The following review of BTB 07 appeared in the most recent edition of Storylines, the journal of the Society for Storytelling…..

Stories, music, inspiration - even sunshine! Liz Garner describes the triumphant return of Beyond The Border Storytelling Festival.

July 2007 heralded the welcome return of Beyond the Border, the Wales International Storytelling festival. Once again, St Donats Castle became the home to over sixty performers, bringing together epic narratives, songs and folk tales.  In the midst of this rain-drenched summer, the sun shone kindly upon us for a weekend. The walls of the castle glowed gold, music from the gardens carried on the wind, and the sea sparkled in the far distance. The tents set out across the Jousting Field provided a range of delights: from the Big Top to the Early Years Yurt, from the children to grandparents, and every demographic inbetween, there was a story here for everyone. 

This year’s programme featured a striking Native North American image of the soaring eagle. The wise and holy bird that travels between worlds.  And this theme of flight recurred throughout many of the performances. We were given Sharon Shorty’s tales of trickster raven, Michael Harvey and Lynne Denman’s retelling of Branwen from the Mabinogion; TUUP’s tale of Crow Dog: an Afro-American slave boy who was adopted by a Seminole Indian Tribe and became a medicine man. In all these stories, the boundary between the human and the animal is blurred. The raven has the cheekiness of an errant child; Crow-Dog gains his magic and his understanding from the coyotes.

This sense of shifting identity was expressed in a different form in Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden’s retelling of Icarus. The tale of the boy who took on the characteristics of the birds, and flew too high.  The man who tried to be God, and to reinvent his own identity – a chilling insight into the destructive power of imagination when allied to blind ambition. A tale of times past that had a searing modern relevance.  

This was echoed in Ben Haggarty’s retelling of Frankenstein. A tour de force, which was the closing spectacle of the festival. Accompanied by the powerful and ethereal voice of Sinead Jones, we were taken into the depths of the scientist’s laboratory, in all its …/… gory anatomical detail.  This was matched by a vivid exploration of the scientist’s descent into madness, and we shared his nightmares which foretold modern day genetic experimentation –  Dr Frankenstein’s world was shown to be unsettlingly close to our own.

But if stories can show us patterns of destructive behaviour, they can also do the opposite: give and celebrate life.  This was profoundly apparent in Dan Yashinsky’s performance “Talking You In” – based on the time when he told stories to his new-born son in intensive care. Blending the personal and the fantastic, stories and the life force became one and the same.  And on a lighter note, Native American storyteller Robert Seven-Crows created a similar tapestry of experience and myth. His songs and stories told the lived and remembered history of his people, following the generational shifts from tribal culture to the modern city. In both cases by turning history into story, personal experience was given an understated mythic resonance. 

As always, Beyond the Border also provided a musical feast to complement the spoken word. Stories are sung, as well as told. This was evident in the range of voices that gathered in the Tythe Barn on Saturday night. Balladeers from Scotland to Newfoundland, and many inbetween, shook the rafters with their traditional songs. Amongst then, was a Sami singer, Lawra Somby, who sang the “yoik” – a musical form which uses sound, not words to evoke place. The audience sat spellbound as we were taken through unknown landscapes and back again, simply through the use of intonation.

As always, the weekend came to a close with a frenzy of music and dance. This year the walls of the packed big top shook to the energetic strains of Mukka: a fusion of Baltic, Russian and Celtic traditions – the musical tongues of the various cultures blending to an unique sound of celebration and delight.

This was a fitting end for a festival that continues to mix cultures, forms, and audiences, to create a rare and valuable experience which is more than a sum of its parts. Place and performance combine to create the impression that we have gained access to a hidden world, where beyond the border, there are no borders. Here is a place where disparate tribes meet, where their stories echo each other and reveal the common nature …/…

of humanity: our ability to succumb to hubris and temptation matched by our ability to imagine, create and transform.  

Liz Garner.

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