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.

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!

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

Autumn has seen Maria outshine herself with the premier of Miss Lindsay’s Secret, a project she has been working on around letters from the Glen Esk Museum, which went down a storm at the Edinburgh International Storytelling Festival and is soon to tour the North East with fabulous original music from her daughter Georgina and resonant readings from Alan Finalyson.

Meanwhile Dagba has not been forgotten and has had a couple of outings on his bicycle which is becoming ever more integrated into the show in the library at the Scottish Storytelling Centre and soon to ride around Edinburgh in April next year as part of the Puppet Animation Festival – and even further if we can get our legs in training to take him!

And don’t forget Christmas! A couple of library tellings at the National Library of Scotland accompanied by Christmas songs to keep the ukuleles in tune, and our winter fixture, back with Bob Mitchell and the Burgh Blatherers, the Winter Warmer coming up on 6th December at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

Finishing 2019 with a bang and making plans for 2020

Home after a fabulous day at the Retreat in Glen Esk on the hottest Easter Sunday on record – a timely reminder of the theme of our show, but what a glorious setting in the bowl of the glen, and lovely last two audiences in our puppet festival debut. We were keeping a record of the offerings for the most beautiful palace in the world: so far we’ve had libraries, and video games (of course!) gold, princesses, queens, gyms, spas, golden flags, theatres, chocolate bars, and today we got some mermaids – sparkling mermaids sitting in pools lined with pure marble listening to the fountains playing and whirlpool slides … a wonderful palace finale to our little tour

Dagba is resting now, until his next great outing in the Edinburgh festival fringe in August and possibly a slot in the Storytelling Centre in the Autumn if we can fit it in!

On to the next projects, which might include some fishy tales from Scottish mythology depending how our drawing skills develop!

‘Animating’ the djinns at The Village Storytelling Centre as our little show reaches its climax! We’ve done three performances so far, and our skills in getting the trolleys on and off buses are growing exponentially. Its been fascinating how different audiences bring such different atmospheres to the tellings, and so far Dagba has stood up well to audiences from 10 to 3 year olds – Faced with a roomful of toddlers for our 5 plus show Maria and I decided not to compromise and see what unfolded: storytelling itself is such a primal thing it seems to touch the heart whether or not the language is at ‘the right level’ – and luckily we seemed to get away with it!!