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My Hackney Valentine…

Then we were home.

We were both genuinely sad to leave so shining a country, so energetic, so optimistic. We were sad to leave the graciousness, the warmth of Indians behind, to say nothing of the warmth of India itself. India was cotton shirts, tee shirts. Home was damp, clammy, cold, but still home. We realised, on disembarking from the plane that straightaway we would need our woollen armour.

Next day, Sunday 14th, I told love stories for Valentine’s at the Viktor Wynd Museum Of Curiosities (my monthly residency). It interested me – the Museum is based on the camera fabula of 18th and 19th Century Englishmen, a box or a room crammed with exotic treasures picked up on voyages as the English explored the wider world. One of those exotic treasures, acquired first by a private company and then by the Crown, was India, all of it. In Hackney, young men in Victorian style beards, and their vintage-fabulous ladies, lost themselves in traditional love stories. It was interesting to reflect on that deep and long relationship between two cultures, which still persists. In India I saw endless cricket and English place names. In Hackney, as well as British Indians, of course, I see young men with large beards and elaborate moustaches which were originally inspired by that British contact with India, where moustaches are still almost de rigeur. That night I told the story of Shukuntala, a beautiful Indian story that Gorg Chand told me years ago. It features the kindness of a king’s daughter, the greed of a god and love for a blinded sage. It seemed right.

A late night, especially after all that travel and with my body  clock 5 ½ hours ahead, but worth it. Telling good stories is always worth it. Next day would bring another early start and “Storytelling Mayhem”, a workshop with blind children for the Imagine Children’s Festival. I went to sleep not knowing what stories I would tell the children the next day. Why? Well, we were yet to invent them together.

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A short clip!

Thank you to Rituparna Ghosh @Rituparna_Ghosh who filmed this clip from the audience at the Kathakar International Storytellers Festival. I’m telling Mr Fox – we join the story just as the romantic head games begin…

 

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Kathakar International Storytelling Festival – Rock and Roll

Friday and Saturday I found myself plugged in to what, for me, is the utter joy of a storytelling festival. It still exhilarates me that such numbers of people will devote their attention and commit time to hearing stories.

The festival is modest in size, being new, with only one stage and one performer at a time, but what a stage and what performers. A stage and performance apron is spread beneath the shade of a peepul tree. The audience sit in tiered, semi-circular rows, and it holds about 300. In the morning, I told stories for a younger audience, then sat back, thrilled to listen to England’s Emily Hennessey and Tim Ralphs, both brilliant tellers. There was, from India, a family of musicians. Bloody amazing! Two men sang in raw, gutsy, incredibly soulful voices whilst behind them two others beat out mind-bending rhythms on dhol and another drum I didn’t recognise, and a third skirled wildly on harmonium. The two singers seemed to be adversaries. Then, to the delight of the audience, next entered, clad in rich red salwaar kameez and a fine red chador, a woman. Only this woman was a young, slender man playing the part of woman, just as would’ve been the case in Elizabethan theatre. Next to me, Indian storyteller Usha Venkateraman, herself a very poised, witty and skilful teller, told me the story was a kind of Romeo & Juliet. It seemed a hell a lot funnier! The whole story was sung and acted and, performed as it was under a peepul tree, I could so easily imagine this performance under similar trees in rural villages stretching back hundreds of years. Stunning.

The audience was wonderful, intelligent, attentive and with a deep knowledge of and engagement with traditional storytelling. And the organisers and the British Council worked wonders with publicity. I kept missing performers because I needed to give interviews for TV, for radio, for print media. That seems a touch more switched on than Blighty.

I had the honour of closing the festival on Sunday night. I told East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon. My telling might not be to all tellers’ tastes. It’s a serious story, Norwegian, from the Ancient Greek Eros & Psyche, and chronicles the journey of the Soul to Love, but the Norwegian version is so intrinsically funny! Talking bears, old ladies bearing impractical gifts which turn out to be just the thing that’s needed, and trolls so bad at handling frustration that they inflate and detonate? Now, you could tell this reverentially and solemnly, but, to a sassy, sophisticated & urban audience, who doesn’t believe

in trolls, why on earth would you? I play the straight bits straight and the wonky bits wonky.

