Towards the Unknown… and Beyond Theatre and Childhood as Schools for Resilience Illustration: Lola Fernández de Sevilla 54 Towards the Unknown – Confronting the Present
LOLA FERNÁNDEZ DE SEVILLA, HAS A PHD IN PHILOSOPHY AND IS AN AWARD WINNING PLAYWRIGHT AND A RESEARCHER. “Towards the unknown… and beyond:” this sentence could be the best definition for “childhood” ever. As newcomer human beings to the world, this process named childhood consists indeed of testing and approaching life through experience. As very beginners, it is normal to fail: falling down and necessarily getting up again and again. But hopefully mistakes will not lead to fatal consequences. You see me, sitting at a table opposite you, a rather heavy, elderly man, grey at the temples. You see me take my napkin and unfold it. You see me pour myself out [sic] a glass of wine. And you see behind me the door opening, and people passing. But in order to make you understand, to give you my life, I must tell you a story – and there are so many, and so many – stories of childhood, stories of school, love, marriage, death, and so on; and none of them are true. Yet like children we tell each other stories, and to decorate them we make up these ridiculous, flamboyant, beautiful phrases, as Virginia Woolf writes (The Waves 1931). As creators, that is what we do: telling tales to each other to be able to understand what is happening to us, who we are and what our world is like. The unknown is in the forest, but also under the bed; at the doctor’s or at school. Graciela Montes talks about childhood as an essentially ambiguous concept, a lifetime which includes both lights and shadows and which generates tenderness as well as violence. There is a monster living inside every child; we just need to observe during half an hour everything that happens at a schoolyard. Montes advocates for the implacable nature of these monsters and stands up for avoiding their domestication. The unknown, the wild, besides being part of the world, is also placed inside every single child; self-knowledge is one of the favorite subjects in literature and theatre for children and young people. And actually self-knowledge will continue to be a significant aspect for the rest of their lives. There is a monster living inside every child; we just need to observe for half an hour everything that happens in a schoolyard. This ability to invent stories – of whatever kind they may be – as a way of resistance, is something that connects our experience as adults to childhood’s vulnerability, any childhood, and not just our audience’s childhood. We create within, from, and for our own childhood, with dialogue and communication: with the children we were at a time and who are kept inside us. Assitej Artistic Gathering <strong>2019</strong> 2–7 September Kristiansand 55
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