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New Season of Stories on a Sunday Now ON SALE!

Tickets are now on sale for all of 2018’s Stories on a Sunday at The Last Tuesday Society at The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Hackney. Booking through TicketWeb Stories On A Sunday 2018 tickets.

It’s always fun choosing themes & stories to suit the magical & exotic setting of the Museum Of Curiosities. This gig is one of the gems in my monthly calendar – intimate, daring, exciting. Guests tell me the storytelling, the Museum, the experience all add up to a magical evening. Book now – tickets are already selling fast.

Stories On A Sunday 2018

 

Jan 14  “A Little Warm Death”

The dead month of January, cold, bleak, dark. We’ve got just the thing for you- a warm little death. From Nigeria, a young man falls for a woman who keeps disappearing. Amidst the dreaming spires of Oxford a beautiful student falls for a stunning older woman. A collector, she says, but of what? Scary, sexy, shocking – aren’t you tempted to A Little Warm Death?

A Little Warm Death

 

Feb 11th –  My Bawdy Valentine – Tales To Make Saint Valentine Blush 

Chaucer, Boccaccio, other mucky so & so’s, make their entrance in evening of filthy, saucy, raucous bawdery in the finest ooh er missis tradition of it all if you know what I mean?! Ooh stop it. Red-hot irons on smooth white buttocks, horny wives & husbands with horns, ooh, go on, I dare you! You know you want it….

My Bawdy Valentine

 

March 11th – Mother

It’s Mothering Sunday. Easter is coming. When better for stories of the Mother of Mothers and original Easter Bunny, Ishtar aka Inana. 5000 years ago we worshipped her in Mesopotamia, in Babylon, as goddess of desire, of love. How much would you like to meet her? Trust us, she’s one cool mother….

Mother

April 8th – What Fools These Mortals Be…

Feeling foolish? Wish to sail on the Ship Of Fools? Giles Abbott will be your blind captain. All aboard as we set sail for a joyful evening of folly and silliness with fools from Britain, Norway, Turkey and Egypt. Book now – you’d be fools not to.

What Fools These Mortals Be

May 13th Mermaids

Spring tides are high – can you hear the mermaids singing? Under the LTS’s real fake mermaid, we offer stories of Mermaids claiming back their melancholy, their beauty, their power. Featuring love, loss, longing & the everlasting kisses of the sea we take the sugar out of Mermaid tales & put the salt back in, in tales in which the Mermaids get their real tails back. Back by popular demand.

Mermaids

 

June 10th is in abeyance as Mr Abbott is most likely performing in a Norman castle looming over the sea cliffs of Wales.

July 8th The Luck Of The Irish

 

….is to be one of the great storytelling nations of the world. Join us for an evening of ancient Irish myth, stories of the Otherworld & the actual tale which inspired Irishman Bram Stoker to create his immortal Dracula.

The Luck Of The Irish

 

Aug 12 Cock Tales

 

Due to popular demand, against our better judgement, we’ve given in and agreed to once more unzip “Cock Tales”, our popular evening of cocktails matched with stories of cock, cockerels, poultry, poulterers & hen-keeping. Honest. Well hung for over 28 days, our stories are game. Are you?

Cock Tales

 

Sept 9 The Last Hero – Odysseus

 

Forced to go to war, keener to use wits than weapons, how did this reluctant warrior become the last of the Heroes? Drawn from Homer’s “Odyssey”, arguably the first ever European novel, we follow wily Odysseus as he faces dishonour, disaster, Death itself. Meeting by surprise his mother’s ghost he even comes face to face with one of our exhibits! Book now for these spell-binding & achingly humane stories.

The Last Hero – Odysseus

 

Oct 14 Real Old Horrors

 

Horror comes in many forms. For some it’s a creaking door & the smell of blood. Or it’s dark, & you know you’re not alone. For others it’s the pressing presence of evil. We promise you all this and more in a evening of skin-crawlingly gruesome, spine-tinglingly scary horror stories.

Real Old Horrors

 

Nov 11 Sparks Fly – The Love Of Sigurd & Brunhild

 

In Bonfire season come hear tales first told around fires in Iceland then throughout the Viking world before they went on to inspire English writers as diverse as William Blake, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien & Roger Lancelyn Green as well as composer Richard Wagner & the entire genre of fantasy fiction. The epic Ring Cycle spirals from innocence to crime to greed, murder, mutation and holds at its heart one of the greatest mythic love stories ever. WARNING – here bee dragons.

Sparks Fly – The Love Of Sigurd & Brunhild

 

Dec 9th Bah, Humbug!

Our annual jollity-free zone, our ever popular celebration of the other side of Christmas. Genuine traditional Christmas stories & songs of murder & blood-letting. C’mon, don’t say you’ve never been tempted?

Bah! Humbug!

