3 Furies Interview with Belinada Otas

Every time I am asked to speak about the Furies project, I reach another level of understanding about why I am doing it. I'm grateful to Belinda Otas, freelance journalist and avid blogger, for sending me a group of questions that provoked more thoughts and points of note highlighting the need for more in-depth dialogue about women's anger.

Belinda: You have had a busy year, from Travelling Light and now as part of AfroVibes, take us into your world and how poetry and the spoken word continues to help you shape and define your space with this manic world? 

For years I have walked through life as if I’m watching a movie, where characters come and go, evolve or implode, where the scenery, set, props and budget, in other words – circumstance - have a profound effect on how people rise to the challenge and test their mettle in this one short life. I find these stories fascinating. Even mine. It’s been tough for me growing up in a single parent family, having a migrant status, being a woman of colour who has experienced serious racism and the paradoxes of sexism and class-ism. Reality is brutal in its treachery and it's beauty, and I feel I have a very strange ability to walk around the planet as a tourist.

SEEDING RED

"Recognising the anger

trying not to see red and disappear
or end up with time lost
to the Bermuda triangle of troubled,
strangulated till I black out:
the  hurricane walks."

The piece below is me channeling an almost imperceptible fraction of Three Furies deadly deamonism.  While pursuing an understanding of women's anger in the 21st Century for a project with the same name, I discovered that The Furies are not often fairly depicted. What they represent is often misinterpreted and the term daemon related to dark forces and something evil. But this is not the case.

"Daemon" is actually a much older form of "demon"; daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person's character or personality. The ancient Greeks' concept of a "personal daemon" was similar to the modern concept of a 'guardian angel'—eudaemonia is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit. 

  Their aka name is "The Kindly Ones", who when incanted, rain torment as retribution upon an offender and render them a defenseless, powerless victim under the focus of their wrath. But summoner beware, you have lifted the lid off volcano. Get out of the way of the lava flow.

However, when the Three Furies were being The Eumenides, "The Kindly Ones", they were making full acknowledgement of an injustice done to Family, to Woman, to Child. They metered out terrorr and torment to the degree of punishment they perceived appropriate

THREE FURIES - The project begins

Click to go to Three Furies Blog

When I was commissioned by UK Arts International and the British Council to create a Spoken Word piece with Dutch MC Clara Opoku and South African poet Mbali Vilakazi, I was concerned about Travelling Light because I was raw from coming out of three serious family situations - a bad patch with my Mum (we hadn't spoken for months),  my Grandpa had passed at the ripe old age of 96, and my Grandma had fallen seriously ill and had been in hospital for about 2 months. It couldn't be any worse for the development of an autobiographical show about 3 generations of women.  It was not a time for questions about their past lives when they were just managing to hold on to the present ones.

As I held it together, I realised that I was angry about a lot of things - that I had been neglecting to exercise and exorcise my feelings about my fraught mother/daughter relationship and about not having the time I wanted to spend with my newly found family, especially my Grandma, due to a hectic and demanding freelance artist workload. I had also not had any time to reflect on my new identity as Niece to my Aunts and Uncles and Auntie to my nieces and nephews now that I had found them. My head hurt getting frustrated about it.

The  story of the Three Furies or the Erinnyes (The Kindly Ones) is an enlightening dramatic inquiry of Ancient Greek mythology into Justice, Humanity and Transformation as these daemons/Goddesses are summoned to unleash retribution  for abuses, murder and injustice done to  family. 

"Tisiphone (tis-if-oh-nee) is the "blood avenger," the punisher of murder and crimes against family. Alecto's name means "unceasing anger." Megaera (mah-ger-ah) is called the "jealous one," is especially peeved about adultery." - [source] 

Once they are summoned the matter is taken from your hands because it is they who decided what the punishment will be

Dear Anger and the Three Furies

In March, of this year I faced a challenged I never expected. My own anger. I was asked to describe it, to critique it, to make a creative pieces of spoken word theatre about it in collaboration with Dutch female MC Clara Opoku and South African Poet Mbali Vilakazi. 

The Three Furies project is, partnership by, UK Arts International and MC Theatre, Netherlands.
We used the Greek mythological epic of the Three Furies as inspiration for our writing but the dialogue that arose between us, and also with the audiences we shared our work with, brought to light that women’s anger is almost a taboo subject – words like hysterical, time-of-the-month and b*tch come to mind as starters. 

How do women process their anger when its not considered  “nice” or “lady-like” to let rip? Where does it go? What do we do with the ensuing frustration if we do not channel it healthily?

Sharon Jane D is a dutch visual artist who took a poem from each of us after our initial stages of our exploration and interpreted them into film. Her warehouse studio space was enormous and full of nooks crannies and open spaces ripe for filming moody pieces.

Go to The Three Furies blog and see Clara and Mbali's film also.