Do Not Look Away @ Scottish Storytelling Centre

Classically, the myth of Medusa is implanted into childrens' minds as a vision of snakes for hair and bodies turning to stone. This is what the audience conveys in response to the act's first interactive question: "What comes to mind when you think of Medusa?" At my first encounter with Medusa, I was made to believe that she should be both feared and despised, purely because she was a powerful woman associated with danger and beauty.

Do Not Look Away adopts Medusa's narrative through oral storytelling, using naturally made sounds and elaborate gestures. The piece paints Medusa’s story and its retellings as transcendental of victimhood, encompassing wondrous ambition, influence, tragedy, irony and revenge.

Prime narrator Lily Asch is a lyricist of Medusa and Perseus’ tales. Her accompanying drummer, Dimitris Kounatiadis, harmonises with the emotional twists and turns of betrayal and shock as Asch seamlessly assumes a multitude of diverse characters.

Asch attempts to invoke thoughtful reflections through Sigmund Freud's and Helene Cixous’ interpretations of Medusa’s story and through political links to modern-day examples of gendered oppression. These theoretical observations pervade the story as our narrator breaks the fourth wall. Asch’s references are slightly overexplained, dampening the gravitas of her performance, but we empathise with her attempts at realistic immersive storytelling. These breaks enable her to directly scrutinise the misunderstood, wrongly vilified and dehumanised figure as a microcosm of modern-day socio-political examples of oppression and injustice, encouraging us to witness such stories as she asks the audience to witness Medusa, to 'not look away', so that we may hold narrative authority and not be turned to stone. 

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Do Not Look Away: The Story of Medusa, Scottish Storytelling Centre (George Mackay Brown Library), until 25 Aug (not 19), 8pm, £10-12