Happy Summer Solstice Northern Hemisphere! (& news on Jasmine Becket-Griffith's upcoming Faerytale Oracle Deck)

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Jasmine Becket-Griffith

Just squeaking in super late in the longest day of the year to say Happy Summer Solstice!

This lovely rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream is by the popular and talented Jasmine Becket-Griffith, who is currently working on a new Faerytale Oracle Deck (with author Lucy Cavendish writing).

Being no stranger to using fairy tales as subjects for her work, I'm so curious to see how she portrays fairy tales and which ones she chooses to use.

Here are a few works she plans to include so far:

Brother & Sister

Rumpelstiltskin

The Little Match Girl

The Red Shoes

Snow White & Rose Red

Ms. Becket-Griffith's Oracle Deck is due out sometime during 2015 from Blue Angel Publishing.

Theater: "The King Stag" (A New Production with Puppets from the Creators of "War Horse")

There's a new production of The King Stag being staged by the University Theater of West Michigan (WMU) and this one has been created under the mentoring of some world class puppeteers (rehearsal photos  - as well as those figuring out the puppet designs - are shown throughout the post).

This is an 18th century Italian Shakespearean-esque fairy tale of love and sorcery being retold with very playful sense of humor in a Commedia dell-Arte** play (albeit with some key differences due to the large scale, multiple-performer controlled puppets). It has "entrapped wizards, talking birds, enchanted busts and magical spells that cause the souls of the characters to switch bodies"*- all while the audience watches with comedic delight.

The classic comedy by Carlo Gozzi is having a revival, of sorts, in theatrical circles in the past few years (very possibly being helped along by the rise in popularity of deer people - and people enchanted as deer - tales from the Celtic to the Native American) and usually, the young man, enchanted in the form of a stag, among the other animal-like characters of the court, is played by humans.  This production is handling the story a little differently:

King Stag is a magically funny fable in which men transform into creatures and creatures transform into men. Through a sophisticated blend of live actors and puppets created and directed by guest artists from the Puppet Kitchen in NYC and Handspring (creators of War Horse) in South Africa,King Stag will challenge the boundaries of imagination and contemporary creativity. Lose yourself in a world of powerful magicians, heart-sick lovers, whimsical servants, and a giant bear—all in pursuit of true love.

The play is intended for people of all ages (barring the very young - the suggested age is 10 and above), and promises to be a lot of fun, especially with the likes of Handspring involved!

Here are one of the University's promotional videos, showing behind-the-scenes of the puppet-building and their performance challenges as a result.

Here's a blurb about the play by Carlo Gozzi from an earlier production. The University Theater production follows the same story, of course. They just tell it a bit differently.

Carlo Gozzi's magical tale brings to life King Deramo, the faithful Angela who loves him, his treacherous prime minister Tartaglia, several hare-brained members of his court, a magician, a parrot, magical stags, and a giant bear.It's a fairy tale for all ages, a story of love and betrayal, intrigue and mirth, magic spells and pageantry.It is a fantastical and at times satirical look at the destructive vices of ambition, jealousy, and lust, and the power of true love to transform and transcend them all.And like all good fairy tales, "The King Stag" is not only about enchantment. It's also enchanting.

If you love Commedia Dell-Arte, this is one play you will want to keep your eye out for. Every production I've seen mentioned dives deeply into the Italian street theater tradition and really, just looks like a lot of fun. You can see some performance photos by The Curtain Theater in California HERE. They have one stag puppet and make wonderful use of masks and stage their play as if it were being performed in an Italian street.

There's also a completely different and modern take on The King Stag, though still using Commedia Dell'Arte, by the Shanghai Academy HERE, and it should be mentioned that Julie Taymor also designed a production of The King Stag early in her theater career as well. You can see some photos from that HERE.

The performance premiered yesterday on April 3rd (Thursday) and will run through the 13th. You can find more details on times and about tickets HERE.

*Quote about the play elements from a different production HERE.

** Commedia Dell’Arte is a Rennaisance Italian Street Theater Form which is known for broad comic situations featuring stock characters (many of which are recognizable today), physical comedy, improvisation and clowning.

YASIV Visual Recommendation Search

Brother and Sister Visual Poem by Terri Windling

I couldn't think of a way to make the title of the post interesting but I think a lot of you may enjoy this great new, free service called YASIV. It's essentially a search engine connected to amazon.com which suggest books "like" a title you search for and books others bought after they purchased the book you're interested in. It also gives you a handy list on the left when it's done making it's connections (which you can watch it do) and, when it's settled you can move the page around as if it were a giant (clickable) piece of paper.

Galley Cat has mentioned the service more than once the past week and I have to admit it is a lot of fun to use.

Just one set of "branches" the YASIC engine found for Grimm's Household Tales. The actual "page" (clickable & movable) is MUCH larger.

 About Yasiv 

Yasiv is a visual recommendation service that helps people to choose the right product from Amazon's catalog. Being it a book, a perfume or a video game - Yasiv finds anything what is sold on Amazon.com. 

