So Summer has sped into Autumn in a blur of colour and leaves bigger than your head floating down from the plane trees. We step out to the scent of bonfires and frost and come back the some tasty homemade pumpkin soup (recipe at the bottom).

We hope you are all well, and are here to update you on the Autumnal taletelling of RRR.

In this message:

• Round Up
  
• This Week! Last chance to see And They Lived...
  
• They Say - a commission for BBC Local Radio Networks
• 40 Winks, Bedtime Stories – RRR's New Role!
• RRR on Twitter and Facebook
  

Round Up
Since returning from the USA, RRR has been taletelling with the Crick Crack Club at the Soho Theatre and at the Barbican as part of their Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow season of performance storytelling, with the support of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Arts Council England.

This Week! Last chance to see And They Lived...
Don't miss the last opportunity to catch Rachel's Edinburgh show And They Lived..., a collection of tales with unexpected endings gathered since she began telling in 2007. It received a host of five and four star reviews over the Festival, and yelps of delight from the London Evening Standard, The Times, NPR and BBC Radio 2, and has been selected by the Pleasance as part of their season of favourites from this year's Fringe. Read the reviews here and come along on Thursday. And They Lived..., 8pm, 12 November, Pleasance Theatre, Carpenters Mews, North Road, London, N7 9EF Box Office - 020 7609 1800

They Say - a commission for BBC Local Radio Networks
RRR's new series begins this coming week on InSpirit with Jumoke Fashola. RRR will be telling six short origin myths in the weeks before Christmas and the programmes will be broadcast from local radio stations across the country at various points during 2010.
They Say, on InSpirit with Jumoke Fashola, 6-9am, 15 November, BBC London 94.9fm


40 Winks, Bedtime Stories - RRR's New Role!
RRR is the new Curator of Tales at London's most chic story night. 40 Winks is David Carter's home and a small hotel bedecked in his eccentric style. Bedtime Stories will take you on a magical trip back in time and rediscover the wonder and beauty of childhood innocence in an atmosphere of dreamy decadence. Tellers tbc (keep an eye on RRR's website), but be assured that RRR is drawing on the community of tellers who can weave wonder with words and the wave of a hand.
The strictly-enforced dress code is pyjamas, nighties and dressing gowns.
Reservations must be made in advance as space is very limited.
£20, 7pm, 9,10,11 December, 109 Mile End Road, London, E1 4UJ, 0207 790 0259, www.40winks.org


RRR on Twitter and Facebook
You can find RRR on Twitter here and on Facebook here. Please join and follow!

More December news shall warm your toes in the coming weeks. RRR is off to tell tales in Belgium this weekend and will be back with more in December. Meanwhile, here's that pumpkin soup recipe:

heat 4tbsp olive oil
add 2 finely chopped large onions and 2 tsps each of turmeric,cumin, white pepper and salt
chop 1kg pumpkin, add all but 200g to the mix
add 2litres vegetable stock
blend the mix with electric blender
boil remaining 200g in salted water for 2mins and add to soup
toast the pumpkin seeds in salt and chilli powder and add as a topping.

Ahhh. Wintry bliss.

Back in the Metropolis

Well hello.

I say I am back, but I suppose the blogosphere is meant to trot along with me wherever I go. However, I decided to leave it behind in the UK whilst I ventured overseas.
Have you noticed that merely traveling abroad is not quite enough to get away from home any more?

Even on the Playa this year I found that the phone which I planned to use for telling the time also told me that I had several new text messages, as a mobile phone company decided for the first time to make profit from the temporary town of 50,000.


Now, back in the midst of the noise I must also be far far away from it. Somehow. Far from email. Far from phones. No good in a library - far too many interesting things to read! Far away from backing music - the rhythm of the music played in cafes gets mixed up with the rhythm of the stories in my head. At last I have found a quiet cafe. It makes good coffee. It has an upstairs room that hardly any other customers venture into. And it plays no music.

The theme for next year's Burn has been announced. It is Metropolis. Like I said, you can't get away.

Egoless(-ish!) Art in an Ego-driven World

I think the thing I find challenging here is people espousing their opinion on me personally (no surprises there I suppose), even if their opinions are mostly highly complimentary so far.

I've come here to share traditional storytelling with people who have not experienced it before, but the downside is that I have people coming in and writing what they think about it as 'theatre' in notebooks, because they have no frame of reference for storytelling as an art in its own right.

