Imagination

I am in awe of people who are truly creative. People who string words together so that two and two make five or six or seven. People who keep you glued to your theatre seat with ways of presenting thought and actions in ways that you could not imitate, even if you tried.

Two recent experiences prompt these thoughts. The first a theatrical cooperation between homeless people and professional actors called Mincemeat, which takes place in a disused warehouse in Shoreditch. As the play unfolds, both actors and audience move from space to space, up and down the stairs, following the action. The plot involves The Man Who Never Was - a true WW2 story about a body washed up on a Sardinian beach purporting to be an English agent with papers designed to mislead the Germans into thinking that the allies were going to launch an attack there. In fact it was planned and did take place in Sicily.

The play imagines the man (whose body it was) arriving in heaven, unable to prove his identity because he does not know who he was and being guided through his life by the heavenly gatekeepers.
It is funny, its argumentative, it is absolutely riveting and one of the most imaginative things one could experience. On until July 12.

And then, I have just finished reading Elise Valmorbida's The Winding Stick about a social misfit whose working life is spent sitting behind glass, in a petrol station, on the night shift, pressing buttons to activate the pumps and take money. He watches people fill up their cars with petrol and doing late night shopping but he sees much more than meets the naked eye. He sees their inner lives, he fantasizes about his Sri Lankan boss and he thinks about his mother, long dead and his unknown father.
I got more and more drawn in by this strange book which became really compulsive reading and I marvelled at the imagination required to write such a tale. What amazing ideas and how beautifully written! It is in paperback published by Two Ravens Press.