Fairytales for Grown-ups at The Forge

The Crick Crack Club have been programming the best performance storytelling for adults since 1987, when they held a weekly packed-out club at Kentish Town’s pub The Assembly House. Since then The Crick Crack Club have held clubs at Southbank Centre and The Barbican, expanded nationally, and currently has clubs at Soho Theatre and Rich Mix. They are now returning to their original stomping ground, with a season at The Forge in Camden. Their programme opens with Fairytales for Grown ups – a double-bill of The White Bear King  by Sally Pomme Clayton and The Blacksmith at the Bridge of Bones by Ben Haggarty. The evening will be vivid and beguiling, a chance to encounter the living cinema of your own imagination.

 The White Bear King is one of my absolute favourite fairy tales ever. In fact it was one of the very first stories I ever told. This dark Norwegian wonder tale was collected and published by Asbjǿrnsen and Moe in 1841, part of the 19th century impulse to document and understand language and culture. Versions of this story are found all over the world, from Italy to Russia, from Scotland to Afghanistan. The tale has elements of Beauty and the Beast, and the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche. The story is most often about a woman who goes on an arduous quest to set a beast free. But in some versions the genders are reversed, and the beast is female and the one who breaks the spell male. My version has gone through many transformations, expansions and edits over the years. The story has some unresolved elements in it, and through the years I have tried to resolve these elements in different ways, adding images from other versions, changing the plot. I published a version of the story in Tales of Amazing Maidens (Orchard Books 1995). But I still was not satisfied and my version has changed enormously since then! This is the beauty and freedom of the oral storyteller, not pinned down by printed words, but able to re-make the tale again and again, as the teller, the audience, and the times change. So join me, as I find the latest version, in a snow filled forest where a princess marries a bear, meets a terrible Troll Hag, and climbs the glass mountain to set the cursed bear free.

The Crick Crack Club at The Forge,
3-7 Delancey Street, Camden, London, NW1 7NL 
Thursday 12th September 7:30pm
Fairytales for Grown-ups
The White Bear King and The Blacksmith at the Bridge of Bones
with Sally Pomme Clayton and Ben Haggarty