Sweating with Wolves

The wolves come...

Friday 13th may be unlucky for some, but not for me.

On Friday July 13th I went into London, to Tiverton Primary School in Tottenham, to see the second performance of a musical play based on my book, The Wolf's Footprint.

It was an exhaustingly hot day -- and I got lost. As I  wandered around, interrupted several people as they were going about their business, to ask the way to Tiverton School. Every single one of these randomly selected people was as friendly and helpful as could be. Several pulled out smart-phones and entered the name of the school, so they could show me where it was and guide me on my way. Thanks to them, I found Tiverton in time for the afternoon session.

So thank you, kindly people of Haringey and Tottenham and especially those -- you know who you are -- who were stopped by a hot and dishevelled writer asking, "Do you know where Tiverton School is?"

At the school I spent the afternoon talking with two great classes about -- oh, how a writer works, the writing of Bremen Town Musicians, ghosts, wolves, fairy-tales. I had a great time. I only hope the children had half as good a time as I did.

Then I got to relax in the staff-room and chat to violinist Anna Jenkins and drummer Sebastien Hankin until it was time for the evening performance.

The play was first performed in 2014 and you can read about it here.

The performance this year, with a different cast, was every bit as good.  I knew how the story was going to turn out, but I was still on the edge of my seat the whole time.

Wicked courtiers try to dissuade the king from helping his starving people -- in song!

The music moves from the sad and poignant to the boisterous and joyful. How the children danced so energetically -- with encores! -- in that heat, I don't know, but they did. The oldest cast members were no more than twelve but they performed with a confidence and engagement that was a delight.

When Resham Mirza, the admirable head-teacher, tweeted that she had watched the show 'with pride,
joy and admiration' I could only echo her. As the head of this wonderful school she has good reason to be proud. As the Head Governer of the school told me, as we sat in the front row, Resham not only nutures all kinds of artistic expression at the school, but they have great academic results too.

And, of course, there is Kate Stilitz, who wrote the music and lyrics and directed, drawing such wonderful performances from her young cast. Follow the link for a look at Kate's website, where you can see something of the many song-cycles and musical pieces she has written for children to perform. More than one of her pieces has been performed at the Royal Festival or Albert Hall.

The villagers celebrate the arrival of food.

 Kate also supplied the trumpeter, Ruben, as he's her son! Grow your own, that's the way.

 Tiverton School website

Kate Stilitz's website

Find it on Amazon

A Conversation With Kate Stilitz

          Kate Stilitz is the writer who adapted my book, The Wolf's Footprint, and turned it into a musical, as reported last week. She agreed to tell us something about herself for this blog.

Sue Price: I could tell, talking to you that you really love your job. How did you come to be doing it?

Kate Stilitz:  It all began in Mexico where I spent a year teaching

Kate Stilitz

English in a primary school after finishing my A-levels. I had a guitar with me and played a bit and soon found myself getting involved in musical activities. It was a great way of engaging with the children, despite the language barrier. One thing led to another and before we knew it we had created a bi-lingual song cycle. I realised there and then how much I enjoyed working with children through music. After Mexico I came back to London and have been running children’s community theatre projects and school-based performance projects ever since. What really excites me about my job is having the opportunity to work both with the children participating in the projects, and with artists from other disciplines to create something new. In the past I have collaborated with visual artists, other musicians and actors, and for The Wolf’s Footprint I collaborated with a choreographer, Neil Paris.

Sue: Have you written musical plays before? If so, tell us about them please.

Kate: Over the last 15 years I have written and co-written many different musicals, song cycles and other pieces for performance. These range from a theatrical exploration of the life of Mandela and the role of music in the struggle against apartheid, a performance piece about the Solar system using music, spoken word, movement and illuminated lanterns, a song cycle called Riversong , co-written with Jilly Jarman, which tells the story of a river’s journey through poetry, song and percussion

          Folk tales and legends have proved a great source of inspiration for new musicals and have led to new productions of The Snow Queen, The Return of Theseus and Little Red Riding Hood. There was a strong sense of folk tale in The Wolf’s Footprint which was one of the things that attracted me to it.

Sue: What’s the process of writing a play like that? I’m not musical at all, so I find it hard to imagine. Do you start with the words or the music?

Kate:  The works I’ve written have emerged in a variety of ways.

