Starry Starry Night!

I wondered why my audience was so quiet for my performance Night Lights: Star Myths and Firefly tales till I found out it was advertised as a science lecture on astronomy!! I'm sure the adults and seniors were surprised to learn that the North Star is really someone's child and when Korean Fire Dogs try to eat the sun it causes an eclipse!!

Facebook Revolution

Face to Face with Facebook as I reach out to the Kurdish community before coming to Edinburgh. Communications are ALL Facebook. From Facebook pages I message to connect with Kurds in Scotland, to the international coordination with UK activists via Fbook messenger that brought 1,500 hits to my site in less than 24 hours, to a meeting with Kurdish activists in Harvard Square today where the only question about how to connect with me was - "Tell me your name so I can find you on Facebook. (Scrolling through phone) Oh I see you - we already have three friends in common!" It is powerful in ways I never realized before. For these people who have been repressed and controlled for so long, it is truly a revolution.

The Arnold Arboretum at Twilight

Twilight Time

At this time of year, I'm strongly aware of the beauty of twilight. In the book, Seven Arrows, which speaks of the deep culture of the Cheyenne, the sunset direction of west gives the gift of introspection. And I do feel that deep quiet when watching the sun slowly sink below the horizon.

For painters and photographers as well as for ancient cultures, twilight is a sacred betwixt and between time when we see things in a special way. At this transition time between day and night the landscape and all its creatures are touched by beauty. Transition times the old legends tell us are when magic can happen! It is a doorway time when fairies appear and other forces can enter. From a practical point of view, if you look at any of the major transitions that happen in our lives you can see that those transition times ARE when we are most open to change and the chance that something new might enter is truly possible.

Our Storytelling and Music journeys in the landscape happen at twilight for this exact reason! You can feel so much in the liminal light. That is why painters loved it - the stretching shadows the "glow" of the divine around everything.

At our annual In the Groves performance in the Arnold Arboretum of Boston on June 16th and 17th 2017, we take the audience down pathways and into several different groves of protected trees during these magical twilight hours.

Join us - we will be there to welcome you...

Tickets are at this link!
Diane

Satirical Tales for the Making!

Imagine a concise and pithy story that sheds light on the repeatable and fairly predictable failings of humankind. If you then imagine that, so that no one can possibly take offence, those tales have animals or inanimate objects as the main characters, you have imagined FABLES! Whether they are traditional fables passed on in the oral tradition or literary fables written by a single author, they share a common ability to serve the needs of their current masters: those who would adapt them to suit the times we live in.

My first adaptation of a fable was Aesop’s: “The Tortoise and the Hare.” I had been searching for a family story that would encourage slow readers to believe that they were as important as those who sped through books. I found the framework for my story in that classic tale. My version had the rabbit literally tripping over the tortoise in the road, berating it for being a Rock. And, because I have a deep aversion to our consumer driven society that keeps us rushing from store to store, from sale to sale, my rabbit trips because he is so focused on the next SALE, he doesn’t even see what is in front of him! The tortoise was just there, in the road, pulled into his shell and happily reading. But reading what? Letters, of course!! The rabbit is disdainful of this, showing off how he reads and speeding through the words, sentences and paragraphs in the same book, but the rabbit reads so fast that, much to the children’s delight, he misses the part about the ice cream! When the race between the two does begin, it is a race to the library- whomever wins gets a library card from the librarian! Though the tortoise wins (the rabbit was too busy signing autographs) we do find out that at the library, everybody is a winner- librarians give library cards to us all. The characters were a delight to improvise with and embody. Clearly drawn and with a situation that has captured the imagination for so many years I had the best Material to work with, for aren’t these time-honored satirical tales from another century material to stitch and re-stitch?

At the Sharing the Fire storytelling conference this March, I’ll be taking those in my workshop on a wild and wooly exploration of the riches fables can yield. We’ll improvise with these “fabulous” characters and situations shining the light of satirical fun on the world we live in. We’ll even experiment with devices like rhyme to see how limiting ourselves to a “form” can yield surprising results. Aesop used his own stories to educate his audiences about the foibles and politics of his time. With all to comment on these days, I can’t wait to see what we come up with at my  “Fun with Aesop’s Fables” workshop at the Northeast Storytelling Conference: Sharing The Fire this year!