And the other thing you might spot in the picture is rather strangely coloured sky. Yes, not GREY and DINGY like you might expect, but a rather bright blue. AND there was a big warm thing up there, kind of like a giant ball of fire, that made us all feel inexplicably..well...happy! So much so that we made it outside and made up some fantastically bonkers stories with some expert story tellers, including one set on an island, on the moon, at 8 in the morning in 1940. Seriously creative stuff!
Today you'll be glad to hear that the sky was back to it's normal grey self, with plenty of clouds and drizzle to keep us all damp on a Monday morning, and we have had a wonderful day spreading some cheer and some stories and some wishes and some riddles.. We were out and about (well, in under cover but definitely about) at the Guildhall Shopping Centre today, creatively bridging the gap between Animated Exeter and Exetreme Imagination. We collided these two fabulous festivals by creating a new game, Frame by Frame, in which we challenged young writers and budding artists to DRAW us a story, picture by picture, which we would then act out with plenty of enthusiasm, a few cacti and a lot of dragons.
Story Exchange regulars will be familiar with our Tall tales, stories written by the public one word at a time, and todays tale was pretty wacky, featuring red skyscrapers, bumping bottoms and a gorilla stealing bananas with a 'sardonic grin'. (Personal favourite phrase at the end there). Oh, and today we welcomed Kelly Miller onto our staff. Kelly plays Poppy, a dreamy young lady with a passion for Haikus and in her spare time she likes to snuggle.
One of my favourite questions to answer (and we get asked to answer this pretty much every time we perform) is 'Why are you doing this?' Today I was asked this by a particularly lovely young story exchanger, clutching a wish bird, having just written her one word on our tall tale, and who was now drawing her frame by frame adventure whilst her dad made a technology free tweet. I thought for a moment, then said, 'Because it's fun. Because it makes people smile, and because it's a bit silly, and I think that we should do more things that make people happy.' I couldn't tell if she was convinced, so I asked her 'Is that a good enough reason?' She looked up at me. 'Of course!' she replied, laughing, as if I was silly to suggest that it might not be, and she skipped off to watch her story being performed. We've had a pretty brilliant day.
