Avalon Blog--Sunday, March 10
I am working
to make Nellieville a fitting site for the OHA production of Avalon, which
means sprucing up the woods around the Grail Castle and increasing the
population of knights. In a recent reshuffle
of sculptures, I came back from a client’s home with a truckload of tattered
and worn-out sculptures of gardeners and landscapers. I’ve decided to rebuild them and repurpose
them as knights. I am ever a found
object man, so why shouldn’t my old sculptures be found objects?
The question
is, what do Avalon knights look like? The origin of the story lies in the Dark Ages when the people of ancient
Britain struggled to deal with the power vacuum left by the slow collapse of
the Roman Empire. The Saxons also had ideas about how to respond to this vacuum:
they invaded the British coasts.
The original
Arthur was a dux bellorum (duke of war) who gathered his followers in a wooden
hillfort and won a series of strategically important battles, unifying Britain
and driving out the Saxons. This story has evolved over the centuries,
captivating listeners, and will again this August when Avalon is performed at
Nervous Nellie’s.
Today, we
visualize Arthur and his knights in the extravagant armor of the high Middle
Ages but, really, they would have been lucky to have helmets. Many generations of story tellers have
pictured these warriors in the gear they found plausible. I could dress my knights in camo and Kevlar,
but I settled on aluminum, which I can find as scrap (I always want found
objects) and which evokes the knights who fought in Saturday matinee movies. That’s my
version of the myth.
But what
about the women? My found object gardeners
are all men. In traditional Camelot tales, the women mostly need to be rescued
or cause trouble—really big trouble. Melody has found a different way to tell it in her play. The vitality of myth arises from its ability
to evolve, to give each generation the clues they need to make sense of
life. So, I think I’ll make some lady
knights!
(Images: Stained glass, including the Grail Window, both in the Wizard's Tower, and new knight sculptures. Photos by Peter Beerits)
NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon: DRIVING THE SNAKES OUT OF IRELAND
AVALON, by Melody Bates, will have its world premiere in August 2019, produced by Opera House Arts and staged in a site specific production at Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies on Deer Isle. All text and photos ©2019 Peter Beerits. More about Melody's work here. More about Peter's work here.
NEXT POST in Seeking Avalon: DRIVING THE SNAKES OUT OF IRELAND
AVALON, by Melody Bates, will have its world premiere in August 2019, produced by Opera House Arts and staged in a site specific production at Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies on Deer Isle. All text and photos ©2019 Peter Beerits. More about Melody's work here. More about Peter's work here.
