The Grant Application for a Deadly Theatre
You were born with a splinter of lightning, a voice that hummed in the marrow long before a form asked for filling. Then came the form. Boxes to tick: Tick! Impact. Outreach. Carbon-neutral narrative. The funding pot waits, a golden bowl filled with the currency of this month’s virtue. You bend your brush to fit the outline. You trim the wild notes from your throat. You call it relevance. You call it survival. You call it art. But listen… deeply listen… in the quiet between rehearsals a wind presses through the cracked window. It is older than the Ministry of Culture, older than every policy brief. It is the Breath that once said Let there be, and it asks only: Are you still mine? Not the government. Not the grant. Mine. The Divine does not fund outcomes. It funds astonishment. It wants the canvas splattered with your unmarketable heart, the song you nearly drowned beneath the metrics....
