Red Shoes

Today we returned to a session of storytelling as the Tale Tellers at the Spring Arts and Heritage Centre. This was our last session under the "Shoes" theme. We had accepted "Red Shoes" as one of our titles from a list offered by the Arts centre staff when we were drawing up the entry in the brochure back at the beginning of the year. I don't know whether you know the Hans Christian Anderson story but it makes the Grimm Brothers look like Sesame Street! There is this pair of cursed red shoes which won't stop dancing once you have put them on. The reason the shoes are cursed and the way to break the curse are religious in the original story - and did I mention the amputation and the wooden limb replacements!! Upon hindsight we decided we would take the basic premise of enchanted red dancing shoes but would write our own version instead of using that of Hans Christian Anderson. As I have written our own versions of "The Elves and the Shoemaker", "Puss in Boots" and "Cinderella", it fell to the authoress of our version of the "Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe", i.e. the Best beloved, to come up with our version of the "Red Shoes".

She completed it last night and she performed it to the children this morning. It was a success and although our numbers were down a little from our last session (we have gone monthly now and it was raining?) it was a pleasure to see their enraptured faces as the Best Beloved wove her magic as Ingy-Thingy the Storyteller. As usual she had got the session going with nursery rhymes and shoe songs in rounds and in unison, before I told the short story of the "troll and the Three Billy Goats Gruff". During our London visit we had refound the Piccadilly Market and the little stall with convertible dolls made apparently by nuns (says the Cockney stall holder). We bought three dolls upon which to base short stories and used the first one today which has the troll and underneath the three billy goats.

Ingy-Thingy then told the headline story while I watched the audience - a fully privileged position to be in! I once learned of a director who did that deliberately in his productions. He knew the play intimately and didn't need to watch it. Instead we watched the reaction of the audience and gave his notes to his cast on their performances by what he had observed of the audience.

As Guppy I reprised our very first headline story, "The Elves and the shoemaker", but in a shortened version and in the form of a game I had found online. It was quite ambitious but it seemed to work and one Dad afterwards commented that he would adapt the idea for future children's parties. We perform our stories alongside the giant boot in the foyer of the Spring so we have the children seated on the ground in front of us and usually interspersed with Mums - Dads and grandparents tend to sit at the adjacent coffee tables and chairs. I am not sure the game would have gone so well without the interspersed Mums!

We finished off with our version of "Old MacDonald had a band", which the children like and to which they can contribute.

The next session is the end of November when we are doing "Aladdin" before "The Night Before Christmas" on December 19th as our last session this year. we are already talking about a 2010 season with the Spring.