(1)
Preface
The play consists of real conversations, extraordinary events and dramatic
confrontations that have taken place over the last eighty years concerning
the mystery of
Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, the explorer lost in
Amazonia in 1925.
I was privileged to be handed a trunk of astonishing documents that have
been hidden from the media throughout the subsequent years. Fawcett's
daughter Joan and grand-daughter, Rolette, have entrusted me with telling
the true facts behind this amazing saga. I hope I have not let them down. I
shall refer to this wealth of newly released documents as the Secret
Papers in order to distinguish what they contain from the generally
misleading information about this story that has been available to the
general public since 1925.
Today, the worldwide fascination expressed
on the Internet shows that
Fawcett has become a cult figure. His objective in 1925, trumpeted in the
world press, was to find in South America evidence of a lost civilization,
probably the earliest on Earth and visit the remains of one of its cities that
he called "Z", still possibly inhabited by the descendents of this ancient
race.
But, according to the Secret Papers, this was not the main objective at all.
There were two extraordinary secret agendas. Because of the mystery of
Fawcett's
disappearance, myths have grown up round his name. A lot of
nonsense has and is being written and, after eighty years of reporting this
story, the media are still getting it wrong. So, here are the facts at last.
Why were they ever hidden from the public and press in the first place?
What does the world know about Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett? Many
have never heard of him. However, as the Internet testifies, there are
thousands all over the world who not only know his name but are
obsessed by the mystery of his life and death.
In the last seventy-five
years, for various strange reasons, Fawcett has been elevated to almost
religious status. Today, in a part of rural Brazil, he is worshipped in
religious rituals. In the cave of Ibez in the Roncador Mountains
worshippers claim he reached an inhabited underground city where he
(2)
now resides. UFOs have been seen coming
and going from the mouth of
the cave. In the Secret Papers, I have found evidence that Fawcett was
never in this area in the first place and that in fact he travelled in the
opposite direction.
Theatre may seem an odd medium for an epic saga of exploration until
you realise that Fawcett's real story has nothing to do with poisonous
snakes, sweaty armpits and swinging machetes in mosquito jungle-hell. It
is all about the mind, the emotions and an inner quest.
Words can best tell
this story and words are just the thing that get cut in film and TV where
action, sex and violence and star names are essential to getting finance.
Who could bear to see this utterly true and agonizingly poignant story
exploited by the media money-men? One of the themes of the play makes
just that very point.
Who was he?
Fawcett was born on 31st August 1867. He was the son of a Regency
rake-style father who was a pal of the Prince of Wales and who died of
drink at forty-five. Fawcett's mother was of highborn Scottish ancestry,
artistically creative and in
tune with Celtic mysticism but, according to an
unpublished family biography, "not disposed to remain faithful to her
unfaithful husband" Fawcett, (who never liked his names and preferred to
be known as "P.H.F"), was an outsider within his own family. He rejected
his parents "racy" life style and became (according to his niece Margarita
Stapleton) a serious, academic loner. His
frothy elder brother Douglas
and his three sisters were on quite another wavelength. But as young
children, Evie, one of the sisters, went exploring through the Devon
wilderness with him and they found a "treasure" of Roman ceramics,
including what Evie described as 'hoofed gods'.
From the start, Fawcett was snubbed and maltreated by his parents. They
thrust him into the Army, (the Artillery); only because his mother "adored
the lovely uniform". Fawcett hated the Army and it looked as if life in
various British outposts of the Empire would destroy him. But no, his
posting
to Fort Frederick, Trincomalee in Ceylon (now Sri-Lanka) set
his whole future on a unique and devastating course.
While Fawcett's brother officers drank and gambled and had sex with the
natives, he would religiously wander off into the interior to seek out