Theater: "Bluebeard's Dollhouse"

Charles Perrault's murderous fairy tale "Bluebeard" merges with Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" in this haunting, immersive promenade-style theatrical event by Combustible Company. Marriage, violence and the power of secrets converge as this production winds through the unique and intimate spaces of the Hill House. A murder-mystery unfolds using theater, dance, puppetry and live music, taking the audience on a seductive journey through the suffocating marriage of Torvald and Nora, underscored by the brutality of Bluebeard's murderous compulsion.

Well this sounds... disturbing-yet-amazing. Bluebeard's Dollhouse, is a new take on the never-nice Bluebeard tale and sounds quite intriguing. With curiosity as one of the key (heh) themes in the tale, it's surprising we don't see more murder-mystery or procedural framing for retelling this story. And a bonus? They're partnering with the Minnesota Historical Society to give you that extra haunted (doll) house feeling, using three of the available floors of the Hill House Mansion to stage the performances. Sounds like an immersive experience.

Combustible Company seem to have taken this show beyond a simple retelling and are looking at the tale a little deeper, and with an unusual slant. There's an interesting interview you can read HERE with the creators about how they came to this "mash-up", and how they will be using the various rooms, moving the audience around from time to time I'm excerpting some tale pertinent bits below:

Erik: ...it's not as crazy as it may seem. Both stories are captivity tales in their own ways and both contain a measure of violence. In one story it’s physical and in the other it’s emotional. Both contain secrets that threaten to destroy the heroine. Kym: As I was researching the Bluebeard fairy tale, I was struck by the power that marriage had over a young woman’s life – how Bluebeard’s bride was essentially held captive as wife, even as his property – and that the only real agency she had was to explore forbidden knowledge. This reminded me a lot of Nora in Ibsen’s play: she is defined by the institution of marriage, infantilized by her husband, and she harbors a secret that reveals both Torvald’s and her own true natures. Bluebeard, Torvald, and Nora are each “destroyed” by the revelation of their secrets, and yet, especially for Nora, this shattering of the mask is the promise of freedom.
Erik: Setting Bluebeard’s Dollhouse in essentially a 19th-century castle reinforces the intersection of the stories we’re weaving together and creates an atmosphere that’s simultaneously grandiose and intimate. 

What specific types of puppets are you using in this show?Erik: We have a number of dolls, both found and constructed, that will be puppeted by actors themselves, but will also be manipulated either directly or indirectly by other actors.
Kym: We will [also] be animating found objects: suitcases, knives, keys, mannequins, dolls. Everything is alive in this fairytale world. In the Bluebeard story, even the key is alive – it bleeds, telling Bluebeard of his wife’s transgression. (You can read the whole interview HERE.)

Digging for a little more information on the use of the Bluebeard tale, we found this "Support Bluebeard's Dollhouse" page, which explains a little more.

By merging Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Perrault’s Bluebeard we create a new story, a “captivity tale” about the fight for personal emergence and acceptance that many face in our society. The struggle to “become human” and the emotional and physical violence that occurs when our humanity is limited by social constructs resonates most powerfully. In both stories the main characters struggle to be known for all that they are and hope for the redeeming power of love. They seek to escape the confines of society and reveal the “secrets” that contain the fullness of their humanity. In this marriage of stories both Nora and Torvald/Bluebeard act upon each other as catalysts for change, embodying our own need to confront terrifying truths locked away within ourselves and venture beyond the stultifying comfort of the Dollhouse into dynamic and transformative interaction with our world. They must transcend old notions of love and the rituals that anchor the status quo in their lives and risk moving into new definitions of themselves.

Perhaps the most informative of all, is this video, in which the creators explain their concept and "set the stage", literally:

This sounds like it's going to either be an amazing and unforgettable experience, or be so continuously bizarre for the audience the experience will head quickly into sensory overload. It makes us wish we had the choice to go.

It sounds perfect for some fairy tale themed Halloween entertainment!

Bluebeard's Dollhouse premieres on Friday September 30th 2016, with additional performances on October 1st, October 6th-8th and October 14 & 15. Each performance day has two times to choose from.

