A little detour to spend some time in Die, Le Drome with Marco and Connie who we met in Portugal over the winter. Le Drome is a special place, full of babacools, relaxed, warm, open and fun. Die has a fantastique market every Saturday, with plenty of local producers, artists and crafts folk. It was fun performing our show at it. We love Le Drome!
Marco and Connie ar part of la Drogerie Moderne Theatre, a theatre company with a focus on community art, street theatre and connecting humans with one another.
We laughed a lot at their house, learned new games, enjoyed lots of theatre talk, fun and discussions about art, its value, its contribution to society, its healing powers and its ability to change the world.
We also discussed how the theory of decroissance envisions radically reducing the surplus and deploying it for a festive society in which citizens devise new, non-harmful ways to dispense it, ways that help build community and collective meaning.
At the moment it seams to be the opposite. In today’s capitalist civilization, as the surplus is accumulated it is invested to produce more growth that is then spent on more privatized acts of exuberant consumption.
Consume less, share more!
Whilst here the words of our old friend John Beedel, from Bristol, the Desperate Men popped into our head. He believes, as do Marco and Connie that "street theatre can change the world – re-connecting people
with each other, reclaiming public spaces, inviting participation and
direct involvement in making things happen – the imperative democratic
performative – with provocative thinking, smiles, laughter, happy tears
and new ideas."
And it got us thinking what our little piece of theatre means, what message it sends out, what it achieves... We certainly have the same sentiment and want people to break out, start having crazy ideas, question the normal, set forth on adventures and break out of their little boxes....
It was a great time to recharge our creative and motivational juices!
Here another one of our favorite songs that keeps popping into our heads as we cycle past, rows and rows of little square houses with little square gardens, long lines of traffic jam, carparks full of mobile homes, towerblocks adorned with satelite dishes...
"The
plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But
it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers,
storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in
their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the
fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have
little to do with success as we have defined it.”
― David Orr, Ecological Literacy
Here are some lovers, storytellers and peacemakers we met along our way.... and their bicycles...
The planet is being poisoned, we see it and we see it again and again, we hear it, and we hear it again and again, as we ride with le Tour Alternatiba and engage with people of all backgrounds, we know and we know and know it is happening and yet people still turn away...and this song keeps coming to mind
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall- Bob Dylan
In 1962, Bob Dylan modeled his song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" on
"Lord Randall," an Anglo-Scottish border ballad consisting of dialogue
between a young Lord, who has been poisoned by his lover, and his mother.
Listen to the voice of a poisoned planet..
Lyrics
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’,
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’,
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’,
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’,
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’,
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’,
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?-
I'm a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
CARS
Hard
Rain Project and the National Union of Students to launch WHOLE EARTH?
exhibition with SOS at universities around the world in September 2015.
- See more at: http://www.hardrainproject.com/#sthash.F0GxckBH.dpuf
Hard
Rain Project and the National Union of Students to launch WHOLE EARTH?
exhibition with SOS at universities around the world in September 2015.
- See more at: http://www.hardrainproject.com/#sthash.F0GxckBH.dpuf
Hard
Rain Project and the National Union of Students to launch WHOLE EARTH?
exhibition with SOS at universities around the world in September 2015.
- See more at: http://www.hardrainproject.com/#sthash.F0GxckBH.dpuf
Hard
Rain Project and the National Union of Students to launch WHOLE EARTH?
exhibition with SOS at universities around the world in September 2015.
- See more at: http://www.hardrainproject.com/#sthash.F0GxckBH.dpuf
Hard
Rain Project and the National Union of Students to launch WHOLE EARTH?
exhibition with SOS at universities around the world in September 2015.
