We Players Rime of the Ancient Mariner takes place on San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park’s schooner Alma, one of the National Historic Landmark ships at Hyde Street Pier.
Ava Roy on the Schooner Alma
…seasons, light and time, too, are intrinsically tied not only to space but also to human interactions with space. We have biological rhythms in our body: the rhythm of breathing – above all we have a rhythmical heart, melodious blood pumping. We have the circadian rhythms of hunger, of sleep, of sex…. The cosmic rhythms of day and night, winter and summer…. When you live beside the sea, you have the sea as an essential rhythm: you internalise it. It is necessary to harmonise all our rhythms.
Augusto Boal
Samuel Taylor Coleridge‘s poem explores a violation of nature and the resulting psychological effects on the mariner and on all those who hear his tale. The Mariner must grapple with loneliness and guilt and ultimately, seek a path of redemption. Through the poem, we are confronted with man’s fragile relationship with nature, and the humbling effects of the supreme elemental forces of the sea.