Entering into the characters of 'Hush'

We’ve arrived – and it’s still the same… it’s always the same. They always find the place… Mum and Dad. (Well, that’s what I call them… I can’t remember a time when they weren’t there.) It’s beautiful – the stars, the tent reaching up to the sky, the circus ring, and the space to dance.

And us… Mum and Dad, Estrella (who’s almost grown up), John (definitely not Johnny any more), little Bobby (she just wont come if you say Roberta) and me – the youngest. And now it’s starting: the music… they always find the music… I think they must have had it specially made for us… and we dance. We all have a sort of turn at it… and it’s so much fun, it makes us so happy… and it’s always the same.

Now it’s time for us, the little ones, to sleep. And sometimes we really do, but sometimes we’re allowed to peek, and tonight I’m going to join in… Mum and Dad together, trying to find some space for themselves… Estrella, then Johnny, but then that last bit… the ho-down it’s called, and it’s here and we’re all dancing together and it’s wonderful and we all feel so happy and so safe.

It’s over… we line up, time to go out into the night… where?

But we’ll always come back…. Or usually… and now we can’t. I’m sitting and reading this and it brings it all back… the ritual, the joy, the wonderful protected feeling of that children’s time, long ago. And now, we can’t be together anymore… we can’t go back. With them both gone we’ll never be able to find that place again.

And that, perhaps, is what makes this even sadder.
[Meic]

In this piece of writing Meic, an experienced dance spectator and non-writer, elected to imaginative construct an inner world and background narrative for the characters in 'Hush'. Focusing on elements of the scenario sketched out by the costumes, music and set he constructs an image of itinerant fair ground people. Interestingly there is very little description of the movement, beyond the labelling at one point of a communal ho-down. Instead his writing focusing on communicates the moods and feelings of piece, the sense of family and the moments of both light and emotional darkness. It is the use of details - the names, the nicknames, the relationships - that are evocative for the reader and provoke investment with the emotions and final sense of loss.