Wednesday 19 January 2011

SOAP The Bride: Cruel, heartless came the match maker...

Andrew Beaton, Marion Redmund and Mark Lucas
(Community Volunteers)

In the opening scene of the opera the bride is distraught. She must have her hair torn from two plaits into one in preparation for the wedding, and so losing the symbol of her virginity.

We explored stories where hair is at the centre of a ritual or a tradition...

...each sequence of movement, action and freeze tells the story of a parade of characters: the prisoner who must forcibly have his head shaved (symbol of identity), the reluctant bride who refuses to have her hair done for her wedding (symbol of rebellion), the young girlfriend who tortures herself to look like the images in a magazine (symbol of obsession), the young man who proudly shaves his head in order to be accepted into the society around him (symbol of conformity)...

...the society around us has so many pressures, traditions and rituals, and we are faced with a myriad of decisions about the way in which we will interact with them. The way we wear our hair can be symbolic of our attitudes and choices, and was certainly a fantastic starting point for some fascinating discussions about the experience of living in today's society.

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