Activated Stories

The Monkey and the Boar is a tale from Japan about two animal chums who outwit the humans who pose a problem for them. It uses the motif of the staged rescue, which has been used a number of times in movies and TV shows. This story appealed to us in part because when we visited Japan in 2006, we saw a young man with a monkey doing tricks in a busy plaza in Tokyo.

We come to you from Wompatuck State Park in Massachusetts, where we are camping and preparing for the end of our 2017 summer tour. The park was the site of a naval ammunition depot from 1941 to 1965, and a few remnants of this history can still be found. There's also a spring in the park where you can fill water jugs free.

We talk about our travels from West Virginia through Pennsylvania (where we stopped at the Strasburg Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad Museum, which our son Zephyr loved to visit when he was about 2) and Albany, NY, where we caught up with Zephyr at his current job of managing 5Wits. We also spent some time in Binghamton, NY, where the annual Spiedie Fest and Hot Air Balloon Rally was in progress.

And how as your month?

Happy listening,
Dennis (Narrator, Man, Boar) and Kimberly (Narrator, Woman, Baby, Monkey)

The Blind Beggar Of Baghdad is a story within a story, like many tales in the famous collection in which it can be found, and indeed like the entire collection itself, a group of stories spun by Scheherazade to forestall her doom. This story involves a beggar, a caliph (the head official of Islam) and a dervish (a sort of monk famous for their whirling dance of devotion). It's a cautionary tale about greed, and being blind to one's blessings.

We're in Charleston, WV to perform for 6 libraries in the Kanawha County Library system. We're winding down a busy summer, having just finished libraries in VA and NC, where we at least were able to work in a day at the beach.

Kimberly has met two cousins she didn't know she had (one of them is a librarian here; and she has another librarian cousin here that she hasn't met yet) and she recently met another cousin in VA that she'd been in touch with online. This is all because of her recent detective work on her family tree.

We now head to the Northeast and, we hope, cooler weather. And maybe we'll encounter more lost relatives.

Happy Listening,

Dennis (Beggar) and Kimberly (Narrator, Caliph, Dervish) 

Why Frogs Croak is an origin myth that explains why a certain animal makes a certain noise, though it also delves into the sleeping habits of bears, the length of days and nights, the importance of democracy, and other such profound matters.

We come to you from Heber Springs, Arkansas in the middle of a very busy summer tour. We discuss our recent visits to the escape room called Lockdown in Jonesboro and to the Ozark Folklife Center in Mountain View.

Here's hoping that the summer keeps you hopping with joy!

Happy listening,
Dennis (Frog, Bear, Sun) and Kimberly (Narrator, Eagle, Mayfly, Owl)

The Shadow Builders is one version of the legend of Karagöz and Hacivat (pronounced KAR-a-gerz and HA-jee-vaht), the beloved characters of Turkish shadow puppet plays, supposedly based on real individuals. According to this version of the story, they were masons who loved storytelling and merriment, and paid a price for being a bit too cheerful on the job. The tradition of these puppet characters being based on actual historical figures seems to have originated around the Turkish city of Bursa, which has a museum and an annual festival to honor shadow puppetry.

This is a sneak peek of one of the four brand new stories that we'll be including this summer in our production Hammer, Nail, Tell a Tale that is designed to fit the library consortium's summer reading theme, Build A Better World. (Well, the stories are not literally new; like the other folk tales we perform, they're very old stories. They're just new to us. Well, no, they're not really new to us, either; they're just new in the sense that we've never performed any of them before. Well, at least not live. We've performed most of them in podcasts, but not on stage. There, we hope that's all cleared up now.) The stories we have chosen will reflect this theme not only in a literal sense – involving masons, a carpenter and a do-it-yourself trio of pigs – but also will deal on another level with the concept of making the world a better place and improving the lives of the people in it.

We come to you from the “biggest little city in the world”: Reno, Nevada, where we always hole up every May to put together a new production. It's an especially big job this time , because we're doing four new stories, and – well, they're not really new – oh, you know what we mean.

We hope to see you in person at one of our 50-something performances this summer.

Happy listening,
Dennis (Narrator, Karagöz, Sultan) and Kimberly (Narrator, Hacivat, Worker, Servant)

No, it's not a sequel. It's not a fractured fairy tale. It's not something that we just made up. It's part of the original Three Little Pigs that normally gets omitted -- you might say that people are accustomed to hearing the Reader's Digest version. This "lost" segment features another example of the rule of three, with three additional desperate efforts by the wolf to lure the third little pig onto his plate.

We come to you from Modesto, California, in the middle of an extremely busy April featuring 26 performances, as well as a photography session for our publicity shots, and frenzied preparations for our new production, our most demanding yet. But we're never too busy to stop and say howdy, either in a podcast or when you drop in at one of our live performances.