Boston Begins City-Wide Fairy Tale Reading & Discussion Of Kelly Link's "The Faery Handbag"

Charles Vess - The Faery Handbag (from The Faery Reel)

Yes. It's not a traditional fairy tale, but Kelly Link's Nebula and Hugo award wining novelette The Faery Handbag is one of those few "new fairy tales" that have stuck with us ever since we first read it, The Faery Reel: Tales From Within the Twilight Realm (Ellen Datlow & Terri Winding 2004). We have read a lot of "new fairy tales" and while the writing is usually lovely and, occasionally, a story will resonate with us, not many of those stories sink into our subconscious fairy tale soup and stay there, becoming part of the shared language. 

A very strange thing, to us, is that we remember reading it for the first time, and, while thinking it was kinda neat, though more modern, more magic realism than fairy tale, not what we would have thought as "fairy tale", so just went on to read the rest of the volume. But somehow the ideas and the story wouldn't go away and we found ourselves thinking about the story in the following days and well after that. We haven't looked closely at why this is. We agree the story feels more like a modernized Victorian fairy tale to us than a "classic" one - not our preferred tale types - but the ideas... they feel very like they fit, right in Faerie Land, and by Faerie Land we mean the land in which fairy tales take place, whether fairies appear there or not.

Magic bags that hold things larger than themselves aren't a new concept in tales. We admit we are quite enamored of the idea that you can pack an entire room - or house! - into a carpet bag (Mary Poppins, Merlin in the Sword and the Stone) and simply carry it with you to your new abode. Magic purses, sacks and knapsacks have been able to capture, tame and contain everything from the sea to Death (The Soldier and Death), not to mention come in useful for benevolent gift givers during the Yule and Christmas season. The classic rabbit in a hat magician's staple, is a variant of these as well. Modern fantasy films employ this idea regularly too, but Link brings a fresh take to this delightful idea.

But back to the news.

The annual One City One Story movement, launched as part of the Boston Book Festival, is a pretty neat idea. Here's what it is:

One City One Story is the Boston Book Festival’s version of an all-city read, but instead of a book, we print and distribute a short story. Our goal is to make a short story available to all, free of charge, to spread the joy of reading for pleasure among the teens and adults of our city, and to create a community around a shared reading experience.

As part of this initiative, in the past they have offered online translations and downloads, led citywide discussions, leading up to a town-hall style discussion with the author, library discussions, distributed the story throughout the city for free in multiple languages, held a writing contest, online reading groups and discussions with the author.

Shaun Tan's illustration for The Faery Handbag
is very different from Charles Vess'
but equally intriguing

This year they've chosen Kelly Link's The Faery Handbag, which means, people are having conversations and discussing fairies and fairy tales, especially in a modern context, in many different places in one city. Not entirely coincidentally, the story is also set in the greater Boston area, so locals are even more likely to imagine fairy tale magic just around the corner.

If you haven't heard of it, you will find many references to it. Here's a great way to introduce the central concept, by way of a discussion on fabulism:

Fabulism is a curious way to explore and understand the ordinary. In Link’s story, the speaker spends her time hunting for this handbag. It’s black, made from dog-skin, with a clasp of bone that can open three different ways:

 If you opened it one way, then it was just a purse big enough to hold […] a pair of reading glasses and a library book and pillbox. If you opened the clasp another way, then you found yourself in a little boat floating at the mouth of a river. […] If you opened the handbag the wrong way, though, you found yourself in a dark land that smelled like blood. That’s where the guardian of the purse (the dog whose skin had been sewn into a purse) lived.

Fabulism is a lot like this purse. It seems to belong to this world, but doesn’t follow all of the rules. It beckons you. It’s off. The more you explore it, the more mystery and power it has.

You can find the many, many different places they're giving out the story for free in a list HERE.

The Faery Handbag - Artist unknown

You can read the story online HERE or download an English, Spanish or Russian PDF, or a Kindle or Ebook version HERE (more languages coming apparently).