Let's face it: We often decide what to buy based on what others are buying. And it's not a bad thing after all. If something is bought by many of our friends there has to be a reason for that. Maybe it's good and worth its money? This is where Yasiv steps in: it shows what people are buying with other products. A link between two products means that they are often bought together. By simply observing the network of products one may guess what has more popularity and what has less. 

The site is really in it's early stages and there are many things that we want to fix. But to know what's important and what's not we need your help. Please tell us what do you like and what you don't? We would really love to hear from you. 

Yasiv is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com with no additional cost to customers. 

Andrei Kashcha 

I put in Grimm's Household Tales as an example for you but it works with any title available (or visible) through amazon.

When you click on any cover the information will come up summarized (and, again, clickable) at the right. You will also see the network connections to the book highlighted by the lines and arrows turning yellow.

It even has a product link paste function so you can literally search visually - and not just for books! Check the demo video below showing what happens:

Very fun and useful in quite a number of ways if you like to have your information presented visually! I only wish you could have the option of showing related items (eg gifts) as well as books altogether (like a product version of a visual collage on a topic or story, such as the lovely Brother and Sister visual poem of Terri Widling's at the head of the post, which shows text, images and found items) or choose to search books separately.

You can start your own searches HERE.

Speaking of interconnectedness, there's one more thing you may be interested in: I did a google image search for "connected fairy tales" and among a lot of random things there were a few that made sense: The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente, Into the Woods musical, Jim Henson's The Storyteller, Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue, ABC's Once Upon A Time, NBC's Grimm, A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz, Bill Willingham's Fables and the Brother and Sister visual poem by Terri Windling (though how it found the latter I have no idea). Various books by A.S. Byatt appeared as well.

Note: In case you're wondering: I have no affiliation with amazon. I'm just posting about the service because I think it's a great research/hunting tool for visual people, which many fairy tale lovers are. :)

Bear and Bird and Other Fairy Tale Work of Allison Reimold

This also caught my eye recently - a new work by the incredibly talented  Allison Reimold for Bear and Bird Boutique and Gallery. It appears this work was commissioned for the boutique in addition to the gallery and will be available as a t-shirt (take note!).

I thought the piece had an instant fairy tale feel (obviously Snow White & Rose Red spring to mind but so do a number of other bear-based fairy tales). If you look around the Bear and Bird site you'll see more renderings of bears, birds and girls and, not surprisingly, a lot of them have a fairy tale quality to them, even with the huge range of styles used.

You can find the blog HERE (where you can see a working sketch if the image posted here) and the gallery HERE.

BUT WAIT!

Seven Ravens by Allison Reimold

You must, must, must visit Allison Reimold's website & gallery to see a LOT more less common fairy tale based pieces! She's created gorgeous paintings based on Seven Ravens, The Flower Queen's Daughter, The Tiger's Bride, Brother and Sister, The Girl with Silver Hands, The Flower Princess, The Three Witches and The Dragon Hunter* (you can see much larger versions HERE on the Behance Network) and there is a LOT more mythic work on her blog HERE.

Brother and Sister by Allison Reimold

I'm seriously hoping she's illustrating a book of fairy tales that will be available for purchase but I can't find any information on such a project as yet although there appear to be prints for sale HERE. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. :)

*Note: Apart from the film, I'm not familiar with a fairy tale called The Dragon Hunter. It doesn't appear to be based on St. George either. If anyone digs anything up feel free to share in a comment. :)

How Fairy Tales Can Nourish Children's Bodies (Article)

This article by Nancy Mellon discusses both the power of storytelling and how the imagery in fairy tales can be used to promote healthy thinking toward our own heart, lungs, liver and more. The suggestion is that we can promote healthy body thinking in children by telling them such stories and fairy tales.I found the stories discussed particularly interesting as most of them aren't well known. The writer concentrates on Grimm tales so those who've read them all will find them familiar.Here are a couple of excerpts:

How do stories nourish children's organs as they grow?... We can look with wonder and fascination at the fundamental archetypes of our organs to find characters and plot structures that express them.

Editors note (from the end): Stories have many levels of meaning and many possible interpretations... Contemplation and meditation about the images in these stories and how they may describe organ functions can reveal to connections.

The fairy tales discussed are:

• The Twelve Huntsman (a true bride tale)
  

• Jorinde and Joringel

• The Juniper Tree

• Little Brother and Little Sister

• Two Brothers

• The Queen Bee (another Simpleton who-is-kind-of-heart wins story)

• Gutta Percha (by George MacDonald)

• The Prince Who Feared Nothing

• The Frog King

A few other stories are mentioned too (eg Great Expectations) but the emphasis is on fairy tales throughout.Here's the article:

How-Do-Stories-Nourish-Childrens-Organs-As-They-Grow -

It's one way of using stories I haven't heard of before and although I admit I'm skeptical about children picking up this information subconsciously, I'm all for promoting health of mind and body through fairy tales.
You can download the article if you'd like to keep a copy HERE.

* All images are from the excellent fairy tale series "The Storyteller" by Jim Henson & Co. There's an overview of the epiosdes/tales with summary and images HERE and you can get your own copy of the DVD set which includes the Greek Myth series too, HERE.