Rethinking Creativity

‘DOT Collective’ theatre company are visiting The Seagull Theatre. They say: ‘DOT collective specialise in making work which is accessible to audiences from a wide spectrum. They have toured care homes and residential homes with their shows… you can expect to see people hanging from scaffold towers and performing on hoops and ribbons.’

They’ve been chatting to folk with dementia and disabilities… developing a new piece of theatre, ‘Project Portmanteau’,  based on the stories and experiences of Lowestoft people. Yesterday I was invited to the first performances…

Theirs is a very special sort of creativity – accessible, original, different.

Yesterday we watched ‘The Repair Shop’… seeing the skill and creativity of Richard restoring an 1890 microscope, Dean working on a pair of 1940’s wartime boots, Will and Sonnaz repairing a 120-year-old Indian bench, Kirsten tackling a broken Argentinian sculpture…

It was the usual feel-good show, honouring the lives and memories of the original owners, re-creating the damaged and apparently irreparable…

We’re staying in Derbyshire for a few days,. Instead of Lowestoft’s beaches there’s hills! Yesterday at Chatsworth House, we enjoyed the deer and the river – as well as the wind and the rain!

I see my creator God and remember his creativity… like DOT collective producing something totally original, accessible, different…

I found a second-hand book shop… 3 at £1 each – a bargain! One was about Julian of Norwich, the 14^th century anchorite and mystic.

I’ve glanced through the beginning. She has visions, insights, prayers: ‘I thought how I wished I had been there at the crucifixion… that I might have seen in the flesh the Passion of our Lord which he suffered for me, so that I could have suffered with him as others did who loved him…’

My ordinary but important prayers are for health and healing… comfort, peace and strength… Julian’s is a Repair Shop prayer – re-creating the suffering of Jesus… honouring the life and memory of the original sufferer… thus re-creating us – the damaged and apparently irreparable.