We’re off on our travels again – by train this time to Aberdeen where we are delighted to be invited to take part in Climate Week North East with two performances of Dagba’s Forest Tales at the Lemontree in Aberdeen on 9th April.
It is a pleasure to revisit these tales as ever, though with sadness that we all still need to spread the message about climate change so fiercely!
https://www.aberdeenperformingarts.com/whats-on/climate-week-north-east-dagbas-forest-tales/
The hard work of the last 8 months from writing, editing, collating, proof reading and ‘printer liaison’ with our new collaborators, Lea and Mary at the Book Whisperers to bring together a collection of 17 spoken stories from members of the Burgh Blatherers storytelling club in time for Scotland’s Year of Stories. All culminating at long last in our launch event at the Scottish Storytelling Festival last night! What a learning curve! What a fantastic editing team we made, and what a delight to be able to say – I am a published author!
Well done and congratulations to our whole team – particularly the Book Whisperers, and our fabulous stall team of Lynsey and Findlay who took the bit between their teeth to sell sell sell! Now it is is out there, available at the SSC bookshop and on Amazon! And just look at this lovely review!
We’ve had fun this Summer taking Dagba and a new ‘work in progress’ Fionn McCoul and the Forests all over Scotland from Mintlaw in Aberdeenshire to Castle Semple Country Park, in Renfrewshire.
Storm Dudley put paid to our thoughts of travelling to the venues on the actual bicycles – but the beauty of the brompton is that it folds up small enough to travel on the buses and we did our mini-tour by bus numbers 27, 16, 21 and 30 – very satisfactory. And firey phoenix and the giants and genies were enthusiastically received in all our three libraries.
Wester Hailes was dominated by real life climate disaster under a corrugated iron roof during storm Dudley. Laura, the librarian there ‘absolutely loved it… the music, the pictures, the audience participation. A perfect mix between theatrical performance and interactive storytelling’ One family wanted photos beside the set afterwards which is very encouraging!
And we’re off again! Today I cycled down the canal on a lovely – if breezy – afternoon to do a reccy of Wester Hailes library space where Maria and I will be delighted to do a performance of Dagba’s Forest tales postponed for 2 years, but still faithfully waiting his turn!
We have three bookings for the half-term holiday with the support of the Puppet Animation Festival
West Pilton Community Centre, 10.30 Tuesday 15th February
Portobello Library 3 pm Tuesday 15th February
Wester Hailes Library 3pm Wednesday 16th February
And then we go to Mintlaw all the way up North for an outdoor performance at Aden Country Park 11am on Monday 4th April for a spring trip away! Very exciting, though I dont think we’ll be able to go the whole way there by bike this time! I shall post again about this one, and the logistics of taking an A3 plywood box construction complete with new ‘proscenium’ shelf, bicycle, buckets, cushions, instruments, singing bowls and costumes by train and bus up to the tip of Aberdeenshire, nearer the time, I’m sure.
We are streamlining this show every time we do it though, and I’m hoping to borrow a second Brompton for Wester Hailes so we can both arrive together along the canal without any recourse to bus or trains this time. Just as we envisaged it when we first thought of it 4 years ago now. How time does fly!
Look over there, says Elk.
Finally our performance at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival is hoving into view..Maria and I had a right old giggly run-through this afternoon, in my livingroom this time. Hopefully some of the fun will come through even if we get muddled with the pictures and the bounding on through the forests.. The story becomes ever more mysterious each time, perhaps that’s what keeps traditional tales so interesting!
Cottongrass – the product of the Andy Hunter Bursary and now the commission from the Scottish Storytelling Festival is finally brewing up a storm in Maria’s Leith Kitchen – our tale of a princess wandering off with Elk with its enigmatic ending is becoming clearer all the time – and more mysterious! We bring ritual, blessings, nature and dreaming into the pot and soon our circle will complete itself, ready or not, at the Festival on 28th October – its getting very close now!
Heartfelt Medley: A Burgh Blatherers Virtual Show on 19th June from 7.30 to 9.30
Join the Burgh Blatherers in a one-of-a-kind virtual show blending visual and oral storytelling to celebrate that the times they are a-changing and we are full of energy brought on by sunshine, blue skies and the prospect of new brighter horizons. In this show eight tellers have reached into their minds and hearts to present a wonderful variety of stories intertwined with song, music, poetry, sketches, images and video. As always, the most important ingredient is our audience.
This could be Burgh Blatherers’ last online show, let’s make it a very special one! Register for the event at the Scottish Storytelling Centre:
https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/…
This event will be held on Zoom. During the event all attendees will be on screen and able to communicate via the chat function. If you have booked a ticket you will receive a confirmation email with your log in details.
I’m looking foward to this one, Maria, Bob and I among other ‘Blatherers’ all showing off our newly acquired lockdown zoom skills, playing around with music and image backgrounds not usually available to us in the flesh!
A year on, a 5k runner and faltering Gaelic speaker to the good – we are beginning to pull our heads out of the online world and hope stirs that we may be telling stories to more than just the cat again soon! Not that we haven’t learnt to enjoy some of the aspects of online telling and developing ideas by zoom and phone. It feels like its been a deep dive, I hope some good will surface from this time for all our us.
Among the steep learning curve that is online teling, I was delighted to be asked to give a little piece about Wolves as part of the Winter’s Last weekend in January with Taibhshear collective.
11 outings for Dagba on his bike, and the whole of Maria’s Minnie Lindsay run at the Edinburgh Festival are casualties along with so much else in the world of ‘arts and entertainments’ and we are confined to our houses and exiled into the internet for the duration.
But its not all bad. We are learning to dip our toes into technology.
And it is with HUGE delight that I can report that we have been awarded a bursary from the Andy Hunter Bursary fund to develop ideas using the kamishibai to hold performance space in an outdoor ritual or exploration which has allowed Maria and I to devote our Friday afternoons to regular teleconferencing and our weeks to various iterations of self-imposed ‘homework’
I am exquisitely grateful to the Scottish Storytelling Centre and Anne Hunter for giving us this amazing opportunity to impose structure on our time in isolation as well as the simple joy in development for its own sake.
Telling ‘The Lazy Snowdrop’ at Harrow Green Community Library just before the public gathering shutdown. A great crew of about 10 kids and their adults who thoroughly engaged with the myths and delights of springtime – even if dandelions seem rather thin on the ground in deepest Leytonstone! The new box went really well – it is absolutely pared back and can simply rest on my knee as I tell so it became an organic part of the telling, but can also be made a focal point to perform to or even put aside easily. A welcome addition to our flexibility with these cards – and a new suite of pictures from me to illustrate our spring flowers theme – channelling my inner botanical artist!
Maria’s amazing family project based on letters found in the Glen Esk Museum stunning evocative of two lost worlds – the rich and complex pre WW1 rural life of Scottish glens and the wilderness of the Canadian gold rush, written by Maria with music composed by Georgina with the letters brought to authentic life by Alan’s poignant reading gets two more well-deserved outings in a mini-tour of North-East Scotland. Shows at:
Johnshaven Village Hall Saturday Feb 15th 7.30 pm
New Deer Village Hall Sunday Feb16th 3pm
Tease your imagination and watch a taster here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea8saUVelmk&feature=youtu.be
storyteller's blog 