My Worry Doll

A friend and I went to York Theatre Royal to see a play this afternoon: Silly Billy. It's adapted from a book by Anthony Browne.

Children's theatre has been very remote from me as most of the time I am quite scared of kids, especially when they are excited, shouting and screaming out of a reason that is not always clear to me. Anyway, it's a very colorful and dynamic presentation, and the story is composed with subtlety. The kids proved to be excellent company. (Of course, it's a children's theatre!)

The worry dolls from Maya legend are important to the story. These roughly fabricated but colorfully clothed small dolls are said to be able to carry away worries that haunt their keepers.
I found the idea interesting to keep a doll which can worry instead of you.

'You have to tell your worries to the dolls' is the first step. It is the act of 'speaking about the worries to another person' that allows the subject to let go of his/her worries. But the keeping of the worried dolls underneath one's pillows is quite curious to me, for the act of keeping the dolls is an alternative way to keep one's worries in another form of existence. The worried subject, still, has his hand on the worries in an even more concrete form of a doll than that of shapeless imagination.

Before today, I used to think that in the Maya legend, these dolls should be thrown into fire after they fulfill their function. If it is the case, when the dolls are burned down to ashes, the worries are supposedly gone with the smoke. It is admittedly cruel and heartless, I agree.

Comparatively, it's rather humanistic to save these dolls. But what is this bothering fact that the worries are carried on within the dolls? I don't know, perhaps, it's in fact a very subtle and metaphorical way of suggesting that not a single worry will disappear, but every worry can live in a less disturbing existence.

Photo: A worry doll, a souvenir from the play.