Sweet Fanny Adams in Hyperspace Eden

From the Wikipedia article…

Gertrude Jekyll (November 29, 1843 - December 8, 1932), was an influential British garden designer, writer, and artist who created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and the USA. (more…)

Every Tuesday, we will be posting a short essay or link to the following characters, real and imagined, who provided some of the inspiration for the inhabitants of The Showman’s Pleasure Garden…

VERSIONS OF EVE:

BUMPS - based on Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood, and the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

CORY - based on Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, and the Lady of Shallot

MINA - based on Marianne North, flower painter and traveller, and Princess Wencheng

VERSIONS OF ADAM

NED THE ARCHITECT - based on Edwin Lutyens and Harold Nicholson (White Knight/Christ)

FREDERICK THE GARDENER - based on Frederick Baker and Vita’s gardener (The Beast/Lucifer).

MISTER SMITH THE SHOWMAN/MAGICIAN - based on Albert Smith and any other capitalist Mountebank (Mammon/God)

VERSIONS OF LILLITH

LILY - based on Margaret Fountain, butterfly- and man-hunter, and Little Red Riding Hood

In 2003, Playwright Judith Adams enlisted the help of Leo Warner and Robert Sharp of digital design company FIfty Nine Ltd, to help her to develop a scripting method that would open up some of the other dimensions in which Judith wanted to work.
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Leaving aside the creation of Sweet Fanny Adams in Hyperspace Eden, there is a second important point about the structure of the piece. This was very pertinent in the case of the Pitlochry performance. Sweet Fanny Adams in Eden requires of the actor a whole new type of text based performance, a subtly different type of acting that not all can master. The Pitlochry performance literally redefined what it meant to develop a character. (more…)

Taking stock, then: The play that appeared as a scruffy CD-ROM in the hands of director Muriel Romanes was text based, but non linear. The constituent parts of the script (I hesitate to call them pages) existed in their very own piece of cyber space, one that neither preceded nor succeeded any other. They therefore made as much sense when put in one order, as they did in another. This matters, because non-linearity better reflects the human mind, thoughts, history. We are constantly affected by the actions of others, and each thought (indeed, each life) is affected not by one, but several narratives that have gone before. A scene has two meanings, one for each character. A scene may have two meanings, depending on what has preceded it. There is circularity to our lives and our history that is ideally represented by a non-linear medium. (more…)

In a small and half formed garden in the quaint town of Pitlochry, Sweet Fanny Adams became incarnate in a human form. Playwright Judith Adams’ creation Sweet Fanny Adams in Eden was performed by a troupe of actors in the Scottish Plant Collector ’s Garden. They were assisted by: costumes; a container of props; some sets; a sound system; and an array of sophisticated digital technology. In two hours they told the stories of three women, three men, and a little girl dressed in red (who may have had wings). Audiences were on the whole delighted by the piece, which combined the fairy tales of their past with a distinctly 21st century sense of humour.
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