1001 tales from a lifelong jester
“Whoever sits on this carpet and wills in thought to be taken up and set down upon other site will, in the twinkling of an eye, be borne thither, be that place near at hand or distant by many a day’s journey and difficult to reach.” The 1001 Arabian Nights
The establishment retaliated by hunting down everyone even remotely involved with the business of flying carpets. The Secret History of Flying Carpets
Continue reading “Twenty Three – The Magic Carpet”The tale of a headteacher and an artist in five parts
Jumping Together – The word consilience was originally coined as the phrase “consilience of inductions” by William Whewell (consilience refers to a “jumping together” of knowledge). The word comes from Latincom- “together” and -siliens “jumping” (as in resilience).
“Creativity seems to be something which links things together…within a new whole, which did not exist before.” Rupert Sheldrake
“Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality” Arthur Koestler
When the angel flew around the world, the angel had a very simple job. The angel had two sacks. One full of wise souls and the other full of fools. All the angel had to do was to ensure an even distribution everywhere in the world – half wise, half fools. But this angel was absent-minded, enjoyed flying a little too much and had a tendency to get lost in angelic daydreams. So, the angel didn’t notice when one of the sacks got snagged on a tree on top of a steep hill. All the souls in that sack dropped out around the hill. That sack was full of fools. A city of fools was built around the hill and the biggest fools of all were the city council.
Firstly, workshops are a relational form and all relationships involved in and around the workshop count. The sum of those relationships creates the power and quality of what is produced. Those relationships begin to manifest when a workshop is requested so the relationship between the requester, in this case that headteacher, and the director who will be responsible for meeting that request, in that case me, is pivotal.
At the turn of the century I wrote and toured a show based on Jewish Tales about that city, Chelm. I played Leonardo De MishMash the greatest painter in the Voyld, a range of other fools such as Dopey Lekitsch and Schmendrick Numbskull. I worked a trio of puppets and opened a story chest that revealed various tales of Chelm whilst Leonardo De MishMash went on his search for wisdom.
Continue reading “Twenty One – Consilience”Traveller, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveller, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveller, there is no road;
only a ship’s wake on the sea.
Antonio Machado Caminante
Maybe 20, maybe 30 years ago I ran a weekend workshop with a group of young people called “Make a Show in a Day”. The idea was simple. All the participants would make puppets and, whilst the puppets were being made, we would find out about their characters and from those new characters we would create a story that would become our show. The realisation of the idea was not so simple. As the parent left, it began to dawn on me that the youngsters, I had been left with were a particularly complex group. For one thing, they didn’t really know each other. For another, there were some ‘special’ characters in there and I had not been forewarned. Still, I had a factor on my side – the puppet making.
Continue reading “Thirteen – I can’t to I can”