scene ideas from Janaki: The Five Ramifications

Following: notes on setting, a breakdown of scenes, and general considerations. Links included.

Notes on setting
Ram's story. Ram = narrator. Ram is trying to make the Dragon fall asleep by telling it a bedtime story.
Jason and Medea are 3/4 body size puppets, like Taymor's meerkat in Lion King. Impetuous child-figures, esp Medea is a strong and daring girl-kid.
That all of the humans appear painted in lines like the legs of Greeks on vases.

title idea --> "Ramifications of Choice"

Prologue: Story of the Fleece, a shadow story told by the fire
Scene 1: Dragon guarding the Fleece (dragon = snakeball). The Dead Fleece speaks, trying to convince the Dragon to take a nap.
Scene 2: Sowing the Fields. The Fleece gets up and goes to first scene of Jason's story: sowing the fields. Bulls of Fire, with hooves that are the skulls of men. Jason and Medea are 3/4 -size bunraku puppets.
Scene 3: Escape, Murder, Ships. Jason and Medea escape on the backs of Harpies. They see that the King gives chase. Medea butchers her brother. The field is strewn with his pulsating, alive body parts. The King's ship moves through the field, surveying the the body parts.
Scene 4: Wanderings. Jason and Medea litter the field with their deeds. They are repeatedly turned away from land by the body parts of Medea's brother.
Scene 5: Jason and Medea puppets enter the setting of the Sleepless Dragon and the (dead) Golden Fleece, liberating the Fleece, which is carried off in person form on the back of Jason the puppet. Hooray! Liberation of the fleece!
HOWEVER
The Ram is stopped from going home. The shadow screen on top of the pavilion blazes to life. It shoots rays of fire.
Helles: You murdered me. You cannot go home.
Ram: Then where can I go? What can I do?
Helles: Atone.
Ram: How?
Helles: Sacrifice.
Ram: That is the only way?
Helles: Once a year, on All Saints' Day, you will cross through the door from the air to the earth, and you will be home, like a child, innocent, who comes home without thinking, who knows home without thought. A year of darkness for one day when the door of your desire opens to you.
(The shadow screen goes dark. The fire remains burning.)
Ram pulls out his own tools of sacrifice and sacrifices himself. Jason and Medea witness.
Ram's blood pours over the stone on which the Ram died. It illuminates, showing itself to be a heart.
Jason and Medea walk together through and into the blood.
On the shadow screen atop the Pavilion, the Ram is encircled by hands and caressed. Final song.
END

considerations:
- place/location of ram and dragon (Tree of Life / Cave of Shadows)
- that the Golden Fleece is the narrator; a fundamental communication with the dead
- hand puppets, made by audience?, function as representative of the people - to vote, take sides like in a boxing ring, or serve as arm bands to buy drinks
- function of dreams; that all the world is an operation of dream powers, and that sleep is a kind of home
- comparative mythologies:
- Ram/Lamb of God; Ram and Dragon in Chinese Zodiac; Cave / Tree of Life
- Bulls episode with skeletons ---> Mexican Day of Dead
- Dismembered Parts - milagros, Horus/Osiris, Coyote
- Blood sacrifice / Grand Guignol