Thursday 10th January, 7.30pm
Brigsteer Village Hall
JOURNEY IN PLACE
Abbi Patrix
Time is suspended above the world as stories gleaned by the storyteller during a whole life spent travelling unfold.
Tales, legends, myths, anecdotes and intimate memories fill pages of his travel diary day after day. Abbi Patrix offers simply to share his love for these stories. To take us away to an unlikely dream world, to an impossible reality. To cross the planet by means of stories.
Balanced between written material and oral improvisation, Abbi Patrix unfurls his stories, giving them a new context each time, always in the live moment, always interacting with the audience, bringing the rich diversity of his repertoire to our ears.
Norwegian fairy tales, African myths, Chinese fantasy and Indian wisdom open an awareness of the world’s diversity, its complexity, its wish for stories in order to understand and amaze.
Between the Eastern sun and the Western moon, you will discover trolls, djinns, dragons, kings and princesses, ministers, salesmen and thieves, as well as frogs, snakes, turtles, monkeys, ravens and owls. Abbi Patrix doesn’t give a whit for genres and frontiers.
In the simplicity of the storyteller’s art, and in one and same journey you will:
– Gather wise and useful advice from a wildlife faerie,
– Admit that trolls aren’t nice and funny little monsters,
– Discover that djinns aren’t always invisible and that they are the ones who gave us music,
– Finally learn how turtles became land dwellers, why dragons also belch out water, and why frogs have such hideous skin…
… without ever forgetting that these stories speak, more than anything else, about us!
WORLD CLASS STORYTELLER, ABBI PATRIX, who trained at the Drama School Jacques Lecoq in Paris, was one of the first to revive the art of storytelling in France and abroad in the eighties. He gave telling stories a new theatrical aspect, using movement and dance, and working on stage with musicians and painters.
HE FOUNDED the first company of storytellers in France in 1980, La Compagnie du Cercle, which is now in residence in the newly-opened arts centre La Maison du Conte, funded to promote and produce storytelling. Last year Abbi Patrix was made artistic director. He has toured widely in France, Canada, the US, Scandinavia and West Africa, as well as appearing in Paris and all the major theatre and storytelling festivals.
ABBI PATRIX’ MATERIAL is of diverse inspiration : The War between Crows and Owls (1994) was adapted from the Indian epic saga, “The Pachatantra”; Possible/Impossible (1996) were African stories told with a percussionist; A Hero’s Death was an adaptation of the Sumerian epic “Gilgamesh”, and Peer Gynt (1998) was an original version of Ibsen’s play. His latest show, To The End of The Earth, is a mixture of personal stories and traditional tales from all over the world.
ABBI PATRIX enjoys crossing different disciplines and traditions: mixing storytellers and musicians from Quebec, Benin or Senegal in the performance Mots croisés – Mondes croisés, mixing actors and storytellers in Peer Gynt, and projecting images with storytellers in Eclats d’Histoires…
In Parole, he worked with a choreographer and a deaf actor, creating a dialogue between a hand, a mouth and a foot.
FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS Abbi Patrix has been leading a team of storytellers who collect tales in new towns outside Paris and record stories in multi-ethnic urban communities, confident that tales of contemporary life will find their place among the myths, legends and epics that are the repertoire of today’s storytellers.
AS DIRECTOR of La Maison du Conte, Abbi Patrix now runs an on-going “laboratory ” for young performers, directing an original workshop for professionals, where narrative is continually enriched by different art forms.