 

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Shakespearean Story Madness at the Telling Tales Festival, London

Telling Tales LogoI’m really excited – building on my successful workshop at the Imagine Children’s Festival, I will be at Shakespeare’s Globe on Saturday 30th July, running a session at 2.15pm called Shakespearean Story Madness. This workshop is specifically for children who are visually impaired and who may have additional needs. What will it be? Well, Shakespeare knew his traditional stories! I’ll be looking at the plot structures underneath his great tragedies, for example Lear, Hamlet, MacBeth and Othello, and using them to help make up new stories with the participants. The session will be frenetic, collaborative and above all fun! So if you, or if you know of anyone who has VI children, please forward the workshop information on and get them involved. You can find out more and book tickets here.

And if you want to hear more about the links between Shakespeare and earlier traditional stories have a listen to this brief natter I’ve recorded for you below:

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Ginger Wig and Strolling Man at The Last Tuesday Society

screen-shot-2016-04-05-at-23-51-55So on Sunday 10th April I was back at The Last Tuesday Society telling stories about fools, it being April and all. And sitting at the table were Ginger Wig and Strolling Man, hardcore reviewers of theatre, musicals, performing arts, comedy and now Storytelling!

And they loved the show! Click here for what they had to say…

I’m back at The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities on Sunday 8th May. Unfortunately it’s returns only for this performance, BUT there are still some tickets left for the 7pm and 9pm performances on Sunday 12th June. Click here to book.

See you there! G;{~

ps And they didn’t even mention the ginger connection…!

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Word of Mouth Birthday Celebrations

My train from Bath took me straight North to Manchester and I arrived at Manchester Piccadilly just ½ hour before the storytelling started. Earphones, SatNav, charge!

I loved walking through Manchester, obeying the orders of the bossy woman’s voice I heard in my ears. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I recognised, having not visited Manchester in over a decade. Oxford Road where Sooz studied, that funny bar at the junction of Great Bridgewater Street and then The Briton’s Protection, a lovely pub named, with typically harsh Mancunian irony, after the Peterloo Massacre on St Peter’s Field, 16th August 1819, when the government read the Riot Act and commanded the Army to open fire on peaceful Chartist demonstrators. Still on the Statutes, the Riot Act.

I arrived with a minute to spare and there I found old friends like Honor Giles and Helen Stewart, who’ve been running the Word of Mouth Storytelling Club successfully for a number of years. I sat at the back not knowing, until he spoke, that I’d sat next to my old friend Nick. Then I heard Effie’s laugh & realised that my London friends, Richard Trouncer and Effie Giordanou were there too! I met Richard & Effie at Word Of Mouth, years ago. Richard & Effie met each other at Word Of Mouth. I was already enjoying this reunion.

Friday night I saw Amy Douglas telling stories with her musical partner Lucy Wells. “Wild Edrick” was very cleverly structured and a beautifully balanced evening’s storytelling. Funny, magical, humane, the story glid from Shropshire landscape to folklore, to history, to myth, and back. Subtly, but strongly political, different layers of the telling explored the relationship between Edrick and Goda, between the rich people hunting and the poor people getting fed, the shamanic relationship between hunter & hunted – in which the hunted gives consent to be hunted on the understanding that they will not be over-hunted, and the relationship between the ruled and their rulers. Really beautiful stuff.

More memory lane as I walked to my hotel, past the Central Library, the Art Museum. I was amazed just how much my mind had stored.

But on Sunday I was astounded at what the memory of Shonaleigh has stored. You think you’re a storyteller and then you hear Shonaleigh doing a Drut’syla telling. Wow.

The Drut’syla is a female Jewish storyteller. They have their own unique repertoire. Shonaleigh’s training by her Grandmother Edith Marx, which lasted from the age of four to eighteen, has equipped her with a repertoire of 3,500 interlaced stories. No, that’s not a typo. Really, three and a half thousand.

The way a Drut’syla telling works is fascinating. A story will intersect with another story which is alluded to with “but that’s another story,” to which the audience responds “for another time”. The teller then continues with the tale. But, if anyone in the audience says, for example, “no, tell us the story of the wine merchants” the Drut’syla will do so. Usually that story leads back to the one we were on, but not necessarily, and there’s no guarantee you’ll hear the end of any given story. Not that night, anyway, and traditionally a Drut’syla telling can last for nights.

I could’ve listened for weeks! It wasn’t just the depth of her repertoire and the sense of an entire world you could explore, but Shonaleigh’s telling is so spare, so clean, with never a word too many nor a description too long. Utterly hypnotic. I sincerely think Shonaleigh should be awarded Museum status as a sincere acknowledgement of her, of her Grandmother and their tradition and of the importance of intangible culture, paradoxically enduring and at the same time fragile. Now that’d be a Facebook petition to sign!

I’m taking a few days break now but I’ll be in touch next week to share some exciting developments in the Alexander Pope commission. And I plan to record some poetry for you. So, keep checking in! See you soon.

