This morning, we took a tour of the Victoria and Albert Museum, walking through exhibits showing art from the renaissance, tapestries crafted hundreds of years ago, and theatre/film relics. One sculpture that I walked past grabbed my attention; this one above, titled the Equestrian Monument to Marchese Spinetta Malaspina.
It reminded me of the show we saw last night, War Horse. It is, without a doubt, now my most favorite play. The story was beautiful, the tech and the horse puppeteering was incredible, and I ran out of tears by the end of it because of how emotional the entire show was.
I connect the sculpture above to the show’s themes of innocence and different perspectives on power. At the start of the show, we see Joey at his most innocent; just a baby who’s being taken care of by Albert, who loves and cares and creates a deep bond with him. As Joey grew, the bond became stronger, but Joey still felt innocent because almost all he knew was the love of someone who truly cared for him. It wasn’t until the actions of someone who was not innocent, someone greedy, that Joey was thrust into a position where his innocence was lost in war. There he was treated like a soldier, another potential casualty, a tool to be used by man to either keep their power or take someone else’s.
The sculpture shows a soldier, riding a horse, holding a weapon. From the soldier’s perspective, this is his epitome of power. He is higher than the other soldiers, on top of a beast that he has used to gain his advantage over others. Then, you look at it from the horse’s perspective. An animal that never had any choice in what its life would be like, who was most likely given this role by the soldiers, not out of love, but used for selfish, inhumane goals.
Joey and Albert both go through trials and the loss of their own innocence on their journeys to find each other, but are both given reminders that not everyone is selfish, or lustful for power, or greedy. There are people, both in their world and ours, that believe that love and our actions to others have infinite more impact over domination and power. Those are the kind of people that we should rely on.
Theatre in London U of A 