Storytelling with Michael Harvey

I feel incredibly lucky and priveledged to have worked with producer Naomi Wilds on two Mabinogi inspired shows Hunting the Giant’s Daughter, and Dreaming the Night Field which tour with the production company Adverse Camber, a groundbreaking company that specialises in taking high quality storytelling performances, often with music as a central component, on tour nationwide and internationally. She is also the Artisitc Director of Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival. I was really looking forward to this conversation and it did not disappoint, as you will hear…

• How the translation and invention of contemporary tellings amplify and compliment the manuscript versions
• The richness of experience that audiences have of listening to different tellings of stories they already know
• The bodily presence of certain story characters in the telling
• Naming, summoning and magic
• The interweaving of recognisable character and landscape worlds with the Otherworld
• The cinematic skills of the storyteller

I really enjoyed my conversation with Fiona. She was one of the first professional UK storytellers and tells with great verve, commitment and humour. She was one of the first people to complete a PhD in storytelling and is a pioneer in the field of education and storytelling and was a founder member of the brilliant and brazen Ogresses storytelling group. She has made her home in Wales and regularly tells stories from the Mabinogi to a variety of audiences in Welsh and English. She also speaks French, Italian and Russian!

She leads creative writing groups and has published three books of  Welsh folktales and is currently working on the fourth, all with the  History Press. 

In this podcast Fiona talks inspiringly about many things including…

• The inspiration of The Owl Service by Alan Garner
• The importance of the courses run at Tŷ newydd by Eric Maddern and Hugh Lupton
• The way the continuity of landscape and place names links very old stories with tellers and audiences today
• Cooking as a metaphor for the art of the storyteller
• The difference between the writer’s and the storyteller’s attitudes to traditional narrative
• The value and joy of working on collaborative projects
• Closing the gap between audience and teller
• Dreaming up projects

In this bonus Cath talks about the effort and graft of making these stories live again. She sees it as challenging and rewarding work and, for her, primarily a process with images. This work takes time and effort and is a re-oralisation putting these tales back in the imagination and hearts of the people, and making them real once more by telling them.

I am really pleased to have had the chance to talk to the Cardiff based storyteller Cath Little and find out more about her practice and how she gets herself into the strange material that is the Mabinogi. Cath runs the Cardiff Storytelling Circle, runs events that celebrate the turning year and is warm and generous storyteller with a great singing voice.

In this interview Cath talks about…

• Her connection to the infrequently told Romances of the Mabinogion, particularly Iarlles y Ffynnon / The Lady of the Fountain and Enid a Geraint.
• The inspiring courses run by Hugh Lupton and Eric Maddern at Ty Newydd in Llanystumdwy in North Wales. 
• The haunting image of the flaming tree that dies and lives again   
•  Animism and the old dieties    
• The importance of Caerleon as part of the landscape and her  personal connection   
• Annwfn, the Welsh Otherworld, as a place of deeper learning and knowing, mystery and beauty, awe and wonder   
• Women in the Mabinogi and the heroic female   
• The Mabinogi and Welsh identity

That’s quite a lot in fifteen minutes so don’t  forget the more informal and shorter bonus interview that follows.

I am delighted to present a conversation I had with the storyteller and social enterprise director Dafydd Davies-Hughes who has the good fortune to live in the incomparably beautiful and myth-soaked landscape of the Llŷn Peninsula where he works as a storyteller and is the director of Menter Y Felin Uchaf. 

I was particularly interested in talking to Dafydd because of his close connection to landscape in the Llŷn Peninsula in North West Wales and his commitment to community building. I first met him making traditional Welsh furniture in an Eisteddfod many years ago and was struck by the way he let the natural beauty and form of the wood speak for itself in furniture that was both functional and beautiful. More recently he has devoted himself to building much bigger structures at Menter Felin Uchaf including the amazing roundhouse which has become a lively and well attended venue for storytelling.

Our conversation was wide ranging and included

• the way narrative knowing hides inside academic practice and the bridge between art and science
• story as the breath of landscape
• the need to digest c

Here are my responses to questions from Jenny White of the Western Mail prior to a tour of Dreaming the Night Field (aka the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi) with the storytelling production company Adverse Camber.

A brief introduction about why I wanted to start asking storyteller's why they were telling stories from the Mabinogi in this day and age and the type of questions I thought I might ask