This is not the culture I grew up with. I want people to forget about me and point scoring and just have a nice time hearing stories. They think I came here to have them love me and give me sparkly stars but I came here because I love storytelling and I want to share it with them.
There was a time before the stars existed, when people would just sit down and share tales between them, and sure, there were some people who were more engaging than others and it would have just become apparent over time if that was your prevalent skill.

Sidmouth Folk Festival. Place of my childhood. Tribes and traditional folk performers came from all over the world to perform. I cannot imagine what that festival would be like if critics had then come along to compare and rate the various ancient ritual dances and epic ballads.
I want to be surrounded by folkies and storytellers.
Do excuse me, I'm off to knit some tea.

July...August...September...see you somewhere

8 September 2009, 18:30 - Cornelia Street Café, New York, USA
Open since 1977, the CSC has hosted performers from Suzanne Vega to Terry Jones.
RRR performs a featured set in the Café's monthly storytelling night run by Greek American taleteller Barbara Aliprantis.
$7 (includes one drink), 29 Cornelia Street, NYC, 10014
www.corneliastreetcafe.com






1-7 September 2009 (time tbc) - QCCB Stage, Burning Man Festival, Nevada, USA
If you happen to be a temporary citizen of the temporary desert-bound Black Rock City, you'll find RRR weaving tales around this year's theme of Evolution.
www.burningman.com






5-25 (not 17) August 2009, 22:45 - And They Lived...
... happily ever after? It's a candy-coated conspiracy. Crashing through the boundaries of spoken word, award-winning Rachel Rose Reid blends storytelling, music and a large whisky to create a spellbinding show.
Storytelling with a unique and modern twist ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Three Weeks, May 2009
...a glimpse of magic The Guardian, July 2009
£5-9, Pleasance Courtyard, 60 Pleasance, Edinburgh






24 July 2009 - Storytelling in the Treehouse Gallery
Come listen to RRR tell tales for the official opening of a magical temporary venue entirely suspended from the branches of a tree by the Regent's Park boating lake.
FREE! 16:30-17:30
www.thetreehousegallery.org






24 July 2009 - Farrago Slam London Final
RRR is a featured guest alongside Fran Landesman, Jasmine Cooray, Abraham Gibson, Dudley Sutton & Rachel Pantechnicon for London's longest running Slam night as London's top poetic talents come together to compete for a place in the BBC Radio Grand Slam.
FREE! 19:00-22:30, Drill Hall, 16 Chenies Street, London







23 July 2009 - The Corset Club
Hothouse and Red on Black Productions presents the tri-yearly event The Corset Club. Each night throughout the year will have featured women artists including poets, musicians, cabaret artists, comedians, dancers, actresses, MCs, DJs and more alongside those picked from our 3 minute auditions. RRR features.
19:00-22:00, Cavendish Arms, 128 Hartington Road, London
www.redonblackproductions.com






16-19 July 2009, Latitude Festival
Catch RRR telling tales on the Outdoor Stage somewhere between the Beatbox Choir and the Royal Opera House!
Friday 1.05pm-1.20pm
Sunday 11am-11.15am
www.latitudefestival.co.uk

Tale Tapestries

Have been weaving together threads of tales today. Mara, my heaven-sent dramaturg is evidence that ideas billow more quickly when there's something, someone to react against or be inspired by. Freemind software also pretty useful as tools go...

One of the issues we brushed over was mythmaking. Working with ancient tales, we wondered, will such myths ever be made again? With such broad brushstrokes imprinted on the landscape? It's a hidden side effect of globalisation. In urban places, how can we sit in front of a man-made building and see 'ah yes, this was the monster of the deep'?! How can we explore epic subjects in mediocre environments? The stars are hard to see in the city. The hills are covered in concrete. The trees are penned in. On the BBC today there was a programme celebrating Beowulf, in which it was performed amongst Anglo Saxon re-enactors, who long to be living then. They even seemed to respond to the story in a slightly unpresent, re-enactment style.
But what about now? Can no worthy epic be made to match that now? Must all stories be written by indiviual authors, copyright intact?

Five Stars from Three Weeks!

And They All Lived
11-13 May, Rachel Rose Reid @ Brighton Unitarian Church, Brighton Festival Fringe.