G ;{~

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The Storyteller of Bath (and Bristol)

So, the first week of March and I travelled down to Bath to stay with my friend Harry. Next day, Wednesday, I worked in a school in Bristol, running Poetry workshops for KS2 children. Wonderful fun. I used a structure-based approach similar to the work I do with StoryMaking, and the staff were amazed at how the right level of limitation liberated the children’s imagination. After my first class there was a break and, as she entered the staff room, my class’s teacher smiled broadly at a colleague.

“If only all learning could be like that!” she said.

And I sincerely believe that more of it can. The children created complex poems in which an everyday object tells their own story. Some poems were riddles and you had to guess what the object was, and some were metaphorically very rich. Everyone wrote something and now the staff will take these beginnings on further. Proper job satisfaction for me.

On Thursday, Harry and I did our best to destroy the best that Bath had to offer in the matter of ales and pies (very good at The Griffin). I saw a moving play at Bristol Old Vic called Pink Mist. Actually, it was very storytellery as all the characters narrated the story straight to the audience. There was no set and minimal props and actors created scenes with movement and posture. I’ve got so much to learn there. I happened to be seated amongst a clump of 6th Formers, A Level drama students. Kid next to me was all scorn at the end of first act, so above it all, telling everyone how he’d worked out the impending twist in Act 2. He had and he hadn’t. As Act 2 progressed, I noticed him stop fidgeting, start leaning forward listening intently. At the end he spun to his friends;

“Excellent!!!” he said.

He’d dropped into the story. So much better than being above it.

On Friday I worked in a different Bristol school and, at day’s end, boarded a train not to home, but to Manchester. Word Of Mouth Storytelling Club was celebrating its 21st Birthday. I cut my teeth there 17 years ago. I wasn’t going to miss their birthday for the world…

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Alexander Pope: A Search For Perfection tickets now on sale!

Great news!

Tickets for my latest storytelling piece Alexander Pope: A Search For Perfection are now on sale for performances at Pope’s Grotto during the Twickenham Festival on Saturday 18th and Saturday 25th June 2016.

You can buy single or family tickets and I will be telling stories throughout the day giving you the chance to both listen to me and explore Pope’s fabulous and very curious Grotto.

Tickets are available via Eventbrite. For more information about the event please go to The Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust Events and News page and subscribe to their email list. And of course, follow me on Facebook and Twitter for further updates!

More tickets for more dates will be available soon…

I hope to see you there!

G ;{~

 

Pope's Grotto ID

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Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4, 20/2/16

I was a guest on BBC Radio 4’s “Saturday Live” on 20th Feb. Great fun. Programme started late because of a technical hitch and there was even a blackout in the studio (I confess, I didn’t really notice!). It’s a great programme, with Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir hosting. You can listen to the whole show here or, if you want to jump to my bit, I’m at 01:07:30.

Here’s the link;

BBC Radio 4 – Saturday Live

and here are some pictures from the studio. Who knew Zeb Soames looked like this?!

Zeb Soames, Newsreader

round the table, Aasmah Mir, Rev Richard Coles, Lorna Currie Thomopoulos, Laurence Fox and Lucy Cooke

us at end of show

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Imagine Children’s Festival, Royal Festival Hall, London

On Monday morning, 15th Feb, at the Royal Festival Hall in London, I ran an hour long session for blind children and their siblings at the Imagine Festival. My brief was to involve the children in a highly interactive storymaking session. This would draw on previous work I’ve done in Norfolk with blind children on behalf of the County Council’s Sensory Impairment Services. I started by telling a couple of very ‘joiny-inny’ stories and got the children singing, clapping, beating drums and shaking tambourines and maracas. In order to take the interactivity to another level I began to tell them a story, asking them to choose for themselves the elements that I could weave into the story as it happened. The result was a story about a knight who lacked courage, rode on a small steam-breathing dragon, and was armed only with an ordinary wooden stick. I told this new story back to them and asked “Who made up that story?” “WE DID!!” they chorused. By the time we’d told two interactive stories and co-devised a third, we had only seven minutes left. “Right,” I said, “let’s make up a complete story from scratch, only using your ideas….” Using Story Structure, we did. I was able to tell the them the tale they’d invented (to be honest, we told it together). Elements included: a giant horn-lacking unicorn! Quacking like a duck! International travel! Blackbirds! Lots of them! Struggles! Danger! Love, and, of course, a very happy ending.

Bloody good story, I reckon, given the time constraints, but this is one of the key things about the StoryMaking work I do. Speed helps. I found it fascinating that this group of blind children created a story about an animal born lacking something everyone else around him possessed.

I was speaking afterwards to one of the dads and an idea popped up – what about setting up a storytelling club for blind children in London, where they could develop their creativity, explore and express their articulacy as well as developing their confidence? What do you reckon – should I do it?

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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.