GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST - coming to Belper, Chilwell & Arran

If anyone out there is paying attention, you may have noticed that I haven't been blogging much this year. Well, there's been a number of reasons for that. Since my Mum died back on February 1st, this has been a year to get through by keeping one's head down and bustling through business without blowing too many trumpets about it. Also, I took a break from storytelling after February's THE STORM BRIDE and didn't have any new performances to publicize.

The year, to be sure, hasn't been without a few highs among the lows - Audible UK produced my adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND starring Owen Teale (also in my previous Audible drama ROMEO & JUDE), Philip Glenister, Catherine Tate & Daniel Mays and that seems to have been well received by listeners. You can catch it here....

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Classics/Treasure-Island-Audiobook/B071JSM4H1?ref_=a_pd_Sci-Fi_c8_2_sim_auth

And just a couple of days from now Wireless Theatre Company are going to be producing a piece very close to my heart NIGHT OF THE ORCHID -- but that'll get a separate posting to itself, so watch this space....

And meanwhile myself and my loved ones are going to be moving, leaving behind suburban Nottingham for one of my favourite places in my native Scotland, the beautiful Isle of Arran. Yes - I'm going to have the sea at the foot of my road and mountains and forests at my elbow. A whole new life beckons....

And as part of that new life I'm going to have a crack at bringing my special brand of storytelling to Arran, starting with a performance on Saturday December the 23rd. of my new show THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST.

But, first of all, I'm going to be premiering the show at my two favourite venues here in England, with a performance on Saturday 16th December at No.28 in the Market Place, Belper in Derbyshire....

And then, the very next night, Sunday 17th December at CAT, aka Chilwell Arts Theatre in Nottingham....

That's the posters. What about the show? Well, it's a winter's night ghostly tale in the grand manner of the likes of Charles Dickens & M. R. James. When provost at Eton, Janes used to gather favoured students about him on Christmas Eve to tell them his latest ghostly chiller, a tradition kept alive in the years of my childhood when not a Christmas would go by without the BBC showing a film adaptation of a James ghost story - you could keep It's A Wonderful Life and the Morecambe & Wise Xmas show, these atmospheric shockers were the TV highlight of my childhood Christmases - I can remember being particularly frightened by the adaptation of LOST HEARTS with its ghostly children....

Well, my GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST is a continuation of that tradition. A story of my own creation, it's set in late Victorian Glasgow (where the Church of Scotland had decreed that Christmas shouldn't be a public holiday - it didn't actually become a holiday in Scotland until after the Second World War!) and begins in my native part of the city, in the snow-swept area around Queen's Park as a young homeless woman wanders the streets, searching for shelter while trying to evade a street gang with hostile intentions towards her. But a bit of grand scale seasonal charity comes her way when a Kirk minister offers her food and shelter in his grand house on the edge of the city. A happy ending? Well, not quite - this is a ghost story after all, and in the beautiful house isolated among miles of snowy parkland there might be some ghostly shades of Christmases past emerging out of the snowflakes and shadows.....

So, I think I can offer a thrilling Winter's Tale to all with the nerve to take it. If you want to book in advance for the Belper or the Arran shows, you can book online at www.brownpapertickets.com

Booking for Belper show, 16 December.... - https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3102318

Booking for Whiting Bay, Arran... -  https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3114329

And to book for Chilwell Arts Theatre - contact michael@chilwellartstheatre.co.uk or call: 07772053412

THE STORM BRIDE: A Fairy Tale For A Fragile Planet at No.28, Belper

Less than a week now till my latest storytelling show at regular venue No.28 in the Market Place, Belper in Derbyshire. This is THE STORM BRIDE: A Fairy Tale For A Fragile Planet, being performed Saturday 25th February at 7.30pm. Tickets can be booked at www.brownpapertickets.com

This show takes strong elements of Scottish fairy and folk tale, yet situates them in a very contemporary context of an environment being fracked, polluted and generally exploited to within an inch of its life. Energy magnate Nathan Gonrad has discovered a whole new source of cheap energy deep in the bedrock under a Scottish highland valley, but bringing it to the surface causes an environmental disaster. Meanwhile, an old sweetheart of his daughter finds himself invited to the daughter's wedding to a very mysterious groom, all of which has a mysterious connection to the disaster - and an attempt to placate supernatural forces within the ravaged valley.

So - plenty of drama, mystery, surreal imagery, creepy stuff and hell-for-leather action. Should be quite a show and anyone within reasonably easy reach of Belper who enjoys dramatic theatrical storytelling, or is concerned with the story's environmental theme, ought to make their way to Belper Market Place for 7.30pm on Satirday 25th of February.

THE STORM BRIDE: A Fairy Tale For A Fragile Planet - No.28, Belper, February 25th

HI, just announcing my first storytelling show of the New Year, which is THE STORM BRIDE: A Fairy Tale For A Fragile Planet, which I'll be presenting at my regular venue of the No.28 community centre in Belper at 7.30pm on Saturday 25th of February. No.28 is in Belper Market Square, Derbyshire DE56 1FZ and tickets can be booked here, at Brown Paper Tickets... http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2830359

Here's a bit more detail....

Storyteller & playwright Marty Ross returns to his regular venue at No.28 in Belper with a dramatic tale touching on the most important and dramatic relationship of our times: our relationship with the planet we live on.

As in previous shows, the Scottish dramatist draws on traditions of Celtic myth and legend, but in a very contemporary fashion. One of the world's richest men has discovered a new source of cheap energy in the Scottish highlands and has fracked his way right down to it, but only to unleash an environmental catastrophe. And more ancient supernatural forces in the valley demand payment in kind for the damage he has done, in a disturbingly modern version of ancient tales of fairy abduction.

A fairy tale, a serious drama and a statement about the world we live in, this is a "Winter's Tale" with much to offer for all who enjoy theatrical storytelling at its most vivid... truly a fairy tale for the Trump era.