A new version of Kenelm Digby and the Liquid Empire opened on 4 July 2002.
    The play is also being performed on 9 July for a conference The Origins of Modernity: European Thought 1543-1789

    There's another public performance on Thursday 18 July. A few tables are still available.
    Bookings essential. $35 per person for full Greek banquet plus performance.
    Call now to book tables at Steki Taverna, 2 O'Connell St, Newtown, Sydney.
    From 7pm, Thursdays 4 and 18 July, 2002
    Call Steki on 9516-2191.
    For further details please email me.
    Press

Performers:
    Chris Burgess
    Adam Hatzimanolis
    Belinda Marques
    Louise Virgona

For references and Digby resources (printed and online), see the Digby resources page.

Come to the swashbuckling corpuscular epic tale of Sir Kenelm Digby, 17th-century philosopher and
pirate! Your M.C. is Aubrey, a hungover hack who's discovered the truth behind Digby's salacious memoirs,
the 'Loose Fantasies'. Meet a therapist named Descartes and a mysterious Brahmin sage, be dazzled by the
celebrated beauty and courtesan Venetia Stanley, be amazed by ointments and machines! How do you mix
research and life? Follow Digby as he resists the advances of Queens, brings crayfish back to life from their ashes,
synthesizes Aristotelian, Catholic, and atomist philosophy, and does some exceedingly odd things
with vipers. Between biology and buccaneering, between adventure and alchemy, between seduction
and the soul, this pacy docufable brings Digby's captivating prose to brief life in the bizarre story of his
life, his loves, and his learning.

VENETIA: Your mother lurks in the East Wing, spitting from the top windows, growing so old, still
hating me more, and more. But I age so much faster, you feed me the snails and the broth of snakes,
you concoct my viper's wine to keep me fresh, but each day, in the long afternoons of empty prayer,
the skin dies, I sense it leaking out into eternity with my devotions.

APOTHECARY:
Viper-wine is made thus. It is of extraordinary virtue for the purifying of the blood, flesh, and skin.

Take of the best fat snakes, adders, or vipers which you can get in June or July. Cut off their heads, take off their skins, and unbowel them. Then put them into your best Canary wine, four or six vipers according to their bigness into a gallon. Let them stand two or three months. Then draw off your wine as you desire to drink it.

DIGBY: So then I made myself unready with the greatest haste and the least noise that might be,

AUBREY: and put himself between the sheets in the gentlest manner that he could. Venetia half
waked with the stirring of the clothes, and turned about to the other side, which made him remain
immoveable, whilst his eyes were blessed with the rich sight of the perfectest work that ever
Nature brought forth.

DIGBY: For as she rolled herself about, the clothes left that part of the bed where she now lay
wholly uncovered, and her smock twisted about her fair body, so all her legs and the best part of
her thighs were naked, that lay so one over the other… Her paps were like two globes, the
uppermost yielding downwards as she lay upon her side, overshadowing a darkness out of
which did glisten a few drops of sweat like the diamond sparks of a liquid empire, and from
between her coral lips came out a gentle breath, which not smelling of any thing, was yet
more fragrant than the morning air.

DIGBY: I write of motions both natural and violent, of the dissolution of mixed bodies, of the
beginnings of motion in living creatures, of pain and pleasure caused by the memory of things
past, of death and sickness, of the docility of irrational animals, of their prescience and providence
of some future events by way of signs and half-seen changes, of the marks of longing seen in children.

Kenelm Digby and the Liquid Empire was first performed in August 2000.
2000: Olympics of the Mind!
Poster for the 2000 season of Philosophy Nights (July to November).
Simple schedule for 2000 season.

For info on my 1998 show Love and Strife: a quest, about the Pre-Socratic philosopher
        and magus Empedocles, click here.

Last updated 6 July 2002.
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