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You are here: Home / Entertainment / Outdoor Performance of Taliesin at Beggs Park

Outdoor Performance of Taliesin at Beggs Park

August 13, 2013 By Katie Shepard 1 Comment

The Goddess enlisted a peasant boy to stir the potion to fix her ugly son.
The Goddess enlisted a peasant boy to stir the potion to fix her ugly son, but the boy accidentally gains the potions power and enrages the Goddess.

Last Tuesday I attended a special performance in Essex’s Beggs Park. The Mettawee River Theatre Company was in town for one night only to perform their beautiful and funny interpretation of the Welsh legend Taliesin.

Under the Artistic Direction of mask maker, designer and director Ralph Lee, the Mettawee River Theatre Company, founded in 1975, creates original theater productions that incorporate masks, giant figures, puppets and other visual elements with live music, movement and text, drawing on myths, legends and folklore of the world’s many cultures for its material.

The performance is filled with delightful masks and puppets of all sizes. I particularly enjoyed a chase scene where two characters kept shapeshifting into various animals. These smaller “puppets” were very beautiful, and the actors did wonderfully at quickly exchanging one animal for another (rabbit to fish to bird etc.) and mimicking the animal’s movements and calls.

Eventually the boy attempting to escape changes into a grain of wheat to hide among many, but when the Goddess becomes a hen and eats all the wheat and then transforms back into a woman she realizes that she is pregnant. Thus Taliesin is born.

Throughout the show there were several scenes in which the actors performed various interpretative movements to represent something of the elements or nature. When the baby Taliesin is placed in a basket by his mother the actors dance and sing rhythmically to the beat of the music mimicking the flow of a river, and they pass the basket back and forth until it is hauled ashore by a fisherman.

King Maelgwyn and his Bard
King Maelgwyn and his amorous Bard who creates lots of gossip in court and sets out against Taliesin’s family.

When the fisherman realizes he caught a baby he is surprised, but even more so when Taliesin begins eloquently speaking and professes himself a bard and good luck. The fisherman and his wife take in Taliesin and raise him, and years later when trouble brews for their little family from King Maelgwyn’s court Taliesin proves instrumental in saving them and teaching a lesson to the interlopers.

The show really retained the feel of an old folk legend, and involved lots of trickery that lead to the wicked getting their just desserts and good people getting one over on the corrupt nobility. A lot of laughs were heard from the audience during the scenes at court.

The actor’s clothing and that of the puppets appeared appropriate for the period the tale took place in. Throughout the show we saw some beautiful puppets, but also various rustic props that fit perfectly with this outdoor performance.

At the end of the show it had become dark and the final props including long staffs with luminescent white stars glowing atop them, which was a fitting accompaniment for the haunting song that ended the show. This performance was a truly unique experience.

Explore the gallery below to see more of the show. (Click to enlarge and read captions.)

The Goddess beginning a ceremony
The Goddess beginning a ceremony
Taliesin's Goddess Mother lowering him into a little boat
Taliesin’s Goddess Mother lowering him into a little boat
Taliesin calls wind spirits to cause some chaos at court
Taliesin calls wind spirits to cause some chaos at court
Taliesin ends with stars shining
The show ends with stars shining and a haunting song.

 

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Filed Under: Entertainment, Opinion Tagged With: Beggs Park, Folklore, Mettawee River Theatre Company, Performing Arts, Puppetry, Taliesin, Theatre

About Katie Shepard

Passionate about reading and writing stories, Katie Shepard enjoys discovering more about her home while writing and editing for Essex on Lake Champlain. Katie graduated from SUNY Plattsburgh in 2011 where she studied English literature, philosophy, and Asian studies. Her first book Essex, New York Architecture: A Doodler's Field Guide was published in 2015. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, or at Linked.in. Or email her at katie [@] essexeditions [dot] com.

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Comments

  1. lorraine townsend says

    August 13, 2013 at 8:59 am

    as always, the Mettawee River Theatre company at Beggs Park was brilliant! for children and adults of all ages. thanx

    Reply

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