Autumn Leaves - 3rd October 2013

Autumn.  A new season.  As 2013 begins to decay, the new academic year begins.  Hopeful students embark on new courses, eyes shining, pens full, pages empty.  Leaves begin to fall off trees.

A drama group of people who know each other well meet up as arranged, as is now usual, at Gnosall Community Fire station.  They share news.  Each has stories to tell.  It is already getting dark outside.

I'm the facilitator.  I facilitate.  Sometimes I don't know what I'm going to facilitate until it happens.  Plans go awry.  Sometimes, and this is a total secret; I don't have a plan.

We talked about Autumn.  There's a start.  I ask people to walk around the room, and think about the autumn, saying all the words they could think of that describe Autumn.  "Leaves"  "Chilly"  "Wind" "Boots" "Dark"  "Acorn". The words come out randomly, in flurrys, like falling leaves, layering, making little heaps.

We are beginning to immerse ourselves in the themes of this season.

Next, I ask people to perform a movement to go with their word, everyone is to reflect the movement back.  Now everyone is beginning to act as a group.  The words come out one by one.  We have time to focus our concentration on each word, and to  internalise what it means, physically, so it is more than just a string of letters.

Now I ask the group to stand at one end of the room, and one by one, each make up part of a group image, saying their own word, and creating an accompanying sculpt.  Now other things start to appear, "squirrel" "mud"  "boots" "rain" "hedgehog".

At times members come out of the picture, and gaze in on it for a while, before joining it again in a different role.  The picture changes, morphs, stories come and go.

I change the task once again.  An image gives itself to me.  A pile of multicoloured fallen leaves.  I ask  each member of the group to become a leaf.  They all describe which leaf they are - oak, chestnut, willow, beech, a green leaf and a fir cone.  I tell them to imagine they are hanging on a tree.  What is the tree like?  What is it like on this tree?  What can they see?  What are the other leaves like?  What about animals in the tree?  What can they see when they look down?  Are they firmly attached to the tree?

After some silence to consider this, I move the story on.  They begin to change colour.  Slowly the stem that is holding them to the tree is wearing away.  They know they are soon to drop to the ground, leaving the tree.  How does it feel to know that they will be leaving the tree?  

A little more silence, and then I describe the last few strands of stem breaking.  The leaf falls.  How does it fall?  How does it land? 

The group are lying on the floor.  A heap of leaves.  Multicoloured.

Night falls. An owl hoots. It is a warm night.  It rains, quite heavily.  The leaves get wet.  In the morning the sun comes up, and they begin to dry.  As they start to dry, they start to notice each other.

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At this point the group all look round, noticing each other.  I divide them into pairs.  In the pairs, they share their stories, about their life in the tree, the moment of leaving the tree, and how they feel now that they are lying on the floor, in a little pile of leaves.  I let them know that they will be reading each others stories, and tell each person to let their partner know the three main things that they should remember in their story.

After some time in preparation.  The group are all lying down.  They take it in turns to read their partners story, in this way;  in random sequence, one member says "Once upon a time..."  At this point, their partner gets up, and hears their leaf-life story being read, whilst they move through the events physically.  One by one each person's story is told.

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We spend some time reflecting upon the experience, of telling, sharing, hearing.  The conversation changes.  Someone notices with regret that we didn't include the Yew tree.  We talk about the Yew tree for a while and I suggest that the group can make one.

Everyone lies in a ball on the floor.  Slowly they get up, and move in towards each other.  They twist their legs around each other to form a great big trunk.  Then they stretch their arms out, slowly, in all directions.  this forms a single large Yew.

I ask someone to find a poem about a Yew tree on their mobile phone, she finds one - by Sylvia Plath.  Group members take it in turn to read the poem, as the rest of the group forms the single tree.  This is done three times, each time the tree grows closer, legs more tightly tangles, arms finding smaller holes to stretch out through.  We form a hot damp knot of humans, all heartbeat and breathing.  there is some giggling, though this reduces over time.  

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As nature prepares for the long winter sleep, Konnektiv start to plan our next season of activity.  More changes are afoot.  Big changes.  It's going to be an interesting time.

 The Moon And The Yew Tree By Sylvia Plath

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to. 

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names. 

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. 

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.