Helena Plado

Fairy tales are forever in our minds as childhood entertainment with happy endings and dashingly good-looking characters. Where the bad get punished and the good rewarded. Be good and justice shall prevail. But if we look at the original endings of the beloved stories and try to forget what we know mostly through Disney movies then a grim tale awaits. The Pied Piper leads the children to a river where they drown and Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten by the wolf.

I grew up listening to the happy endings. They capture ones attention and take you to a world of magic. No matter how bad things might get or how trying the situations, there is always the hidden promise that good things shall follow. It becomes a game, a journey that takes one to the darkest of places but then guides the listener back again and presents them with the gift of knowing that they all lived happily ever after. What happens when it is not delivered and the audience is left without the feel of completion and with the sense of unease? Left with their own dark sinister thoughts?

How to set a scene, create a narrative through functional objects and leave the viewer with a sense of the unknown.

This is my story, I’ve told it, and now in your hands I leave it.
–Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde