“Hush” — The Freedom Found in Fantasy…

By Ernest Kearney  —  Like little boys with their toy soldiers, so, too, are little girls with their dolls: They weave webs of fantasies.  But nothing, as psychologists have finally realized over the recent decades, is quite as important as the pretend world of a child.

Bruno Bettelheim, in his classic study, The Uses of Enchantment, holds that the human child transcends infancy via a bridge of fantasy.  That fantasy liberates the child from the “limited and provisional hopes of what the future has in store for them.”

In Hush, the performers of Madcap Creative, take you into the doll play of a little girl left alone in her room.  As the girl (Sarah Mann who co-directed) engages with her dolls, they engage her with imagination entering her fantasies as dancers reflecting her own flights of fancy.

The troupe creates images suggestive of attitudes and hopes, and of the realms all little girls in our society must test and explore as they discover and defy the boundaries set for them.

The Ballerina who brazens forth into the seductress (Alyssa Marquez), the bound and hanging doll (Corrin Evans) who in her rope restraints finds a freedom verging on flight, and finally a carnage of bursting balloons in a celebration of sexuality by Lila Sage (co-director of the piece), Zoe Kirkpatrick, Lyssa Morgan and Rachele Donofrio.

You can assign whatever significance you choose to the exploding balloons stomped on and pricked: illusions, pregnancy, the obsession with “boobs,” but in the middle of the destruction these take on the sense of liberation of a child when sitting amongst and playing with her dolls.

In the final analysis, dolls and toys are the tools the child uses to embody aspects of its personality too complex or intimidating for him or her to fathom.

The dancers of the Madcap Creative troupe skillfully expressed how — through the projection of fantasy play — the child masters its own inner processes and is awarded with the potential that comes with growth; and for that a GOLD MEDAL.

♦     ♦     ♦

 

“Some do fear not the deepest depths;

Sweet, sweet music that you hear their dying breathes gives to song.”

 

Hush

Played During The Hollywood Fringe Festival 2018

For More Information about Madcap Creative click HERE.


For An Updated List of TVolution Award Winners for Fringe 2018 Click HERE.


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An award-winning L.A. playwright and rabble-rouser of note who has hoisted glasses with Orson Welles, been arrested on three continents and once beat up Charlie Manson. His first play, "Among the Vipers" was a semi-finalist in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition and was featured in the Carnegie-Mellon Showcase of New Plays. It was produced at the NPT Theater in Ashland, Oregon and Los Angeles’ celebrated Odyssey Ensemble Theatre. His following play, “The Little Boy Who Loved Monsters” was produced at The Hollywood Actors Theater, where he earned praise from the Los Angeles Times for his “…inordinately creative writing.” The play went on to numerous other productions including Berlin’s The Black Theatre under the direction of Rainer Fassbinder who wrote in his program notes of Kearney, “He is a skilled playwright, but more importantly he is a dangerous one.” Ernest Kearney has worked as literary manager or as dramaturge for among others The Hudson Theater Guild, Nova Diem and the Odyssey Ensemble Theatre, where he still serves on the play selection committee. He has been the recipient of two Dramalogue Awards and a finalist or semi-finalist, three times, in the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition. His work has been performed by Michael Dunn, Sandra Tsing Loh, Jack Colvin and Billy Bob Thornton, and to date, either as playwright or director, he has upwards of a hundred and thirty productions under his belt, including a few at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater as puppeteer. Kearney remains focused on his writing, as well as living happily ever after with his lovely wife Marlene. His stage reviews and social essays can be found at TheTVolution.com and workingauthor.com. Follow him on Facebook.

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