As you know, I can’t see my audience, not really, but can sense their attentiveness. I got to the end, a quiet, a low-key close, because the end is serious, and the applause engulfed me. It took Blind Pew a while to realise, but the entire audience had risen to their feet! They stayed there until they were quite clapped out.

And thereafter surrounded me for selfies, photos, autographs and handshakes. A woman declared, loudly, that I was “A rock ‘n roll storyteller! I’ve never seen a storyteller mobbed like this!”

So, I became a storyteller because I lost some sight. Do you believe me now when I tell that, even though sight-loss was my first real experience of grief, I honestly can’t now regard it as a misfortune?

Chandigarh tomorrow, an entire city planned and designed by Le Corbusier. India continues to astound me.

G ;{~

For more photos and a little video of me onstage go to Further Adventures in Pictures

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Hard at Work

Pope's Chaucer ParodyStarted my work day today reading Alexander Pope’s Chaucer parody to my assistant and making her laugh! I still find it very strange that the complete works of Pope seem to fit on my iPhone… Looking forward to diving into the research for the Pope’s Grotto project. First proper meeting next week at the Grotto in Twickenham to get things started. Until then your Interesting Pope Fact of the Day is this – as a child Pope had TB and instead of it going to his lungs, it went into his bones so he never grew beyond 4’6″ and left him with a hunchback.

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Why The Robin Has A Red Breast – A Christmas Story

And now for my final story before Christmas – Why The Robin Has A Red Breast (and became a hero).

Hope you all have an enchanting Christmas of love, happiness and good old overindulgence and check back on New Year’s Eve for something to see you through into 2016…

 

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Big Cattle, Little Cattle

Hey ho (ho, ho)! To brighten up your Christmas, I thought I’d share a couple of stories with you. Today’s is called Big Cattle, Little Cattle and is a traditional Russian Christmas tale with hearty borscht, glad tidings and an obscene amount of rats…

Check back for more tales of snow and mayhem and don’t forget to let me know your favourite Christmas story in the comments – you never know, it could be the next one I tell…! Enjoy!

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A new project and a new (old) story

A New Project, a new (old) story!
So, a BBC World Service journalist called Richard Hamilton, working in Morocco, has discovered and fallen in love with the public, open air storytelling traditions of Marrakesh and has discovered the tradition is under threat. For years, storytellers have been able to perform in a particular square and this is how they have earned their living for generations. Guess what? The citizen’s friend, DEVELOPMENT, has now deprived these storytellers of anywhere to work, to earn. Richard has started a labour of love to bring this tradition and the plight of these tradition keepers to a wider audience and, as part of this project, he is launching a YouTube channel to showcase as many stories and storytellers as possible. He and his assistant Nigel came to my flat and, despite an egregious cold, I told some stories for them. The first of them to be published is now online, a short Norwegian tale, and you can enjoy it here….

Stay tuned to this list for further stories in the weeks and months to come.

Best wishes,

Giles ;{~

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I am currently touring Tongues of Flame

My story of Richard Francis Burton

Mausoleum IMAG1647 My story is based on the extraordinary life of Richard Burton; it is a story that runs to the heart of Empire and travel.   Beginning at the foot of his peculiar mausoleum in the form of a Bedouin tent in a Catholic church, my tale of the great and enigmatical explorer becomes a journey to the edge of the known world.

Burton was an Englishman fluent in over 40 languages, with the support of the The Royal Geographical Society he led an expedition to the true source of the Nile; he was the first non-Muslim to enter the holy city of Harar and he completed the Haj from Suez to Mecca. ……..Burton turned exploration into a practice of human freedom.  These stories are complemented by the soaring, melancholic, and yearning vocals of the Iraqi Kurdish singer Nawroz Oramari.

‘Tongues of Flame’ was one of the highlights of a great storytelling year in Cambridge…. They [the audience] were enthralled by the vibrant colours of the piece, and the masterly crafting of the material…..  Its picture of a colonial past has an immediacy for modern culture and the 21st century legacy of British colonialism…Best of all it held me riveted, laughing, appalled – what more can I ask from a storytelling show?

2014, Marion Leeper, Cambridge Storytellers Programmer

 

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