Hear us and Hasten: created and performed
By Ffion Phillips and Ailsa Dixon
Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival, 1 September 2022
I saw this piece on the main stage of Aberystwyth Arts Centre, where it made a huge impact on a festival audience of a wide age range. I know it has also been performed in the round by firelight in a Celtic Roundhouse at Y Felin Uchaf in North West Wales. It is clearly very adaptable in terms of performance space.
The two storytellers, working throughout as a brilliant team, created a striking opening which brought the space to life. Speaking in call and response, with one on the stage and the other at the back of the auditorium, they took us, in our imagination, on a sensory journey from the theatre into the wild.
The core material, two traditional tales, from their respective homelands, is entwined with personal stories, bold stagecraft and striking sensory descriptions of the beauty of nature. The performance moved me to tears, because of the strength and simplicity with which the storytellers conveyed their hopes and fears for the future of the planet.
Telling in English, Welsh and Scots, they wove three languages seamlessly together and incorporated strong physicality into the piece. Especailly striking was a section in which each took a turn to be manoeuvred by the other into various positions, which they held while speaking from personal experience about struggling with issues of body image.
Their simple set, a great hoop of greenery standing vertically on the stage, became a door through which they moved in and out of the story worlds. It also became a visual expression of the three-fold connection of storyteller, story and listeners, as they climbed through and around it, helping each other to unroll and tie long green ribbons to it, to create a triangle across the hoop.
I felt completely drawn into the world of the piece: the oral skills and fluency of the tellers were exceptional. A friend who is also a storyteller came to hug me, in tears, at the end and said, ‘Well, the future of storytelling is in safe hands’. She was right. This is an extraordinary and moving piece of performance storytelling, created and performed by two highly talented storytellers.
Fiona Collins, Storyteller, 21/11/22
By Ffion Phillips and Ailsa Dixon
Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival, 1 September 2022
I saw this piece on the main stage of Aberystwyth Arts Centre, where it made a huge impact on a festival audience of a wide age range. I know it has also been performed in the round by firelight in a Celtic Roundhouse at Y Felin Uchaf in North West Wales. It is clearly very adaptable in terms of performance space.
The two storytellers, working throughout as a brilliant team, created a striking opening which brought the space to life. Speaking in call and response, with one on the stage and the other at the back of the auditorium, they took us, in our imagination, on a sensory journey from the theatre into the wild.
The core material, two traditional tales, from their respective homelands, is entwined with personal stories, bold stagecraft and striking sensory descriptions of the beauty of nature. The performance moved me to tears, because of the strength and simplicity with which the storytellers conveyed their hopes and fears for the future of the planet.
Telling in English, Welsh and Scots, they wove three languages seamlessly together and incorporated strong physicality into the piece. Especailly striking was a section in which each took a turn to be manoeuvred by the other into various positions, which they held while speaking from personal experience about struggling with issues of body image.
Their simple set, a great hoop of greenery standing vertically on the stage, became a door through which they moved in and out of the story worlds. It also became a visual expression of the three-fold connection of storyteller, story and listeners, as they climbed through and around it, helping each other to unroll and tie long green ribbons to it, to create a triangle across the hoop.
I felt completely drawn into the world of the piece: the oral skills and fluency of the tellers were exceptional. A friend who is also a storyteller came to hug me, in tears, at the end and said, ‘Well, the future of storytelling is in safe hands’. She was right. This is an extraordinary and moving piece of performance storytelling, created and performed by two highly talented storytellers.
Fiona Collins, Storyteller, 21/11/22