On September 28th there will be a discussion of The Faery Handbag, care of Boston's NPR, WBUR, and they promise other discussions throughout the community to be announced soon as well. There's also a writing prompt for a contest with prizes. (Gotta love that!)

Want more food for thought? Again from the highly recommended article on Diving into the Faery Handbag: On Fabulism:

The greatest part of the faery handbag is that there’s a wrong way to open it — meaning a dangerous way, a way that can eat you alive. And it’s that third compartment or “way of opening up” that separates the magical realism of childhood stories from the magical realism of stories for adults.

And because the proposed discussion questions are great to kick your brain into gear, even if you haven't read the story, we are putting the discussion prompts and questions below. Enjoy!

Chris Riddell - lady with carpet bag from sketchbook

Discussion Questions1. How did the jump between times/focuses affect your reading of the story?

2. Was Jake’s decision to go into the bag justified? Why or why not? Why do you think Zofia refused to let Genevieve go after him? 

3. After Zofia dies Genevieve becomes the official heir and guardian of the bag. What does this role mean if the bag is lost?  

4. Genevieve is a headstrong teenager entirely wrapped up in thoughts of her missing boyfriend and the fantastical world her grandmother taught her about. Does this make it difficult for you to sympathize with her or trust her as a narrator? Why? 

5. What lost item (like the Sesame Street shirt) would you like to find at The Garment District? What is the significance to you of finding something you thought was lost forever? 

6. How might this story have changed if Jake had not gotten expelled and MIT had not rescinded his acceptance? 

7. What is the importance of Scrabble tiles also acting as divination tiles in the story? Does it affect the way you read Zofia and Genevieve’s relationship to the game? 

8. What do you think will happen to Genevieve after this story ends? 

9. Does Zofia’s death (or absence, if you follow the thought that she didn’t actually die) force Genevieve to act differently than she would have before? If so, what is the difference?  

10. Do the characters in this story remind you of people you know? Is this affected by the familiar setting (greater Boston). Does this change the way you read the fantastical elements of the story? How? 

Writing Prompt 

In 500-700 words describe what you would expect or hope to see after disappearing into your own faery handbag for several decades. Email your story to info@bostonbookfest.org by Friday, September 30 for a chance to win a BBF prize package, including a signed copy of this year’s story!

The Boston Carpet Bag newspaper, 1851-1853

"Erstwhile" Volume 3 Is Coming! (& You Can Help)

If you've been following this blog for a few years you'll be familiar with Erstwhile comics - the amazing team that rewrite and illustrate little known Grimm tales in an effort to bring them back into circulation. You may not know, however, that Erstwhile are preparing to print they're final volume... with a little help.

If you read any other fairy tales blogs (which we dearly hope you do! They are all unique treasures!) you will know how much all of us committed fairy tale folk love this project and heartily lend support whenever we can. For a cliff notes version (ie. short but highly informative) of the team behind Erstwhile and just what these comics are  - and why they're worth your time - Fairy Tale Fandom has a nice write-up and tribute HERE.

Erstwhile comics are one of the only retellings that actually add to the tales without really impairing the originals in any way. That's... amazing. As a bonus, these comics are set in different times and have a wonderful diversity of characters as well. Just take a look at some of the individual tale covers scattered through this post.

The comics and volumes are largely a labor of love so each collection (volume) has been helped into existence by way of a Kickstarter fund and Erstwhile 3 is doing the same. This time around they've gotten extra creative with their supporter rewards too.

There is just 28 days to go, (at this writing) with just under $4 000 of the goal (of $15 000) remaining, so you have just a few weeks to snag some exclusives and be part of history.