In the case of The Wolf’ Footprint, the starting point was ‘The Song of the Peasants’. I had an image of the villagers out in the forest: night is drawing in, and there they are, desperately searching for plants to eat as they have done every day since the crops failed. I tried to imagine the sense of frustration and hopelessness that the villagers might be feeling, and the relentlessness of the work they are doing. With this in my mind, I started improvising on the piano and with my voice, searching for a clear mood that I felt captured the scene.

          Once I had the music, the words came quite quickly and the play had its start.  It’s not always like that - sometimes the words will emerge first and I have to search for the melody and sometimes they come simultaneously as they did for ‘The Song of The Advisors’. This song came about in response to a section of the story involving the king and his guards, as they are described in the book, and a need to shift the play rhythmically. Neil and I bounced ideas around and in our interpretation the guards became sycophantic advisors or courtiers. Very quickly and playfully, we sketched out a melody and some words and in a matter of minutes that song was born. The words and music for that song seemed to feed each other and it provided the shape for the characters in the play and led to a great scene.

Sue: It was a very funny scene - and you could see that the children were having a ball with it. But I loved the whole play.

Thanks for blogging!

                                     The Wolf's Footprint

Adapted by Kate Stilitz and Neil Paris from the book, The Wolf's Footprint, by Susan Price (copyright 2003) by kind permission of, well, moi.

Music and Lyrics: Kate Stilitz

Directed by Kate Stilitz and Neil Paris

Assistant Director: C J Carroll

Sets/Props/Masks: Ramona Barsalona

Costumes: Caitriona McGarry and Miranda Mayston

Year 6 Teachers: Charlotte Houchin and Isabel Hamilton

And the children of Tiverton School

 

Orchestra! Lights! Cue the Wolf Pack!'

         

The wolf pack

      Children twisting and bending like trees in the wind, their arms forming low-hanging branches, a living forest to be lost in.
          Other children, wearing wolf-masks, climb through a leafy terrac, and slink and prowl.
          A peasant's chorus sing, beautifully, about the turning of the seasons, and the hunger that comes with winter.
          A troop of pompous, self-satisfied courtiers strut and cluck.
          And all the children quite obviously having a wonderful time as they sing and dance and act out their part.
          As their headmistress, Resham Mirza said, it was wonderful to see their courage and freedom on the stage.
          I saw all this at Tiverton School last week - a wonderful primary school in Tottenham.

Kate Stilitz

          I was there because I was contacted, through my website, by Kate Stilitz, Tiverton's music teacher. She had come across my book, The Wolf's Footprint, had loved it, and had turned it into a play, writing the script, songs and music herself. She wondered if I would like to come and see it performed?
          Well, what a silly question. It is true that I detest traveling to London. I don't like London much. It always seems to be roasting hot when I'm there, and gritty and dirty, noisy and crowded - normally I'd much, much rather spend 15 hours traveling to the Outer Hebrides than two hours traveling to London.
          But how many chances do you get to see a story that you wrote interpreted and reinvented by another artist because they loved it? With all the work, and thought, and revision that entails?
          Not many... So there was never any question but that I would go.

The villagers sing a rousing chorus

             It was a roasting hot day. London was as noisy, crowded, dirty and gritty as ever. But the play, and the children's performance - was worth it and more. There wasn't a moment when my attention wandered - I sat there throughout with a big grin on my face. You might say I was biased - but the rest of the audience, made up of parents and children from other classes in the school, were equally absorbed, despite the heat.
          Called on to say a few words after, I said that, although a bit late - my birthday had been the week before - it was the best birthday present I'd ever had.
          I mentioned that I'd written a book called The Ghost Drum, which had been awarded the Carnegie Medal for best book of its year - and that this was better. And I mean it.
          I'm not decrying the Carnegie Medal in any way. It was awarded by librarians who work with children, and who are informed, and often passionate, about children's books and their importance. And they gave me their medal. I'm proud of that.
          But it doesn't quite compare with discovering that another artist has so enjoyed and 'got' something that you've written, that they've been willing to pour their own energy into creating something new from it.
          Thank you, Kate. And thank you, the wonderful cast.
          The wolf-masks were made by Ramona Barsalona,

Daw becomes a wolf.

      Thank you to Kate for the photos - which will find their way to my website eventually.

The King and his court.

     

         The book of the musical is available as an e-reader from:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble (Nook)     Kobo   iBook

       

          It's available from Amazon as a paperback

with black and white illustrations

with colour illustrations