9am Live International Hybrid Storytelling
Kapiti Storytelling Live from New Zealand
On the west coast of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand lies Kapiti Island, and the mainland settlements of Pukerua Bay, Paekakariki and Porirua. During lockdown the local storytelling group, In the Belly of the Whale, began meeting monthly online, organised by Judith Frost-Evans. The festival eavesdrops on one of their gatherings, at 9am Welsh time, 8pm in Kapiti.
10am Project India Wales
India Wales is cross cultural project supported by the British Council and ACW that helps children in Aberystwyth and Bangalore to understand how they can express how they feel about climate change through understanding techniques of animation, oral storytelling, book illustration, ‘zines, graphic novels, mythology and visual storytelling. Run by animators Charlie Carter and Anwaar Alam, and illustrators Ekta Bharti and Peter Stevenson.
10am Creative Soundmapping Workshop with Ailsa Mair Fox
What can we hear in our immediate surroundings? How might we tell its story? Join Ailsa for an introduction to the practice of creative soundmapping. An explorative way of documenting and re-sounding things we hear around us to capture special moments from the festival and its surroundings: from the mythic to the mundane. Ailsa began this practice in her ‘Soundmapping Our 5 Square Miles’ project – funded by Arts Council Wales & The National Lottery Stabilisation fund during. Come and play! (Materials provided but feel free to bring your own art supplies)
11am Hear Us and Hasten by Ffion Phillips and Ailsa Dixon
Hear Us And Hasten is a collaboratively devised storytelling performance deeply rooted in the North Sea and North Welsh landscapes of the performer’s homes. Created with support from the Village Storytelling Festival and Tasgadh by two of Britain’s leading young storytellers, Ffion Phillips and Ailsa Dixon. It is an upfront reckoning with the climate‘s fragility and those narratives, both old and new, which so easily cast young women’s bodies into the jaws of waiting beasts. But, this show is, most importantly, a celebration of being alive, right now. As Ffion and Ailsa say – it’s a triangle; story, people, landscapes, if connection between any of these three is weak we all suffer.
Individual ticket £8
Midday Book Launch and Workshop – Siani Pob Man by Valériane Leblond, with Morfudd Bevan and Peter Stevenson
Hidden in Cardigan Bay, between New Quay and Aberaeron is the charming beach of Cei Bach. In a little cottage, an old lady sits smoking her pipe with clocks on her feet. She is the famous Siani Pob Man. A story about an unusual character, with striking illustrations by talented artist Valériane Leblond.
https://www.valeriane-leblond.eu/home.html
1pm Parramisha by Frances Roberts-Reilly,
Frances Roberts-Reilly from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, is of mixed-heritage Welsh Gypsy-English, a descendant of Abram Wood, the notable family of Romany musicians and storytellers. She is also a published poet, writer, memoirist, playwright and storyteller. Frances performs with her harp, the gypsy stories brought by her Romany family to Wales. These are Magical tales rich with the mystery of the Welsh landscape, hailing from another time and place. Frances is in Wales to introduce her book Parramisha, a collection of Romany poetry published by Cinnamon Press in 2020. She writes, ‘What’s written about us by non-Roma is a stereotypical image that’s both romantic and vilified. In writing our own Parramisha-story we are obligated to deconstruct those prevailing narratives readily available in popular culture and that have unjustly treated us. Parramisha challenges the reader to reconstruct a new image as a life affirming narrative of our wholeness as a Romani identity.’
https://francesrobertsreilly.wordpress.com/
2pm Storytelling for Welsh Learners with Fiona Collins
Storytelling to help you speak Welsh
2pm Ports Past and Present Talk by Mary-Ann Constantine
The Irish Sea basin forms a distinct node of histories, economies, and identities. This project considers five very different ports and their communities on either side of the sea: Dublin, Rosslare, Holyhead, Fishguard and Pembroke Dock.
https://portspastpresent.eu/
2.30pm Official WOW Selection Chwedl Dwr with Seneca Nation films, Native Spirit Foundation Cinema. In association with Planet.
Chwedl Dŵr, dewis swyddogol WOW, gyda Seneca Nation Films, Native Spirit Foundation Cinema. Mewn cydweithrediad â Planet.
Chwedl Dŵr / Fairytale of Water 46 mins
Beneath the west Welsh waters are stories – flood myths – that tell of a time when you could walk across Cardigan Bay to Ireland. Above the sea are forgotten fairytales that tell of dreamers who built utopian lands, old ladies who made love potions with well water, and rivers who were seen as people. Using old methods of visual storytelling that gave rise to the fledgling film industry, filmmaker and sound artist Jacob Whittaker and storyteller and illustrator Peter Stevenson take a journey through time to hear these lost voices in the water. Specially commissioned for WOW.
Terry J Jones and Native Spirit Film Festival.
Gathered Places, an Indian Documentary 19 Mins
In Terry J Jones’s short doc “Gathered Places: An Indian Documentary Film,” when two Indian filmmakers visit each other’s homelands in the USA and India. Terry’s father speaks about Kinzua Dam.
Soup for my Brother 10 mins
Terry J Jones is a film maker from the Seneca Nation and his short film won best documentary at the Liverpool International Film Festival in 2016.