It's impossible to take your eyes off Rachel Rose Reid: she absolutely commands the stage. Extraordinarily expressive without ever bordering on histrionic, Rachel spins yarn and weaves dreams - myths and fairy tales for adults - not just with her powerful voice but also with her graceful and flowing gestures. Effortlessly moving between poetic and colloquial language, comedy and tragedy, innocent and sinister moods, her stories are so captivating, her invitation to audience participation so engaging and her delivery so charming, that the performance could easily last another hour without audience attention waning. This is storytelling with a unique and modern twist: contemporary storytelling at its best.
[ap] tw rating 5/5

May Missive

Warm and lilac-scented greetings from this yellow house in breezy London Town...I have been traveling over hill and dale, and through the occasional tropical rain forest, so some of this letter has ‘oops, ya missed it’ news as well as word of upcoming tale-telling yet to come.


So, what happened in April? you ask

3 April 2009 - Mekhong: Spirit of Thailand 2009
RRR repeated the multi-tasking feat of mixing her original Mekhong cocktail recipes with the telling of the Thai folktales, which won her last year’s National Mekhong Spirit of Thailand Competition.

3-5 April 2009 - Society for Storytelling Gathering
The Gathering is an annual opportunity for professionals and enthusiasts to share the various applications of storytelling throughout the UK, whilst taking time to enjoy it as a pure performance art form. RRR was a guest artist along with Shonaleigh, Pete Chand, Nick Hennessey, Dominic Kelly & host Taffy Thomas, amongst others, in a weekend of myths, and legends at Rydal Hall, Cumbria

12 April 2009 - Jazz Verse Jukebox at Ronnie Scott's
Award-winning broadcaster and vocalist Jumoke Fashola launched her new night with her favourite artists in jazz and spoken word. RRR performed an intertwining of jazz song and fairytale with respected musicians Simon Wallace, Oli Hayhurst and Winston Clifford, and was on the line-up alongside Adisa and the incredible Fran Landesman. 47 Frith Street, London, W1D, events@jumokefashola.com


...And now you have cruelly teased me with things that have already happened, howzabout May then?




11-13 May 2009 - Brighton Fringe Festival: And They All Lived…
Wondertales the fairytale tellers forgot: Can a princess cope without her prince? What do you give Greek landowners who have everything? Are there perfect endings in an imperfect world?
£7.50 / £6
22:15-23:00
Brighton Unitarian Church, New Road, BN1
http://tinyurl.com/oyv7wy




20 May 2009 - Glitterbest
Compere and all-purpose-ruler of Hoxton’s new weekly poetic frenzy is Andreas Grant, RAW Slam Champ
Full line up TBC.
Free!
20:00-00:00
Bacchus, 177 Hoxton Street, London, N1 6PJ
http://blackfogrising.blogspot.com




22-24 May 2009 - Underdrome at The Roundhouse
Enter the Underdrome, an unforgettable place where dance, voices, music and video collide in a thrilling assault on the senses. Darren Johnston has created Underdrome especially for the Roundhouse, in response to its architecture and heritage.
£20 / £18
19:30-23:00
The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, London, NW1 8EH
http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/productions/underdrome-2957




28 May 2009 - Jewel in the Mud
In May, Hoflish Kadu’s monthly Cabaresque jaunt takes on theme of Espionage to celebrate the birth of Ian Fleming (the man who gave us Bond).
FunFed will be giving us a half an hour spy themed games session to kick the night off. Performers include the incomparable RRR, John Crow, Stacey Cohen and guest from Clemence Viel, & a tap-dancing Ronald .
£7/£5
19:30-23:00
The Others, 6-8 Manor Road, Stoke Newington, London
www.goldnippleproductions.com


In other news…
…I have discovered that gibbons make a cry that’s pretty much the same as a boiling kettle; that the jungle area I visited was formerly called ‘Dead Body Mountain’ due to a local legend about a Giantess who died from a broken heart; and that the name was changed because it put people off.

Despite that nice review I use in my publicity that refers to my ‘ego-less charm’, I have actually fallen prey to the creation of a Twitter profile, and a Facebook Fan Page. Please join me there if you like. Like the proverbial lottery winner I promise it won’t change me:
www.twitter.com/rachelrosereid
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Rachel-Rose-Reid/118954715920 (click ‘become a fan’ next to my name to join the party ☺)


Thanks for reading my most recent missive,

Wishing you all a frolicsome May,

RRRx