The Word

Before the word

there was

cry grunt moan whimper squeal

The word was to articulate, to enrich

the within It controlled and repressed

The word tamed when it should have liberated

The word dominated our bodies

stifled the cry

left us mute.

We use the word to save us from the violence of feeling, the savage realness of the cry. A realness which we all understand but have become fearful of acknowledging. Fearful of ourselves and what could come out of us, in the silence, to shatter the fragile state of things.

Our world is in need of the human and all its intensity of emotion and feeling.

Quickly!

UNRAVEL THE KNOTS TEAR AT THE ROPE STRANGLING THE THROAT BREATHE DEEPLY WILDLY SAVAGELY RECLAIM FEELING MADE ‘OTHER’ FOR IT IS THE REAL

A voice: “Rage is blind and speechless”

Yes! Rage - joyous rage!

Rage because it is the force which breaks, and joyous because it will feel good to own the human after denying it for so long, to finally be alive.

And there is a place - the theatre - which would permit it if only we would allow it.

Instead, we keep to the safety of pleasing images and equilibriums, confusing the sacred with the sterile. The sacred is not the cold, smooth death of marble: it is the pounding heart, the pulsing artery, the hand which seizes the knife to slice open and bleed the cry of life.

Go back to the cry before the word and you will discover that the word was made

to pierce

and break

to rage

to cry

and to shout

with joy.