To begin, we hear the poet Susan Howe recite “Chipping Sparrow,” a poem that draws us into a fanciful state: “… Bird and pencil dining/ Bird and pencil dining/ Special visitors/ Walking on stilts/ in snow … .” We have just listened to a short recorded essay by Mark von Schlegell on the nature of fairy tales, explaining there is a beneficial intention/moral to the gruesome behavior—unnecessary, but perhaps it serves as a content warning. But now, once the narrator begins the telling, Jonas and Mullican come alive onstage, and I am fully in their grip: “It is now long ago, quite 2000 years, since there was a rich man who had a beautiful and pious wife, and they loved each other dearly.”

In the story, the pious wife cuts her finger while paring an apple, at which Mullican draws a scarlet scarf from her pocket. “Ah, if I had but a child, as red as blood and as white as snow,” the narrative goes, setting into play a recurring symbolic color motif. Jonas mimes the lyrics, “you are my only sunshine” over Mullican who reclines in a hammock with her legs peddling the air. The wife gives birth to a son, “white as snow, and as red as blood,” then dies and is buried under the juniper tree. Mullican appears ghostly with a white scarf draped over her head, holding an apple. 

The story goes on with a second wife, who gives birth to a daughter and fears the first-born son (the stuffed doll in the audience) will stand in the way of her inheritance. The red and white scarves now hang from a clothesline like a pair of prayer flags. Mullican animates a red banner into a swirling river. Jonas winds herself up inside it, then reverses to unfurl. She presses her face into the white scarf making a three-D imprint. These physical elements become a visual poem to enhance rather than illustrate the story. The plot goes on with the stepmother killing the son, making it look like the daughter did it, then cooking his body in a stew for the father to eat. (Gruesome, yes, you were warned.)