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!!