Yarn

Yarn explores the idea that individuals evolve from the stories that precede them, as well as the stories others tell about them, and the stories they tell about themselves. At the centre of Yarn sits Lily, a young woman attempting to untangle herself from three specific stories that she believes inform her identity. The stories she grapples with are ‘Lilith and Eve’ from the Judeo-Christian mythology, Oscar Wilde’s interpretation of ‘Salome’, and a contemporary tale of a young woman falling in love and having her heart broken. All of the women in these stories feel bound in some way and are searching for a freedom they cannot quite articulate. Each of them is cursed to replay their narrative over and over, examining it in detail from different angles but always ending at the same point. Salome always asks for John the Baptist’s head. Eve always eats the apple. The young woman’s relationship will inevitably fail. The play concludes with Lily deciding to ‘unpick the threads beat down precisely, unravel the yarns, the myths, ruin the tapestry’. Essentially she is choosing to start again from nothing, from a point that predates gender inequality, victim blaming and all the other narratives that have lead to her feelings of powerlessness. This is not a statement of nihilism but rather an optimistic, feminist rebirth; both an acknowledgement and rejection of determinism.

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