When first strolling through the museum, I was desperately looking for clocks so that I could talk about Back to the Future: The Musical, which is one of the best musicals I have seen since Kinky Boots. Instead, I found a painting called “Still Life with a Dead Stag” and as soon as I saw this, I instantly thought of PunchDrunk: The Burnt City. I was a little disgusted, once I took a step back and realized that it was a painting of a gutted deer carcass hanging among other dead animals, but that quickly faded when I thought of The Burnt City, and specifically Artemis. Artemis was one of the twins in that show, who wore matching outfits with her brother, Apollo, and I followed her around for a large portion of my time in the experience. While I never followed her to Troy, I did follow her back to a quieter room, where the actress was (more or less) able to recoup for a moment before beginning the loop again. In this room, there was a small cabin that one would be able to crawl through, and this cabin was adorned with lots of animal skins and hides. The inside of the cabin was similarly decorated but had animal tusks and horns strewn around the floor and on the walls as well. This is what made me realize that I was following Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. This painting reminded me of that room in particular because when I approached it, I actually thought that it was representing Artemis in some way, however after reading the plaque, it is more representative of “worldly pursuits” and “fleeting pleasures.” That line really spoke to me regarding hunting in general, and how it can be seen as a sport, rather than a necessity and that people treat the killing of these animals like a game and, personally, I feel like that is very against – for lack of a better phrase – how nature should be interpreted. Anyways, there is a funny little monkey in the corner of the painting too that “represented greed” but I just thought he was a funny little guy. The End. (classic ending).
Theatre in London U of A 