UNDERWORLD

Drawing on Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With Wolves, we performed a live-action re-telling of the Handless Maiden Tale, set then and now. Siting it at Old Union, a place of Spanish Colonial Architecture and early Jordan Starr notions (eugenics, economics, faster is better, competition) we sought to instead ask: what are the necessary major steps of human development symbolized by the myth? We sought to immerse the audience in the experiences of these steps by using food, games, escape rooms, face-painting, storytelling, sing-alongs, dance, and music—all contemporary versions. We began by the courtyard fountain, came inside to the underground forest of the theatre, and ended under a giant redwood tree. Participants were asked to contribute paper leaves to a Celtic/Vedic Tree of Life banner after the play, answering: Who was I? What Happened? Who am I now? Following Estes, we sought to use the power of story to help us reveal depths of ourselves to ourselves—and then share in community—for larger communal healing and expansion from the troubled parts of our past.