Cassandra

Cassandra sits in Apollo’s temple, tears drying on her cheeks, blood caked beneath her fingernails. The ritual fires are burning, incense thick in the air. Her body no longer feels like hers, the ghosts of Apollo's hands heavy on her hips. Her mind is shattering under the weight of a thousand prophecies, always true and never believed.

By a Scottish mountainside, a spaewife is thrust under the waves of a loch, her prophecies ringing in the ears of her murderers. Orcadian witch Marian Ibster, put to the pyre, screams out to the sky as her lover watches her burn. A girl scrubs her skin red raw in an Edinburgh flat. She blasts pop music as she daubs climate slogans on cardboard protest placards, ignoring the prophecies whistling on the winds of Auld Reekie.

Storyteller Ailsa Dixon invites the audience into the realms of a divinatory prophetic ritual, creating a liminal and transient space. Legends of prophetess and priestess, witch and survivor build bridges across time and space; prophecies, pyres, smoke and tears meld and blend together as Ailsa's personal story melts into the old myths. She explores intimate themes of climate activism, sexual assault, feminism and mental health which bleed together in this deeply personal exploration of what it means to be believed.