The sensuous beauty of a red-flowered banana plant -- a spider sucking the blood from a baby bird – an army of ants devouring everything in its path – a seductive but deadly poisonous fruit
Synopsis:
Suriname, 1699 – the wild coast of South America – the forests dense with strange plant-life and sinister animals and insects – two women meet.
Both are outsiders. Sibylla, a European woman, is there by choice and determination, hungry to learn about the insects and plants of this brave new world, to paint them and record their mysterious life-cycles. Jacoba, a slave taken from her African homeland, knows the secrets of the forest, which plant cures and which poisons. The two women are drawn together in the search for knowledge. Like the insects and the animals around them, they have struggled and adapted to survive in a harsh world. Working together they share the stories of their lives, but they come from different worlds. When Jacoba reveals that she has killed her baby daughter rather than see her live as a slave, Sibylla cannot comprehend it. The friendship is broken.
Sibylla is racked by a fever in which she hallucinates the destruction of everything she has worked for. In the fever she understands why Jacoba killed her daughter. As she lies exhausted, Jacoba prophecies that she will return to Europe to publish her research and paintings. But what of Jacoba?
Background and staging:
The character of Sibylla is based on Maria Sibylla Merian, the naturalist and artist. In 1699 she traveled on her own initiative to research and record the plant and insect life of Suriname, a Dutch colony in South America. When she returned to Amsterdam, she produced a book, De veranderingen der Surinaamse insecten, with vivid pictures and accounts of the exotic flora and fauna she had studied there. She is recognized not only as a gifted artist but acknowledged as a scientist of vision whose research and insights made a significant contribution to natural science.
The play is inspired by the illustrations of this book and the surreal, beautiful and dangerous world they portray. Images of the plants and insects are always present throughout the performance, sometimes in abstract detail, changing from scene to scene. At times the plants or animals are animated, bringing a shift in energy, atmosphere and mood. These images are an integral part of the performance, relating to the actions and interactions of the two characters on stage. The stories and animations of the insects and plants serve as metaphor, chorus and commentary on the harsh life in the colony. The two characters inhabit and are surrounded by this real and surreal world.
The piece explores the relationship between the European artist and naturalist and a fictional slave-woman who advised her and aided her in her research in Suriname. Through the changing relationship between the two women, the play addresses women’s hidden role in science and research, and individual survival in a strange land in a society on the edge.