Wee Stories Theatre

4 Dec 2004 in Dance & Drama

Wee Stories Tackle the Big Stories

The Arts Journal catches up with ANDY CANNON, the Artistic Director of Wee Stories Theatre, as the company prepare to bring their Christmas show to venues in the Highlands and North East

WEE STORIES THEATRE are on tour this month with their unconventional Christmas show ‘The Emperor’s New Kilt’. Andy Cannon originally devised the show as ‘The Laird’s New Kilt’ a couple of years ago. It is based on the famous Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the Emperor’s new clothes, but set on a mythical island off the west coast of Scotland.

The show is suitable for audiences of five and upwards, and the Edinburgh-based company have already demonstrated that their work is well worth the attention of adults. They have earned a deserved reputation as an innovative and exciting producer of theatre aimed principally but not exclusively at young people, and recently won a prestigious TMA Award for best show for children and young people for their production of ‘Arthur, The Story of a King’ to add to their earlier Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland.

Artistic director Andy Cannon set up Wee Stories with manager Lara Bowen in 1995. Andy cut his theatrical teeth at Edinburgh’s Theatre Workshop, but finally took the plunge in setting up his own company to pursue his personal vision of children’s theatre.

“I like to think of it as child-friendly rather than children’s theatre,” he explained. “It’s for everyone – I prioritize children within that ‘everyone’, but without excluding anyone else. Adults and children enjoy enjoying the same thing together, and it’s surprising what kids — and indeed adults — will respond to. I was interested in developing a style which was based on story-telling but that would also draw on the work I had done in workshops and in stand-up comedy as well as theatre.”

“My hope was that anybody who saw it would go away with a better understanding of the legend, as well as having had a great time.”

Wee Stories have mounted a string of productions since they made their debut at the end of 1995 with ‘Ivan’ (including ‘The Loch Ness Affair’ in 1999). Their more ambitious productions of recent years include ‘Labyrinth’, a re-telling of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, and the aforementioned ‘Arthur’.

Andy’s interest in the famous tale of Theseus goes all the way back to his own childhood, when he remembers his big brother telling him the story one day after school.

“I was ten at the time,” he recalled, “and it was the first time I was ever really hooked by a story in that way. I remember following him from the table and asking all kinds of questions about it. I left school early, and only really came to theatre and to classic drama later on, but I’m proud of the fact that ‘Labyrinth’ is actually quite an educational piece. It was all done as part of the story-telling process, but we gave them a lot of information about the Greek gods and myths in a form that they could grasp. It’s all accurate, though — I’m a bit of a pedant about that.”

The legend of King Arthur also proved to be a suitable case for the ingenious Wee Stories all-action treatment. It featured a cast of seven, big for a Wee Stories production, and came together in the wake of two earlier shows on a similar theme, ‘Quest’ and ‘Excalibur’. The final shape of ‘Arthur’ grew out of the lessons learned in the course of the two earlier productions.

“It is such an iconic story, and that was one of the things which attracted me to it. In my experience many people know fragments of the story, but there is a clarity missing in how it all fitted together, and one of the real satisfactions lay in unpicking all the different elements of the legend, and trying to present them in a coherent way. My hope was that anybody who saw it would go away with a better understanding of the legend, as well as having had a great time.”

The company’s most recent touring production, ‘Tam O’Shanter’, tackled Burns’s famous poem in a two-hander starring Andy and cellist Wendy Weatherby. ‘The Emperor’s New Kilt’ hits the road in Lyth in early December, and they will be reviving both ‘Labyrinth’ and ‘Arthur’ next year in what will be something of a ‘greatest hits’ package, since they will also revive their productions of ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Peter Pan’ in the course of 2005.

The Emperor’s New Kilt can be seen at:

Lyth Arts Centre, Saturday 4, Monday 6, Tuesday 7 December 2004
Invergordon Arts Centre, Thursday 9 December 2004
Mallaig and Morar Community Centre, Friday 10 December 2004
New Deer Village Hall, Monday 13 December 2004
MacDuff Arts Centre, Tuesday 14 December 2004
Universal Hall, Findhorn, Wednesday 15 December 2004
Woodend Barn, Banchory, Thursday 16 December 2004
Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, Friday 17 December, 2004
Stuarts Hall, Huntly, Saturday 18 December 2004