Imagination, the Language of the Soul
Backstage opening night of my play If There Be Dragons with Alex (still in makeup)
How do you turn your dreams into reality? Imagination! When you imagine something and then action it, you manifest your dreams. Imagination is the language of the soul, according to Albert Einstein. He is often quoted for this views on imagination. One of the quotes I really like is this:
If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales,. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.
I grew up reading fairy tales and worked my way through Andrew Lang’s collection of red, green, yellow and blue fairytale books at our local library. It was no wonder that I studied classical civilisations in my final two years at high school, because I already knew about the Greek heroes from the Lang fairy tale books.
When I come up with crazy wild ideas, it’s usually because I have read some story in a book which has fired up my imagination. Ooh, a horse and wagon, wouldn’t that be fun to do. Ooh writing a pantomime, that would be interesting, all about fairy tales and dragons.
As a young mum, I loved reading my children stories. The town where we lived and raised our children had a really strong arts community which revolved around the local theatre group. They staged a Gilbert and Sullivan production every year mid winter to get people out and on stage and connected. But there were no plays or pantomimes put on for children.
I looked around for pantomimes to stage but couldn’t find anything I liked. A friend and community mover and shaker, said to me if you want to see a pantomime on stage, then write it yourself. So I did. The first one was Tales of 1001 nights: Aladdin because at the time I was learning bellydancing. (ooh belly dancing, that sounds like fun…). The next play was on gypsies, The Gypsy Queen - I learnt a lot about the Roma doing research for that pantomime ( and I had travelled around with a horse and wagon some years earlier - but thats a story for another day).
The third one was if There Be Dragons which was roughly based on the hero’s journey - quests, getting the princess and fighting the dragon. It was a huge success because all the cast were local townspeople who became the characters from nursery rhymes and other children’s stories (Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter, Snow White, Little Bo Peep, Jack in the Beanstalk) . Throw in some singing dwarves, marauding fairies (complete with tattoos), Ned Kelly and a storytelling bard (with harp) - and you get the picture.
I loved writing and directing those plays. It was my form of creative expression long before I ever took up visual art. What unites the past and the present is the ability to use imagination as the key to making dreams a reality. As my Icelandic coach Sigrun says - “put a date on it and everything else is logistics”. Committing yourself to turning a dream into reality is a commitment of imagination. Let’s imagine together !
A post script about dates leads me into calendars as I will be adding a PS onto my blogposts each Sunday in December to announce the winners of my 2020 desk calendar - 12 collaged postcards of Iceland. To be in the draw, sign up to my newsletter. If you are already a subscriber, join up a friend (and let me know).
Cast photo from If There Be Dragons - a Mansfield Musical and Dramatic Society (MMUDS) production July 1998.
