on to say a list of things that used to be imposible but no longer are  eg cars flying telephones

whilst this storyline is going on they also have a second world called beaulah, beaulah is the land you go to in between life and death and as we spend 1/3+ of our life asleep you can easily acsess this place in your dreams.

The boy and the girl spend alot of there time in beaulah together, as it is a dream world they can do what ever they like and things that seem in possible in real life arent here.

In the real world the girl has preposed to the guy, and they then go on to talk about how things have changed as if you tried to do that in the olden days you would be frowned apon ( imposible ) They then go on to talk about how they should stop living there lives by what is and isnt posible. They also talk aobut how people measure they life by time and age where as they should measure it by heart beats and how much fun they have.

The girl grows old and fragile whilst the boy is still young and healthily, they start to spend more of there time in beaulah as there time dosent exist so they can still live young and happy.

eventually the girl dies at age 80 but the boy is only 20 years old so has to spend the rest of his life alone. He starts to spend all of his time sleeping just so he can be with his wife in beaulah and remember her that way.  As time goes on the girl becuase bored of beaulah and says she needs to move on, the boy becomes sad and spend the rest of his life alone avoiding sleeping as when he sleeps he is forced to be in beaulah alone.

eventually the boys dies and is able to cross over to his wife.


Not only is the story of beulah really good but i like that they didnt use any actors they just used things that could resemble other things to create an illusion of people and places.