Would you mind giving us an insight into what your show/event/performance is?
Times have always troubled in some way or another, stories tell us this. We have often allowed greed to cloud our judgement, hungry beasts have long lurked in the dark, stoking our rage, feasting of the spoils of conflict. Tyrant kings have always wielded power with a heavy hand. The permacrisis continues to unfurl before us – climate change, political unrest, division and rising fascism may feel heavy, insurmountable – too much for one person to deal with alone, but we have dealt with all of this before.
However, meeting these challenges requires us to face them head on. Apathy is our weakness – distraction forces us to maintain the status quo, even prop up those in power that feed fires of division, spread fear and hate. Every one of us can pay close attention to the stories being told around about us, to look carefully at who is telling them, and realise the power we hold to challenge those in power. However, this first requires us to raise our heads from the sand.
The Ostrich Principle is a piece of storytelling theatre that blends folk song and story to explore what it means to make choices and take action in tough times.
Tell us about the creative team and the process involved?
This piece is devised by two traditional oral storytellers based in Edinburgh – David Hughes and Kirsten Milliken. We have worked together for a few years and have talked at length about these themes that crop up in stories and we decided that now was the time to create something together. Oral storytelling is a brilliant art form as we can draw from a wealth of existing lore, knowledge and stories to craft something new.
We first decided that we wanted to use Peggy Seeger’s 1969 Song of Choice as a frame to hang the piece together. The song warns of the danger of political apathy in the face of rising fascism.
From there, we each chose stories that we both love that had some connection to the themes we wanted to draw out. We sought out ways to find humour, levity, and a throughline to link things together – to get the stories speaking to each other. Both of us work with traditional oral stories, and as such, there’s no script to write. Storytelling is a living craft, so we keep it ‘on the tongue’ so the stories can shift and change with us and feed of the energy in the room. It’s part improv, part theatre, fully magic!
How does it feel coming to (back to) the Fringe?
I’ve (David) done the Fringe a couple of times before, both at the Scottish Storytelling Centre with Land Under Wave and TÁIN. This is Kirsten’s Fringe debut! We’re both excited and nervous to be part of the Fringe lineup this year. It’s a thrill to bring new work to the Fringe and we’re excited to see what comes from our run at the Storytelling Centre.
We’re really grateful to the Scottish Storytelling Centre for providing us a platform to share this piece. Even as locals, there are so many barriers and risks to bringing new work to the Fringe, especially as costs for everything continues to rise. We’ve created this piece off our own backs, with no funding and on a shoestring budget – what we think the Fringe is really about. We couldn’t do this without the support of the Storytelling Centre and the team there who work hard to curate a programme that celebrates the traditional arts.
With shows from all over the world at the Fringe, what sets yours apart?
So much of the Fringe programme is labelled as ‘storytelling’, yet the craft of traditional oral storytelling and the spoken word is under-reviewed and somewhat undervalued amidst the plethora of theatre and stand-up across the Fringe programme. With storytelling, there’s no fourth wall, and we’re not actors. We perform as ourselves, and this gives us a really unique perspective to performance – we address the audience directly, eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart.
We’re bringing a piece of Scottish traditional oral storytelling to the world stage in the Edinburgh Fringe, finding ways to (hopefully) bring the craft to new audiences. To explore the tension that exists within artistic expression to explore both escapism and harsh reality in a way that galvanises and inspires hope while also remaining true to the challenges we face.
On that, is there anything in the production or production team’s backgrounds which influences the way the show is performed or told?
We both work at storytellers and bring ourselves into the all the stories that we tell. We have co-created, co-produced and co-perform this piece in tandem. We both work in engagement and education – David has a background in youth work and environmental education and Kirsten is also a visual artist with a background in policy. As such, we am interested in looking at the world through a lens of relationality – exploring how to we relate to each other, the living world and the systems that we live under. I (David) am particularly interested in critical pedagogy, from thinkers like Paulo Freire, and storytelling is a brilliant way to invite audiences to consider themselves as active participants in culture rather than just seeing ourselves as passive consumers of entertainment.
We both tell stories that we love, and we are both drawn to darker, more challenging themes within stories… As such, the narrative of this piece works with some weighty themes, yet we always love to find the ways to bring absurdity, lightness and humour to build trust and take audiences with us on the journey.
Is there anything specific you’re hoping the audience will take away?
We hope that The Ostrich Principle inspires people to see the world through a lens of story. To look carefully at the stories being told and be critical of those that are telling them.
We hope to stir a strong response, one that galvanises action and civic participation.
Your Ideal audience is in attendance, who’s watching? Or more importantly – who isn’t…?
This is a politically charged piece, and it uses story and song to explore the challenges we face in the modern day. We are less interested in furthering greater political divide between left and right but rather inviting everyone to the table to better understand how narrative is often wielded as a weapon by those in power. The audience we hope to most influence is those who perhaps consider themselves politically disengaged or apathetic.
There are many people who are disillusioned by the. By getting this piece up and running during the Edinburgh Fringe we hope that this can become a piece of theatre we can take beyond the Fringe and out towards audiences that perhaps haven’t engaged with storytelling and traditional arts before.
It’s an intense month, so where you’re able, how do you plan to relax, and are there any other shows you intend to see or want to recommend?
The Scottish Storytelling centre has a fab programme of events on during the Fringe, all
celebrating the traditional arts. We’re keen to check out some of the events on there, like Through the Shortbread Tin and Troubled Waters. The Loud Poets also deliver a phenomenal show each year showcasing the spoken word. Beyond the Storytelling Centre I’m also excited to see Niall Moorjani’s Kanpur: 1857.
As always, during the Fringe, it’s important to find those times away from the hustle and frenetic energy of the city. Edinburgh has a wealth of fantastic greenspaces to explore, and I will certainly be making an effort to listen to the birds among the trees and touch some grass on the down time!
The Ostrich Principle runs at Venue 30, George Mackay Brown Library at Scottish Storytelling Centre
Runs: 11th – 23rd August at 18:15pm
Interested in being featured on our Have a Gander page? With many previews and Q&As lined up, we’re always happy to chat about including your show in future articles. Please do get in touch through the contact page to feature in an upcoming ‘Have A Gander’