I've had some musings of late. Here are some themes I want to explore:
Horses/Daughters: How she acts towards them as sort of a barometer to the rest of the world. Is she being nice? Does she eat them? I also was thinking about connecting the riders as entities that she has married some of her daughters to. And they are now beholden to her.
I also pulled a couple of phrases from some stuff that rachel posted that I really like and want to pull from :
I'm telling you its not pain, just the embrace of a very strong god.
She thinks famine is nutrition
and Ashur and I have been talking about age and beauty, the rejection of the old and ugly
oh actually, I'm just going to post what he said (hope that's good with you ash):
Fear/terror of an incomprehensible power, one developed by age and solitude instead of by birth or intention... something horrifying (not necessarily evil) that is organic and just as much a part of the world as something beautiful................
beauty juxtapozzed with grotesqueness.........
grotesque organic materials, like funghi and decomposition......
Age - the shunning of the elderly. Society which does not look back in time, or learn from its past although it offers a wealth of information... BY recognizes her position and perhaps fights back against it... maybe she relishes the terror others feel at her power.....
house as organic material, like abig beast in the woods, The space which BY occupies is a beast, in my imagination, from the house and yard to the surrounding trees. I imagine approaching this cabin through the woods, you can only find it by the light seeping through the windows so you wont find it until the sun begins to set.. you can follow the horse riders there. As you approach the trees take on a terrible aspect, they loom over and judge you, and then threaten you. The woods alone prevent the weak from setting foot in the clearing where the house looks down (down? I imagine noticeable elevation from the also noticable chicken feet) upon you with total indifference. The house could care less if your entire species lives or dies. It is something bigger. BY coexists with this house. She neither built nor owns it. She occupies it as a hermit crab would occupy a shell. But we're nowhere near the ocean...
infanticide, (abortion?! fuck...) killing for convenience, the motivation to murder that does not involve hate. I don't think BY is hateful. I don't know why she kills children, but something tells me it has to do with protecting herself...
Sexuality, sexual tension between BY and a strong prince, kind of a power showdown but something else is there... so weird.
beauty juxtapozzed with grotesqueness.........
grotesque organic materials, like funghi and decomposition......
Age - the shunning of the elderly. Society which does not look back in time, or learn from its past although it offers a wealth of information... BY recognizes her position and perhaps fights back against it... maybe she relishes the terror others feel at her power.....
house as organic material, like abig beast in the woods, The space which BY occupies is a beast, in my imagination, from the house and yard to the surrounding trees. I imagine approaching this cabin through the woods, you can only find it by the light seeping through the windows so you wont find it until the sun begins to set.. you can follow the horse riders there. As you approach the trees take on a terrible aspect, they loom over and judge you, and then threaten you. The woods alone prevent the weak from setting foot in the clearing where the house looks down (down? I imagine noticeable elevation from the also noticable chicken feet) upon you with total indifference. The house could care less if your entire species lives or dies. It is something bigger. BY coexists with this house. She neither built nor owns it. She occupies it as a hermit crab would occupy a shell. But we're nowhere near the ocean...
infanticide, (abortion?! fuck...) killing for convenience, the motivation to murder that does not involve hate. I don't think BY is hateful. I don't know why she kills children, but something tells me it has to do with protecting herself...
Sexuality, sexual tension between BY and a strong prince, kind of a power showdown but something else is there... so weird.
And then I also wrote just the beginning of a scene as a sort of experiment:
Scene opens on Baba Yaga, facing upstage, feeding her horses and singing softly to them. Something makes her turns around and stare out into the twilight. We see that she is not an ordinary old woman. There is something both intriguing and terrible about her. She looks around and then says to the house
Baba: Another one today: (considers, listens) a girl. alone. quite alone and need of me. (smiles) oh, she needs my gentle guidance. (laughs)
horses shift, they are nervous or excited
Baba: nothing to worry about my girls. Your baba will take care of this one herself.
the night will be here soon. Satisfied now, I hope. It may be a long one.
B.Y. hobbles into the house which lights up at her entry and stokes the stove. The night horseman rights through, dragging with him a tattered and terrified Vasilissa, deposits her and stops to stare at the horses before carrying on. B.Y. comes to the door and stares down at her.
V: Baba...Baba Roga, I have come her to ask you for your help. I-
Baba: Yes. I know why you thought to come here. You ought to know that this forest is dangerous.
V: (nods) I had-
Baba: -nowhere else to go. Isn't that always the case. NOthing for baba until something goes wrong.
V: (ashamed) I am sorry. Do you want much for company..out here?
B.Y.: (cackles) (horses stamp) maybe I do. Get inside, girl. I must think.
Some things to figure out: What's going on with the horses? I feel like maybe they have a power over BY that she doesn't want anyone to know about? Man? Does he want vass or is he there for baba? Etc. Where does this go basically?
hmmm. Cool cool. I like what Ashur was saying about the house.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if we want to deal with the inside of the house, I had the idea of the shape and size of the inside having nothing to do with the shape and size of the outside.
Also, here's something I said to Eva about the house: Like a nest. I imagine that BY would fix her house periodically (or the house would fix itself) with whatever was handy. So the roof might be patched with red sticks, the cracks might be stuffed with children's shoes.
Your question about "does he want vass or baba?"... do you mean the horseman, 'cause when I was reading your scene here it seemed to me that the horseman was looking at the horses longingly. in that case this moment could be a really cool, subtle hint at something we find out in another story about the horseman/men and the horses. Maybe they have some deal w/ BY, like she promised to turn them back into women? or something.
either the horseman or the prince. Ashur was saying something about sexual tension between the prince and baba and how uncomfortable that would be. maybe not does he want her, but is sexually threatened by her?
ReplyDeletei sitll like the nest idea a lot.
and yeah, i was having similar thoughts about the horsemen, horses. Like, maybe she enslaved them because they wanted her daughters or some shit.
maybe she's turned their wives into horses and enslaved them under the pretense of letting them go at some point.
ReplyDeleteI have an idea of hair that goes along with Bab patching the house with things, because in the stories they talk about her growing into the house, like her nose, and it would be cool if a transition thing maybe to show time, if she hair could start growing out of the house as she slept or sat in a chair, I've been thinking about wigs too.
i really like the idea that the horses are her daughters though, to play with generations and mother hood and blahblah.
ReplyDeletedaughters/wives?
ReplyDeletemaybe she missed them too much once they got married.
ReplyDeleteI like that. So the horsemen, in what we're talking about, just sort of come around from time to time? Maybe they just appear when they have to do their thing? I'm just trying to get a practical/staging idea...
ReplyDeleteThis is kind of design-ey, but I really like the idea of masking the horsemens' humanity (like obscuring their faces or something) until some later point when BY isn't around. When I first read about them I didn't get the impression that they were human at all, but I like the idea that they may seem this way until you catch them with their guard down, or at a point of emphasized emotion... likeee being alone with their horse/wife/BYdaughter.