Savage / Future 3 mins
Editing to the soundscape of shaking Iroquois white corn and tapping, Seneca filmmaker Terry Jones uses personal and historic still images to link family and the American Indian Boarding School experience
Individual ticket £7
3pm Tonfanau Tales by Chandrika Joshi
Fifty years ago Chandrika Joshi fled the country of her birth, Uganda, with her family and came to Wales. She stayed for the first six months at Tonfanau resettlement camp near Tywyn and in 1973 she was housed in Penrhys in the Rhondda Valleys.The show weaves real life drama of escaping Uganda with Hindu mythological tales – stories of loss, resilience, assimilation of cultures and finding home.
Individual ticket £8
4pm Daniel Morden and Hugh Lupton
Q&A about the Stars and their Consolations project
5pm Mochyn Myrddin by Milly Jackdaw
The tale begins as Myrddin seeks the sanctuary of an apple tree, a remedy for disturbing futuristic visions triggered by battle, where he befriends a wolf and a pig. 2000 years later a single mum begins a quest for the living myth of Myrddin and the primal power of the land. A call to re-evaluate the stories we tell ourselves and to discover codes in ancient tales, hidden till the time is right for revelation.
5pm Chwedl Meeting
Chwedl is the network in Wales of women storytellers and women who love stories. Chwedl is one of the many Welsh words for ‘story’.
Join Chwedl women in the garden (cafe if wet) on Saturday at 5pm, to hear a story, and maybe tell one, to chat about what what Chwedl does – and could do – and to network with other women in Wales and the wider world. Croeso i chi siarad Cymraeg gyda ni. There will be a warm welcome to all women and everyone who identifies as a woman.
6pm Adverse Camber presents The Gods are All Here by Phil Okwedy
“May your shadow never grow less.”
Sparked by the discovery of a series of letters from his father in Nigeria to his mother in Wales, The Gods Are All Here is a compelling, lyrical and warm, one-man performance from first-class storyteller, Phil Okwedy.
This captivating performance storytelling piece skilfully weaves myth, song, folktales and legends of the African diaspora with an astonishing personal story that uncovers Phil’s experiences of growing up as a child of dual heritage in 1960 &70’s Wales.
Charting the time of life when children are said to view their parents as gods, but never having actually lived with them, Phil considers if his parents were, in fact, the gods he had imagined them to be…
Exploring equality, freedom, racism, family and growing up without your birth parents, in a touching, funny and evocative performance, The Gods Are All Here is both timeless and very much a story of now.
“Superb storytelling, combining personal, traditional and reimagined stories in a unique way. Very moving and gripping throughout, you always want to know ‘what happens next’.” Audience member
“This stunning show is spectacularly crafted”
Rufus Mufasa
Created and performed by Phil Okwedy
Directed by Michael Harvey
Funded by Arts Council of Wales sponsored by Welsh Government, Lottery funded.
Supported by Theatrau Sir Gâr
Suitable for ages 12+
Individual tickets £10
This production talks about being brought up with foster parents, there are stories of slavery that include descriptions of violence, and the show contains discriminatory language.
8pm The Gods are all Here talk
With Phil Okwedy and Shara Atashi
FREE for anyone with a The Gods are all Here ticket
9pm Georgia Ruth and Iwan Huws
Georgia Ruth is a musician from Aberystwyth. Using folk influences to create a truly unique sound, her debut album Week of Pines won the Welsh Music Prize in 2013 and was nominated for two BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
Georgia collaborated with The Manic Street Preachers on their 2014 album Futurology before releasing her second album, Fossil Scale in 2016.
Georgia released her third album – Mai – in March 2020 through Bubblewrap Records.
“Her own debut is a wonder, full of longing and melody” MOJO
“One of the British folk discoveries of the year”
The Guardian
“Georgia is finding her own distinct voice”
Q Magazine
Individual tickets £10
9.30pm Vincent Price: Three Skeleton Key. Collaboration with Abertoir.
Vincent Price was one of the great storytelling voices of cinema history. During the endless lockdowns of 2020, Gaz Bailey, director of Abertoir, and Peter Stevenson, director of Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival, decided to create a hand drawn version of one of Vincent’s most memorable radio plays, Three Skeleton Key, a tale of madness and death set on a remote lighthouse besieged by rats. A place where storytelling meets folk horror.
10pm The Company of Wolves
Based on Angela Carter’s 1979 short story in The Bloody Chamber, The Company of Wolves was released in 1984 by director Neil Jordan , where it pulled together elements of classic fairytales of Red Riding Hood and Mr Fox. It contains a star turn by Angela Lansbury as Grandma, who warns us that the worst wolves are those who are hairy on the inside.
10pm Late Night Storycircle with Hayley Addis
Fables After Dark: Tales of Love and Lust by local tellers.
“Fables after Dark” brings tellers from our monthly Aberystwyth story circle together for tales and songs of an… adult nature… Meet lusty queens, horny fellas, and magical quims!
Dr Halo Quin is an enchantrix, poet, pagan author, goblin wrangler, and host of Fables Storycircle, with an obsession with faeries and a passion for myth and magic…
