At the start of tonight's workshop, 5 of us sat in a circle, with a selection of instruments. I instructed the group that they were to create a story. The story was to begin with the birth, and end with the death, of a being. The instruments were to illustrate the narrative as it transpired with sound effects. I gave no other instruction. We sat in silence for some time before the first threads of the story began to come forth, awkwardly, hesitantly, and eventually, the story came to life, as creature was born that became an object of horror, fear, pain despair and eventually, death. None of us guessed at the start of the story, that it would be so horrific.
As the story was told, individuals in the group attempted to steer it this way and that - at times attempting to stem the flow of the horror, to bring redemption to the tale. But it was not to be. A blind, kindly priest was drained of his blood and innards, his skeletal remains being found later by the terrified congregation. An exorsist came, and drove the evil from the creature, leaving the creature nothing but a mass of impotent pain and torment, and who then crawled into a corner and died.
We then took it in turns to direct a short phrase of action from the story, taking on a character in our own story. One phrase showed the exorcist driving the spirit from the creature. The evil spirit was destroyed, leaving the creature drained and heaving for breath.
Dark, cold nights, tiredness, burden of life, dissapointments. These were some of the themes that we had brought with us to the session this evening, and it was fitting that we ended up creating a tale of such pain and despair.
I am glad that we don't feel the need to only create nice pretty things, but that we can dig into the darkest parts of our souls and drag out the things of pain, despair, anger, revenge and tragedy.
The surprise to me, looking back, was that the birth was full of pain, horror and torment, whereas the death came as a peaceful relief, the end of an agonised struggle. In life, we often think we see it very differently, that birth is a joyous and wonderful event, and death a great tragedy, even, in our culture, being seen as an unnatural event that we must defend ourselves against with great vigour.
In one of the scenes, the final death of the creature was depicted, with one director, describing the action, and one actor physically depicting the words of the director, who reflected the movements of the actor. We got great satisfaction out of making the death as painful and drawn out as possible, and the ending, when it came, was one of peace and release.
This is sometimes the case with horror. The object of horror is a tragic accident of nature, that cannot experience anything but pain. It is unlovable, rejected, often starved, sometimes beaten. When someone does offer kindness, they are repaid with suffering. maybe the person who offers kindness has their own disability - for instance in this case being blind. The disability brings empathy for a fellow creature in suffering, and also prevents the kind person from perceiving the true nature of the object of horror.
Through horror, by breaking the rules of the natural world, we can explore fear of death, superstition around disability and physical difference, the terrible consequences of the self fulfilling fear of people who percieve evil in ugliness, malevolence in difference. The tragedy of rejection, cruelty and neglect. Through the experience of the monster, we can feel our own experiences of rejection and cruelty. Through the revenge of the monster we live out our own need to be cruel, and then, through the death of the monster, we kill our scapegoat, and can bury the secrets hidden in our most vulnerable selves.
We also explored the role of the exorcist. Calm, confident. Funny enough, no-one had considered the monster evil until the exorcist turned up. They just thought it was horribly ugly and frightening. The response of the creature to the predicament of it's birth, though shocking, was in a sense, understandable. Once the exorcist drove out the evil spirit from the creature, the creature had lost it's last defence. It had nothing but it's pain, and could only exist, in a state of torture, until death came. This was a tragic horror. In the final scene creation, the father of the creature silently, thoughfully, walked onto the stage, holding the wrapped up creature. He slowly waded into a river, and placed the creature, in a basket, onto the top of the flowing water, watched it for a while, as it drifted up river, and then walked silently away. Disappointment, loss, fear for an object that was almost loved, but could never be nurtured.
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