Angelique Zhou - The Poet

“Who does not lend an ear to the voices that invite him to the sad peace of self-betrayal?”

writes Eugenio Barba in the archaic printed journal called the Theatre Papers. And then it made sense to me. The grief and uncertainty of leaving all you know to immigrate to a new world. The poet, who whistles when he plays the piano, leaves for a foreign land, leaving a little girl's fragile heart succumb to inexplicable pain. Conceiving this work was meditating on delusions which in the Buddhist definition can be called ‘attachments’. It is with these attachments that the characters in this fable-like story align themself with their sorrow and acknowledge that they are “a learner with much still to do” (Ananda’s words from Surangama Sutra).