A Winter Play

Let’s start with a confusing image and work towards the inescapable conclusion.

There’s an animatronic dog wrapped in tin foil, cotton balls strewn about, and a dog with angel wings.  Got it yet?  Me neither, let’s keep going.

Here we have Hello Kitty lying in state, much like Lenin but with more pink satin.  In the background you can see a shopping cart going into the fireplace.  What is going on at our house?  If you guessed it was some kind of ritual sacrifice or a rummage sale after a seismic event, you’re justified but way off.  What you’re seeing is the set of a grand production by Child Harbat called A Winter’s Story.  The characters include Mother Winter, Mother Spring, Mother Snow, and some others I forget but I think they included names like Cloud, Pibbles, Woodstock, and Fig Figger. Once the stage was set Child Harbat launched into a long description that included many plot twists, semi-poetic free-form stanzas, relocation of the characters from one area to another, and no eye contact.  My wife and I were instructed to stay still and not comment while the show was underway.  When CH is in her twenties and doing a performance art piece involving piles of toilet paper and medieval weaponry I’ll probably be just as confused about when to clap.  Finally, though, the show was over and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.  Except Hello Kitty who was completely forgotten in the show, the dead elephant in the room, if you will.  YAAAYYYYY!

About Peter Soutowood

Writer, architect, father, husband.