Back in February, BFTF and No3 son attended a rather wonderful event at the Broadway cinema hosted by Nottingham Storytellers which featured professional stroyteller Shonaleigh
Shonaleigh is, amongst many other talents, a drut’syla (storyteller) from the Yiddish oral tradition. The stories in this tradition form a huge interlocking network, such that they do not really have a start and a finish, but rather a series of points at which they connect with each other.
As Shonaleigh told her stories, she would mention these points of connection, but add that the related stories they connected to were “stories for another time” – a phrase that the audience were encouraged to join in with.
The tales Shonaleigh told were mesmerising and included stories of the duel of minds that occurred between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The stories had many incredible scenes, perhaps the most memorable of which was where a young man fell asleep inside a dead cow and awoke to find that he, and the cow, had been transported to the top of a castle – the repercussions of which were very entertaining!
A constant companion, narrator almost, through the tales was the monotone voiced (but still very lovingly portrayed) Hoopoe bird, with one of the stories explaing how it obtained it’s golden crown.
Should you every get the chance to hear Shonaleigh, grab it!