Happy listening,
Dennis (Narrator, Wolf, Churn Vendor) and Kimberly (Pig)

Old Joe and the Carpenter is a moralistic little yarn about two neighbors who are initially friends, but get into a small quarrel that escalates into full-scale estrangement until a wise stranger intervenes. The story is set in the Appalachian region of the U.S., which encompasses parts of more than a dozen states ranging from Alabama and Mississippi to New York. This story stems from the (inaccurate) stereotype of the region's inhabitants as backward, isolated, moonshining feuders.

This tale will be included in our new production opening this June: Hammer, Nail, Tell a Tale. It consists of stories that somehow relate to building, to coincide with the library consortium's summer reading theme, Building a Better World.

We come to you from Anaheim, California, where someone definitely built a better world by constructing Disneyland. We spent a day exploring the park with our son Zephyr (formerly a performer with our troupe), who flew out from the East Coast for a couple of days.

Recently, we also got a "backstage" tour at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, a museum and dig site where millions of prehistoric animals have become trapped in tar pits and their bones preserved. These are nowhere near as old as dinosaurs, going back only about 50,000 years; but they do include some impressive extinct mammals like the mammoth and the saber-toothed cat (please don't call it a tiger -- it will growl at you).

And now, it's back to pounding in these-here nails and splashing this-here paint on our production in progress.

Happy Listening,
Dennis (Narrator, Joe) and Kimberly (Wilbur, Carl)

#beActivated #tryPod #tryPodAct

The Robin is a nature origin story from the Inuit people (commonly called Eskimo) of the far north. We thought it would be appropriate for the end of summer and the first hints of spring.

We come to you from Mesa, AZ. Having spent the past month in Arkansas, we started our annual pilgrimage west. At Holbrook, AZ we headed south through the mountains on a scenic drive toward Phoenix. Next, we're on to California check our tour schedule for a show near you.

Join us in the #beActivated campaign that encourages everyone to get up, get moving and be Act!vated.

Happy Listening,
Dennis (Father, Son) and Kimberly (Narrator, Robin, Bear)

Aladdin and the Lamp is one of the many popular tales from the collection commonly called The Arabian Nights, though its more proper name is The Thousand and One Nights. It's an anthology of many folktales from many countries, and going back many centuries. Although generally these stories originated in Arabic lands, Aladdin is of uncertain origin, and actually may have come from China.

We come to you from Heber Springs, AR., a sleepy little resort town that hums with tourists during the summer. It sits beside Greers Ferry Lake and Sugar Loaf Mountain, and the Greers Ferry National Fish Hatchery. The Greers Ferry Dam was dedicated by President John F. Kennedy in his last official appearance before his assassination.

Every July, the lake is home of the World Championship Cardboard Boat Races. Yes, the boats really are made of cardboard, and are quite colorful.

Happy Listening,
Dennis (Aladdin, Stranger) and Kimberly (Mother, Vendor, Genies, Sultan, Sultana) 

The Mouse Princess is one of those tales about someone being transformed into an animal and then trying to be transformed back again. It's somewhat similar to The Frog Prince except -- well, it's a princess instead of a prince and a mouse instead of a frog. As in many other such stories (and many folktales in general) there are certain tasks to be completed and challenges to be met before the spell is broken. This story is from Scandinavia, specifically Finland, home of many Christmas-ish things like snow and reindeer and evergreens.

Since the story deals with customs and traditions, and we are presenting it at holiday time, we also discuss the holiday tradition of hanging stockings.

Incidentally, there is a reference to the late British author Brian Jacques (yes, it really is pronounced "Jakes"). If you didn't get the joke, you've been missing out on some great reading.

We come to you from Greenville, SC. Our special guest is Ben Lafontaine, a listener who contacted us and asked if he could be involved in a podcast. We're happy to have him, and we're sure you'll agree he did a great job.

Happy listening,

Dennis (Narrator, Lars), Kimberly (Farmer's Daughter, Mouse, Princess) and Ben (Father, Hans)

The Frog and the Sky Princess is a story from Angola in Africa, about a frog and a princess that involves the lead character successfully completing tasks to prove his worthiness to obtain a prize – in this case the hand of the princess in marriage. Yes, it's somewhat like the classic European tale The Frog Prince, though in this case there's no metamorphosis between species. But it's also curiously similar to an American legend.

It was immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 narrative poem The Courtship of Miles Standish, in which military captain Miles Standish wants to court the lady Priscilla, but is a bit too shy, so he sends his friend John Alden with messages on his behalf. Priscilla is indeed won over, but it is Alden she falls for and not Standish. The characters in the story were real people – John Alden did marry Priscilla, and Miles Standish has a state park named after him in Massachusetts (we've camped there); and Longfellow claimed the story was true. But most likely it was just a folk tradition that somehow became attached to actual people.

We come to you from Greenville, South Carolina, where we're doing our annual Christmas tree sale to benefit our company.  We hope things are really hopping for you, and you're having a hoppy holiday season.

Happy Listening,
Dennis (Kimana, Hawk, Sun King) and Kimberly (Narrator, Rabbit, Sky Princess, Frog)