Storytelling

I was recently asked to read or perform a story for children at Oslo’s Theatre Museum as part of a wide cultural event to encourage people to get to know their city better. I was given a free reign when it came to material, which made making a choice of story all the more difficult –there are, after all, so many fabulous children’s stories out there –some of my favourites being those of Hans Christian Anderson, Roald Dahl and Aesop. However, ultimately I wrote and performed a story of my own, which was the tale of "Sebastian the Theatre Cat". This had nothing to do with T.S. Eliot or Andrew Lloyd Webber, but concerned my own particular "mascot" Sebastian, with whom I am pictured here, and who already has many fans, being much more of a superstar than I am! The story is set in an old theatre, and tells of how Sebastian (and his animal friends) saved the theatre from burning down, and it is the first of what I hope is a series of tales about this feline character. 

Storytelling for children is one of the most demanding but enrichening performance experiences imaginable; a combination of mutual imagination and rigid focus on the storyline. It is also one of the fundamental acts of performance –how it all started, long, long ago, before there were theatres or stages or the written word, when tales were told around a fire. I felt very priveleged to get back to the roots of what performing is all about, and learned a lot from the experience, not least of which being to find one person in the audience to whom you direct your storytelling. This does not mean neglecting all the others, but gives you a focus point, a receptor, which you can return to, affirming that what you are saying is getting through. This is an old performance trick, but it works.