The stories in Erstwhile 3 will include:

• The Singing Springing Lark 

• King Thrushbeard 

• The Wolf & the Man 

• The Twelve Huntsmen 

• Sweetheart Roland 

• The Ungrateful Son 

• The Leftovers 

• The Wolf & Seven Kids 

• Mother Holle 

• The Golden Key (exclusive to the book)

And here are the Erstwhile comic collections so far:

One thing we don't see mentioned much, with regard to Erstwhile, is the fascinating discussions they inspire  as each page, or set of pages, was released. Their pattern was that they would upload pages twice a week from a story in progress, with a whole lot of interested comic fans watching and commenting as they (often) read this story, for the first time, in installements. The comments archives for each tale and page are really interesting to read! (Make sure to have a big cup of coffee with you, if you dive in. There's s LOT to read!)

You can check out the comics on the web for yourself HERE, to find out even more about this wonderful long term project. We're sad to hear this is the end of the series but the world of fairy tale appreciation is wider and more informed due to theses women's amazing work.

Hats off  to you Ladies!

Labyrinth Fan Alert!

We admit we have a soft spot for Labyrinth, for many reasons, and there are some upcoming products that fans might like to keep an eye on as they're releasing very soon... (September 12th! Though, if you're very lucky you may find a pre-release in hidden portals around the web.)

I will just use the ad copy, as it says it all:

Be careful what you wish for!

Jareth, the Goblin King, is no slouch
when it comes to granting wishes!

Sarah must rely on Worm and the dwarvish Hoggle for
help to solve the Labyrinth and save her brother!

The playful beast, Ludo, is coming as a super-sized 6" Pop!

                                     Collect the whole line of Labyrinth Pop! figures this September!

                              

Giant Ludo! And there's a Hot Topic exclusive, featuring the Jareth Sarah saw at the ball (but where's Sarah in her ballgown?!) 

I wouldn't mind a version of the Junk Lady either. She represents so much in terms of people's struggle to come to terms with childhood stories and loves...

And then there's also a wonderful-looking book that Corey Godbey (another favorite contemporary fairy tale illustrator) has been working on a while: Jim Henson's Labyrinth Tales. Here are some screen shots.

Jim Henson's Labyrinth Tales will be released on September 27th 2016. Pre-orders are available through Amazon.

"The One Hundred Nights of Hero" - A New Graphic Novel in the Tradition of Arabian Nights

In the tradition of The Arabian Nights, a beautifully illustrated tapestry of folk tales and myths about the secret legacy of female storytellers in an imagined medieval world.

What are the Thing trees, indeed. Are you intrigued? I am!

This new graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg, was released in the UK on September 1st (you can find it HERE) and will be released in the US on December 6th (pre-orders available through Amazon).

Here's the rest of the blurb:

In the Empire of Migdal Bavel, Cherry is married to Jerome, a wicked man who makes a diabolical wager with his friend Manfred: if Manfred can seduce Cherry in one hundred nights, he can have his castle--and Cherry. 

But what Jerome doesn't know is that Cherry is in love with her maid Hero. The two women hatch a plan: Hero, a member of the League of Secret Story Tellers, will distract Manfred by regaling him with a mesmerizing tale each night for 100 nights, keeping him at bay. Those tales are beautifully depicted here, touching on themes of love and betrayal and loyalty and madness. 

As intricate and richly imagined as the works of Chris Ware, and leavened with a dry wit that rivals Kate Beaton's in Hark! A Vagrant, Isabel Greenberg's One Hundred Nights of Hero will capture readers' hearts and minds, taking them through a magical medieval world.

I don't know a lot about it, except to say that I'm definitely curious, and this writer and illustrator has a habit of wowing critics so this one's on my "to watch for" list. It helps that The Guardian has a brief but lovely write up too. Here's an excerpt from the review:

Hero tells stories to distract (Manfred, her husband's friend), taking in dark swamps, floating greenhouses, cursed daughters and a harp that sings of murder. Danger lurks within these tales and after each dangling cliffhanger, but Hero weaves a web that has soon snared the suitor, the sentries and most of the townsfolk. Greenberg’s artwork is whimsical, and her plots reference countless fables. 

Greenberg has generously previewed quite a few pages  and scenes, on both her Twitter feed, Tumblr and Instagram (often using them as commentary on her excitement and nervousness about the upcoming release, which work so very well) so I've assembled, what appears to be the beginning (or very near the beginning) of the story. Take a look.

