BLACK CIRCLE
THINK YOU: HERMES/
communications consultant
Intro - Crazy drum solo
Performance sound - Heartbeart, pulsing
SPEAK: The Black circle is now opening
*Enter the stage with a black circle with words on it*
*Places it on designated holder / spot, takes your time*
*Turns around and looks at the observers*
B: Do you love me?
Or Suzanne? The young man asked, standing at her door.
It was evident he was frustrated, but she had a hard time answering, as he had been gone for so long. Suzanne had now taken a central part in her life, and things were not that easy to answer anymore.
Her name was Ross, and she had resentment and hostility in her eyes.
Suddenly the question seemed important for the fate of the two.
His name was strange, hard to pronounce
I mean – Niame like five but then with an N instead of the F.
He had travelled from his home country Ireland to see the rest of the continent.
Europa, the princess abducted by a phallo-central deity in disguise as a bull, now naming a landmass, a tectonic constellation he had overcome to get to her.
In the doorway she was looking at him as if she didn’t know him anymore, clearly surprised by him turning up at her door.
He was a chronic expat, a traveller frequenting over borders, never committing to any substantial relationships. She, on the other hand, was a settler, busy with nesting and building a safe path for herself with material goods and friends that agreed with her course of action and the system of society.
She closed the door on him. Feeling slightly frantic she ran through her hallways, passed her friend Henry, who she didn’t acknowledge, even though he was sitting at her dinner table, just having opened a bottle of Romanian biological wine.
He looked perplexed as she ran out the garden door, into the moonlight, into the garden maze, where she lost herself in the narrow corridors, before heading out the garden gate and down towards the market.
Niame was meanwhile facing a door shut right into his face, with utter question marks appearing in front of his eyes as if he was going to faint.
He really felt like he had tried to keep in touch with Ross as he had been travelling, but maybe his ways of communicating had not manifested as wholesome in reality as he had intended.
He turned towards the street and set out to find something to eat, - he had taken for granted a warm meal and welcoming salutations would be waiting at Ross’s door, and now felt slightly bruised though overshadowed by the sound of his crying intestines.
“I see nothing anymore” cried Ross “ I have lost all memory of good and bad!”
*to the audience* - this really is a sad sad story…
Having reached the market, she was feeling nauseous and dizzy, maybe it was the emotional stress from seeing the old lover whom she had been actively ghosting for the last five to 18 months. Or maybe it was something she had eaten.
Anyways, she found herself wanting to get some medicine, but it was too late! It was already 2 AM and the market had already closed for the day.
Only the thin crescent of the moon shining at times and the cloudy sky.
So instead she went to take a rest on a/the bench overlooking the river.
Sweet words, so sweet were coming from the dark waters
*SINGS*:
A great dark sleep/
has fallen on my eyes/
oh sleep oh why sleep/
o hope/
a great dark sleep
For a short moment, she felt better, but then the nausea took over again, and trembling and shaking for some reason she fell into the river!
As it had been around 10 PM when the door was shut into Niame’s face, the market had been closed for the day, and he found himself craving and needy for both food and hospitality for the night.
He went around the village and started knocking on doors, but no one had neither food nor beds to spare, and an uncountable mass of doors were being shut into his face that evening
– shut - shut - shut - shut - shut!
Rejected, he found himself down by the river that ran through the village, and took out a spare pot he had in his backpack. He went around the riverpath and picked up driftwood for a fire, which he lit on the singing shore. He took the pot, went down to the river and filled it to the rim with the clear water. Through the depths, and with the help from the crescent moon, he saw something shiny down on the bottom of the water. With some effort, only causing a completely wet left sleeve, he reached for the shiny effect and got his hold on a large smooth black stone.
He placed the black rock in the pot, which he placed in the middle of the burning fire. He was going to make a stone soup!
The fire down at the river had awoken the villagers’ curiosity. Niame didn’t notice, but everywhere in the village blinds and curtains were being shifted, so the eyes could analyse what was going on down there.
Soon a villager approached the fire and asked the strange young man what he was doing.
“I am making a stone soup! It’s delicious, but it could use something more to spice it up..”
“Is that so?” Said the villager “Well I have some carrots at home, could that be of help? I mean if I get to try some of the soup in the end?”
“Of course it could, and yes! There’s soup enough for everyone!” said Niame to the villager, who soon had returned from his house with the carrots, and joined Niame at the fire.
And just like that, more and more villagers started to come by, and in the same fashion showed their curiosity of the stranger, the fire and the soup. Soon the black stone was joined by potatoes, onion, chives, a cut ofveal, corns of pepper, a pinch of salt, a branch of thyme and you name it!
Around the fire the villagers were waiting with him eagerly to try the soup that he had pitched so well. / woven into wonder
The river bent and bent through the landscape, like an s and s and s and s and the curves were snaking and wiggling themselves through the earth, for centuries the mass of water had carved its own way through the terrain, into this bendy shape. You cannot step into the same river twice, you know, as the water will always change, it will never be the same.
The village had been placed on the river’s path, back in the day, for practical reasons. Historically natural resources and material goods had ventured and found their way into the community by the ways of the water.
Niame was no longer a stranger to the river could suddenly hear the mermaid’s song - and understand fragments of her words:
*SINGS*:
Overpowering/
Don’t sleep - change! /
O hope o why /
Turning point - light!
The party who had been so occupied with the simmering pot all looked in the direction of the wonderful clear voice travelling from the depths of the wet currents.
Oh ROSS! ROSS!
Niame all of a sudden cried. ROSS! The Party watched in awe as the stranger ran to reach a pale body that was reflecting the moonlight on the shore of the river. It was as if she had emerged directly from the singing water itself.
As Ross was carried from the riverside to the fire, she slowly awoke from what had seemingly just been a moonlit slumber.
The stone soup was ready.
Ross opened her eyes and, in disbelief of seeing Niame, blinked five times.
Blink, blink, blink, blink, blink - as the sun rose in the distance...
Do you love me?
*Linger by the circle, contemplate on the narrative that has just unfolded*
SPEAK: Black circle is now closing, in two minutes the YELLOW circle will open
Outro: Crazy drumsolo again
*As you leave the stage, let the circle stay as a remnant in the space*
Performed by Ba Bladh as a part of 7 CIRCLES
Bar x Niels Munk Plum
the 18/05-25 at Thoravej 29 with Art Hub Copenhagen
