Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This is a huge study of homosexual behaviour amongst every kind of insect and animal. The evidence in this book is overwhelming that there is a huge amount of same-sex behaviour in the natural world. It is not a book that one reads from beginning to end, but it is a book that we refer to when people say about being gay that it’s not natural.
And your second book – still with the gay theme, but rather different!
It’s called Biological Exuberance. It’s an enormous study of homosexual behaviour amongst every kind of insect and animal. The evidence in this book is overwhelming that there is a huge amount of same-sex behaviour in the natural world. Most of the sexual behaviour amongst giraffes is same-sex, but also amongst dolphins and whales, and especially penguins. The book was introduced to us by Marthinus Basson who worked with us on Tall Horse [a play about a giraffe]. It is not a book that one reads from beginning to end, but it is a book that we refer to when people say about being gay that it’s not natural. We quote from it when the Watchtower people come around.
How has this book informed your work?
Only indirectly, but since we have always had to think very carefully about human and animal behaviour in our work, it gives us a point of reference, not just to ‘gay’ behaviour, but to how humans and animals interact in any social situation.
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Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler are founders of the cutting edge Handspring Puppet Company whose signature style involves puppeteers sharing the stage with their puppets, along the lines of Japanese Bunraku but adapted so that the puppeteers are not obscured but form an integral part of the action on stage. Their creations for the smash hit War Horse are stunning audiences this Christmas at the New London Theatre and will hit the Lincoln Centre in New York in 2011 after a European tour. Their production of Woyzeck on the Highveld is currently touring in Spain and France.