 

Page45 (yes, that's the name of the comic book news site) has a more extensive review, which I'm including an excerpt of, since it mentions all those things that we love: plot twists, folk and fairy tales and the power of story:

Will handmaiden Hero similarly succeed in saving the virtue of her beloved mistress Cherry from the predatory advances of her husband’s lascivious and quite ridiculous best mate? Whom her husband’s encouraged for the sake of a bet and proving a point! Hero’s certainly won over the guards with her carefully chosen and craftily spun yarns, but where has the one hundred and first night gone?
The answers will prove elevating. I even anticipate an air punch or two.
This is a book about stories and storytelling; of sisterhood and story spreading...
...What Greenberg has done here with the Scheherazade scenario – which elements she has incorporated and how she’s repositioned them – is ever so clever and makes for much mockery of man-pride.

Yes. We definitely want to read this.

To give you more of an idea of Greenberg's style in comics and storytelling you can read her graphic short story The River of Lost Souls, for free, online HERE. It will especially appeal if you also enjoy myth and begins with a forgotten coin on the banks of the river Styx...

Fairy tale bonus of the day:

I admit I was torn as to whether to make this one it's own post as I'm just as thrilled about this illustrated story as a new Scheherazade-based graphic novel! 

Isabel Greenberg and award winning author Zoe Gilbert, (whose short stories are often inspired by folk tales and folklore), were asked by Microsoft (stay with me) to "project test" the new suite of tools in Office 2016, designed to make online collaboration easier. They had just two weeks to create, from scratch, a completely new illustrated story and the result is The Mud-witch. (Yes those are webbed hands you see there!)

I initially forgot to embed the video, (sorry!) showing the collaboration and creation of words and images. It's fascinating, just from a story-creation point of view, plus, you know, folklore!

(Did your ears perk up? Mine did and it was worth the dive into the PDF available online HERE - if you can't see it embedded below - to read and view it.)

"Cloud Cuckoo Land" Is An Aerial Avian Fairy Tale

Conceived and Directed by Djahari Clark, “Cloud Cuckooland” is a new theatrical spectacle inspired by ancient Greek tragedies. Follow a girl who, upon her death, is offered a chance to become Queen of the Birds!  But her Queendom is contingent on leaving her heart behind...a doomed existence the watchful birds enjoy to the very end.

Having opened this past Thursday night, September 8th, theatrical "spectacle" Cloud Cuckoo Land proves to be a different sort of fairy tale, mixed wonderfully with myth. As an added bonus, it includes corvids (crows, ravens) and a phoenix, among other interesting birds (jackdaws, storks, peacocks, flamingos, magpies, vultures...).

From a review in the Brooklyn Paper:

The show — which includes dance, puppetry, aerial acrobatics, spoken word, and song — follows a girl who dies and enters a fantasy world where she becomes Queen of the Birds. But she can only wear the crown if she leaves her heart behind. Clark said that show will take viewers on a roller coaster of emotions.“It’s a beautiful dark fairy tale that will break your heart a little bit, but it’s going to make you fall in love again,” she said.... “I was very drawn to Greek theater already and I realized that this would be the basis,” she said. “The structure of my play was going to be coming out of ancient Greek tragedies and birds were going to be telling my story.”The show features nine performers dressed in ornate avian costumes and puppets, which Clark said are the perfect blend of child-like and mature.

You can see a lot of theatrical photos, including behind-the-scenes HERE on the official Facebook page.

I admit I'm very curious about the narrative. The photos on the Facebook page give a lot of clues and do give very much a fairy tale vibe across the span of the show - somewhere between The Magic Flute, the Firebird ballet and Cirque du Soleil with some Julie Taymor influence (think Disney's Broadway version of The Lion King) thrown in.

Showing at the House Of Yes in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, the show runs for two long weekends: Sept. 8–10 and 15–17 at 7 pm.

Unlike the dance parties held there, all ages are welcome.

Tickets available HERE are $20–$30