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.”
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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