“Good stories cast enchantments, great stories break them.”
WHO: David Hughes
WHAT: “Three storytellers, trapped in the Otherworld, must perform their music and stories to earn their freedom. Which deserves to return to the human realm? The fair folk in the audience must decide! In this intimate and interactive show, the Young Edinburgh Storytellers (YES) Mark Borthwick, Ailsa Dixon and David Hughes navigate the mystery of emergence and becoming, blending their voices with music to explore queer identities and the rewilding of people and place. Modern Scotland’s living lands contrast with the ancient otherness of the Faeries’ Tír na nÓg (Land Under Wave). ‘Magnificent’ **** (ScotsGayArts.com).”
WHERE: Scottish Storytelling Centre – Netherbow Theatre (Venue 30)
WHEN: 17:45 (60 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
We are a local Edinburgh based company and this is our first Fringe show as a trio. We are all traditional storytellers in our own right but this is our first time navigating the fringe with a piece. The fringe is a great festival to try things out, to get better at performing. It’s high energy, it’s intense, you’ve got to bring your best self to each and every performance.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2022 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
As a trio, we’ve been working with a couple of simple mantras;
- Less is more – we’ve tried to pare back elements of our performance, to make our message clearer to audience members without losing much of the dreamy quality of traditional storytelling.
- ‘Be surprising, but inevitable’ – this is a Sondheim quote. We’ve tried to do this in our show. To provide the audience with a journey, an experience they can join us on, to surprise them but deliver what they expect in an intriguing way.
- Good stories cast enchantments, great stories break them – we’ve been exploring how we tell stories that excite and entertain but also encourage people to think, to go away with questions and consider ‘what was that?’
We are learning as we go, but I feel we have done a good job in integrating some of these ideas into Land Under Wave!
Tell us about your show.
Land Under Wave is an experience of immersive traditional storytelling. The audience are encouraged to enter into the space and shed their human form and embrace their inner fairy. The fairies in Scotland were the spirits of nature and of place, they are intimately connected to the land, in a way that many humans have forgotten. We want people to reconsider their own conneciton to themselves and wide, wild nature. The audience join us at a traditional ceilidh (a gathering) in the court of the fairies, to hear tales of wildness and identity, all carrying truths needed for our times. The audience votes on which story they feel carries the best medicine for the human realm.
We are all storytellers on our own, we came together at a story share night and found we shared a lot in common and thought it’d be fun to join our voices together and work on a project. We produced a longer version of this show for the Scottish International Storytelling Festival in 2022, and refined it for the Edinburgh Fringe 2023. We hope to continue to work together and develop more storytelling that is interesting, engaging and unique, yet still rooted in tradition.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
The Scottish Storytelling centre has a really great programme – it’s all curated and what they offer is some really interesting, heart centered and folky stuff.
No One Is Coming by Wandering Stories Theatre is an excellent piece of solo storytelling blending epic irish myths with deeply personal stories about living with a family member with challenging mental health issues.
Thunderstruck by David Colvin is another one man play about the life of Gordon Duncan, a bagpiper who had an immense impact on bagpipe music. It’s heartbreaking and electric all at once.
Pretty much anything at the Storytelling Centre is great!
We also highly recommend exploring the Free Fringe – there can be some really amazing productions there that don’t necessarily have a big budget like the main fringe scene, but the performers have huge hearts. Support the free fringe, enjoy the show, throw something in the bucket at the end.
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