Teaching Earth Sciences - Earth Science Teachers' Association

The starting point of the Deep Time Cabaret (written
and directed by Bob Frith of the Horse and Bamboo
Company) was the exploitation of the geological resources
of Rossendale – sandstone quarrying and coal mining.
The Deep Time Cabaret links into the myths and legends
of miners and quarrymen – spirits, ghosts and grey ladies
seen in mines. Similar mining and quarrying legends are
common across the country from Rossendale to the Forest
of Dean. These myths and stories are also in the Tales
of Hoffman – the Cabaret uses a film excerpt by Tracey
Holland to pick up this theme, with fleeting glimpses of a
grey shadowy figure, or was it a wolf, flitting through the
murky mine passages.
The overall theme that runs through the Deep Time
Cabaret is time; linking the past to the future and the
future to the past. Showing that the exploitation of Earth’s
resources is limited by time – the Earth resources are finite.
The set is a wooden framework of trestles and ladders
up and across the stage, with objects, baskets, lamps
and tools hanging down. Like the wooden supports of
an underground mine – reminiscent of the old mining
photos of the Cornish mines or my trips underground in
the Florence (haematite) Mine at Egremont, west Cumbria,
the Bronze Age copper workings at the Great Orme,
Llandudno, the Ecton Copper Mines of Derbyshire and the
Snailbeach lead and zinc mines of Shropshire.
The Deep Time Cabaret opens with a steady beat of piano
music, with the occasional sound of far off digging and
hacking of rocks, chanting songs in foreign tongues or
strong accents. Could these be the lost voices of former
miners or miners working just around the corner of the
mine passages? As the light dimmed two men with
head lamps appeared, then total darkness. The miners
demonstrated not seeing their hands in front their faces.
The same darkness as underground at Egremont, Ecton
and Snailbeach when we were all told to turn off our lamps
– very black, very quiet – a sense of waiting and listening,
hearing the weight of the rocks above our heads.
A person appeared holding a candle in their mouth – again
an image seen on the old Cornish mining photos. The
underground theme is well set, as the miners climb up and
through and over the wooden framework in the dark with
haulage noises from a far off mine shaft. This mining theme
particularly appeals to me as an ex-coal geologist and to my
delight the mine surveyors then appeared with a selection
of instruments, getting the measure of the underground
Earth.
The Cabaret was divided into acts, introduced with the use
of a blackboard. The act titled ‘Deep Time Lecture’ really
appealed to me, with its very effective use of mixed media
from songs to films to the disembodied ‘Stephen Hawking’
voice of science explaining seriously the slow speed of
continent movement. Again the hand motif occurs, this
time to demonstrate the rate of growth of finger nails and
the rate of plate movement.
This is really the first introduction to the ‘Deep Time’
concept in the Cabaret, which is developed again to my
liking with the use of food and geological processes.
While one actor fills bags with slices of different types of
bread and cakes, another fixes the bags to a cable across
the stage and hauls them like mine tubs across the stage,
where they are received, emptied and the bread and
cakes are stacked layer by layer in a transparent container
– repeated time after time. Eventually the layers are
compressed. The repetition simulates the slowness of the
transport and deposition of layers of sediment and the
slowness of time it takes to compress layers of sediments
to layers of rock. The stacking and compressing of layers
goes on all the while to the sound track of the ‘Stephen
Hawking’ voice of serious science repeating and repeating
..........‘ millions of years’ .........’ gradual compression’.
The myths and legends of the mine workers’ lives
underground are portrayed very effectively with Punch
and Judy type puppets and shadow puppets accompanied
by a drippy, drip, drip of water sound track. The mining
machinery shadow show has a definite Heath Robinson feel
about it. The theme the Cabaret now introduced appears
to be how Mother Earth or the spirit of the mines agrees
to the exploitation of the heart and wealth of the Earth,
but at a price. As if the wealth of the Earth is on loan. I
assume implying how mined Earth resources are finite
– not renewable, with the message that the price of past
excavation and exploitation is paid in the future.
www.esta-uk.net Vol 35 No 1 2010 Teaching Earth Sciences 59