The Talking Skull

A quick storytelling post on the back of another Verbalise at the Brewery Arts Centre. The slots are 4 minutes, and I’d struggled to find a piece I liked that fit that time frame – despite having loads at 1-2 minutes and several at 5-6 minutes. Eventually I settled on The Talking Skull; originally from Cameroon, I think, and a story I’d known for a long time before I started telling any myself – and one I heard completely reinvented by Nick Hennessey when I was on the storytelling course.

While keeping the structure the same, Nick moved the action to the gibbets and heaths of old England, bookending it with singing and drums and a clutch of corbies. I’m nowhere near drumming and I’ll never be a singer, but his translocation of the story was so deft and absolutely something to learn from. I shifted mine to the mosses of south Lakeland and used a Baron of Kendal for the villain. It’s a fantastic wee piece and I loved telling it – and I loved exploring how the bones of a story can hang with different skins. That’s something to remember.

My son drew the backdrop for the projector – much obliged that lad – and many thanks to Ann The Poet for the photo.