After finishing reading the Baba Yaga book I had at school, which had some stories at the end I've come up with a list of characters that I feel its important we include.
1. A boy
2. A girl (Valilisa?)
3. Three Baba daughters
4. Prince Ivan
5. Prince Ivan's fiance (Valilisa grown up?)
6. Animals
a. Wolf
b. Bear
c. Hedgehog
7. Twins (boy and girl)
I don't know if any of you stumbled across Prince Ivan in your reading but I read his story the other day and loved it.
Basically he meets his fiance (depending on how much time we want to contribute to each story he turns her back into a woman from a ferret) and she says she's going to go home and come back the next morning with two ships full of things for them (i.e. payment for the marriage but I like to pretend she was just getting furniture for their house).
Prince Ivan sets off for the shore the next morning but his nasty stepmother sends her little son along with him and when the fiance shows up the little boy puts Ivan to sleep and they cannot wake him. The fiance says "Ok, it must not be enough stuff I'll come back tomorrow with more" and she does but the same thing happens a few times until she says "Fuck it, if he wants me and my stuff he has to come find me. Tell him to make 3 copper hats and 3 steel spears and when he crosses three rivers and three lands and three seas and wears out all the hats and spears then he'll find me."
Long story short, he does that and everytime he wears out one set of things and crosses 1 river, land and sea he comes to a Baba Yaga who says keep going sometimes she hangs out with my sister"
He gets to the third BY and she says "Quick hide in the basement" (made me think of a basesment in the house that the audience could see into and could watch him all squished in and listening) and the fiance comes over.
And she is really mad, basically they have a little girl talk and come to the conclusion that Ivan better fucking not come find her because she would just kick his ass to the curb. So, knowing that Ivan is listening, Baba asks "is there anything he could do if he wanted to win you back?"
and she says "On the sea there is an oak, in the oak a mare's head, in the head a duck, in the duck an egg and in the egg my heart, if he could bring that to me then maybe." and she says good bye and leaves.
So Ivan sets off and saves a man from being put to death so he gets a side kick. As they're walking the come across a wolf, a kite (bird), and a fish that Ivan want to eat but the side kick says dont and they'll help us. So they get to the tree and cut it open and the head falls out which the wolf shakes until the duck falls out which the kite pecks at until the egg falls out which rolls into the ocean but the fish gets it and gives it to Ivan.
They go back to Baba who tells him to get back in the basement and she has the fiance over and puts the egg on her plate and she eats it and suddenly is sad.
"why are you sad?"
"I miss Ivan!"
"Well, good because he's in my basement!" and they all live happily ever after!
For some reason I love this Ivan kid, he's just really nice. And the fiance is relateable and not stupid. And the loosing your heart thing when your heart broken and hiding it away, trying not to feel anything and the struggle to get it back. It just sits right with me.
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Damn gurl, that's a lot of characters. If our whole things is about the mulptiplicity of baba and her journey or whatever, we want her to be the focus, yeah?
ReplyDeleteI think that we should figure out what we're saying about her, then decide what characters we need based on that. My personal preference would be to err on the side of less, but I'd like to what everyone thinks.
I guess I'm just thinking that each Baba is shaped by who she's interacting with, so knowing who she's helping/hurting will effect her
ReplyDeletethey're her support in a way. Each one doesn't need to have their whole life explained to the audience. and there is over lap between them.
so its like
a boy, the daughters and their BY
and
Ivan and his BY
and so on
I think what's really good about audrey's list is that all of those characters say different things about Baba Yaga, and I think that that a great list to have I think I would be a good idea to simplify and expand upon it to make it sort of cause and effect (example: little boy- daughters in oven). I think that from there we can choose aspects that fit together, separate episodes, combine existing stories, etc.
ReplyDeleteWe started to talk about this in another discussion, but I think that along with a lot of these pretty established relationships, one of the big relationships we can totally work out for ourselves is the one between BY and her house. Like her private and her public self. Revealing both of these will, I think, help to make her really complex, interesting, and central. bam
house baba relationship could perhaps be established during transitions?
ReplyDelete