This program is designed to introduce a wide audience, including young children and people with special needs, to various rhythms and dances, using traditional Faerie music of Ireland and Scotland. I am looking for session musicians (many of the tunes are well-known session tunes) and a group of dancers, versed in any Celtic style,  including Irish step dancing, sean nos dancing, or highland dancing, who can choreograph to hornpipes, reels, jigs, slip-jigs, and waltzes, and can teach at least one of these to a diverse group of people- all while wearing wings or other faerie accoutrement. You must be willing to bravely play the fool so that audience members won't be afraid to seem foolish. Anyone interested in designing wings or other costume aspects for this production please contact me as well.

    (If you want to learn the tunes I will use in this production, I will be posting many in my blogs on my myspace page, www.myspace.com/kaade, and here as well if people express interest.)

    When Richard Corbet, in the days of King James, wrote the song "Farewell to the Fairies" he believed- like many from Chaucer to the present time- that faeries belonged to generations past. But the Age of Reason, rather than burying the elves, revived them in the consciousness of the populace. This program explores how minds of the Renaissance, in words and music, found inspiration looking at the Land of Faerie in new ways. This includes lyrics penned by Shakespeare and Jonson, poetry of Spenser and Herrick, music by Holborne and Ravenscroft, and ballads by that perennial favorite, Anonymous. I am looking for people who play period instruments, and particularly vocalists.

    Thus begins this tale of a sailor, a selkie, and the spirit of a ship, and how remembering our true natures is the only way to preserve what we cherish. This intertwining of three distinct stories occurs along the sea routes from North Scotland to the Baltic and draws from the music and traditional stories of sea-beings in the places along the way. This small ensemble production requires each performer to be both actor, musician, and lead or chorus vocalist, and uses blocking and choreography techniques reminiscent of both Thornton Wilder and Tibetan opera, an always changing environment where all performers are present throughout the performance using minimal props to evoke the sea, the shore and the ships.

    I plan to premiere this piece this Fall in New England, possibly as a solo act at first.

    With this piece still in development, I intend to challenge and make demands of both performers and participants. This is a tale of the dark and difficult, but ultimately empowering, aspects of the fey, in the vein of such writers as Holly Black, Charles DeLint and Guillermo del Toro. As the participants (as this is not to be a passive "audience") enter the space of the Brugh- a Faerie hill- they are presented, as a group, with a challenge: find the changeling, free the abductee, restore a balance. Every performer has his or her own repertoire of tools to offer, be it faerie-lore or music, symbolic objects, or means of encouragement, that gives the participants clues and strength to accomplish the tasks at hand. Through a series of challenges including riddles, games of wit and skill. and interactions with the characters within the Brugh, participants reach their larger goal through smaller ones. Live action roleplaying and divination mean that no two performance will be the same. The participants will leave the Brugh with tools and insight from the Faerie realm to empower them in their own lives.

    I first produced this piece with the help of visual artist/film-maker Jeanne Stearn and members of the House of Commons Co-op. Based on a chinese tale of a wizard, a kind inn-keeper, and three dancing cranes, this ambient production is set entirely within an inn along the silk road. Performers and audience members sit amongst each other, and as different servings of a vegan feast are served, different stories, music and performances come from unexpeced places. Types of skills which are useful for this include storytellers and actors, musicians on instruments and vocal styles that could be found along the Silk Road, belly-dancers, jugglers, and of course cooks (I can provide all recipes, or work with cooks to provide suggestions.)