Catrin's school play


Catrin's class done a play yesterday, Poor Beck, wot wos wrote by someone called Joanna Laurens, and have been done by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It's a post-apocalyptic reworking of the myth of Myrrha. The class did very well and I found the play very poignant.

It's all about the consequences of forbidden love. People (ok, Wikipedia - but even Wikipedia is people in the end) suggest that the Myrrha myth, being about the disastrous consequences of incest, is a kind of boundary marker for civilisation. Civilised people do not commit incest. Uncivilised people do.

It made me think. What if a civilised society decided to permit incest, voted on it in its governments, legislated for it, declared that it was no longer taboo. Would that mean that civilisation had crossed the boundaries, or would it mean that that society had now become uncivilised ? What does it mean when ancient markers are removed or displaced ?


I can't imagine that the play was chosen to provoke discussion about the redefinition of marriage, but it could have been.

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