I ran into a couple of old friends at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday in the exhibit Storytelling in Japanese Art. In an “emaki” (handscroll) illustrating the story of “The Drunken Demon” I found the hero samurai Raiko (who I know from a folktale I tell of his battle with the Goblin Spider) andAbe no Seimei (my favorite Onmyoji, or yin/yang magician)—both in the same story like a Spiderman/Dr. Strange crossover in an issue of Marvel Team-Up.
Marvel Team-Up — Twice as Many Pages! Twice as Many Thrills!
Emaki are like the original comic books or animated movies, telling a story through text and sequential illustrations. A scroll might be 30′ long, and to read it you would look at about two feet at a time, unrolling it with your left hand while simultaneously rolling it up again with your right. “The Drunken Demon” version in the exhibit was told over three scrolls from the Edo period by Kaiho Yuchiku (1654-1728). A boyish demon becomes terrible when drunk, stealing all the beautiful women. When he captures the daughter of an aristocrat, Abe no Seimei uses his powers to find where the girl is held, and the Emperor orders Raiko and his warrior companions to rescue the girl—which they do with the help of three gods disguised as men, a tree that grows across a chasm to become a bridge, some poisoned saki and a golden helmet. In the climactic illustrations, after a wild feast featuring human sashimi, the sleeping demon is depicted as filling an entire room (described in the text as 10′ tall, but illustrated as if 30′ tall) before Raiko cuts his head off, blood spraying out in a fine mist just like in the modern samurai movies like “The Warrior’s Way” (a fun one I watched last night). Continue reading →
Dream BIG this Summer with Timeless Tales in Two GREAT Shows!
——— SHOW #1: THE LITTLE MOUSE THAT DREAMED BIG ——–
Christopher Agostino returns with a special selection of stories for this Summer Reading Club theme.
The Mouse that becomes an Eagle
Featuring “The Story of Jumping Mouse”, a traditional Native American folktale that captures the power of our dreams to transform our lives. This inspirational tale, made into a children’s book by John Steptoe, is about a brave little mouse that follows his dream and against all odds reaches the far off land where he is transformed into a mighty eagle. Plus the show includes other exciting tales that encourage young people to dream big and never give up, brought to life through Christopher’s playful storytelling and amazing facepainting.
Magic Frog gives him his Name
Christopher Agostino’s Transformations Storytelling is a very different kind of a show. Audience volunteers are brought on to the stage and facepainted very quickly to illustrate the stories he tells. The amazing facepainting holds kids attention while they listen to folktales from around the world and his original tales. With his extensive repertoire of stories he can perform successfully for any size audience and any age: kids, teens and adults, and each summer he crafts a new selection of stories to fit the Reading Club Theme. In most shows he paints 8 to 12 volunteers while mesmerizing the audience with a theatrical storytelling style and tales that range from the comic adventure of the first time a man met a crocodile to the heroic tale of the boy Punia and the King of the Sharks. It’s surprising and delightful theater for any age. Several themes are available and special shows can be crafted to feature specific cultures and special topics. Christopher has appeared on the NBC Today Show and the CBS Early Show and performed for hundreds of theaters, schools, libraries and festivals.
——— SHOW # 2: The BODACIOUS Book Show CLASSICS ———-
Including our special version of Jack and the Beanstalk starring kids from the audience and a 60’ beanstalk!
Beatrice the Bookworm
Beatrice the Bookworm is back in the show that’s so much fun it gets everyone inspired to pick up a book and read. Our Bodacious Book Show Classics edition is all about the books that have kept readers dreaming big for generations, from Dr. Seuss and Charlotte’s Web to timeless fairytales like Jack & the Beanstalk. Also featuring the Quiz Show Game that gets the entire audience thinking and talking about great books:“Have You READ It?”
"Have You READ It?" Quiz Show
This fast paced variety show really gets kids inspired to read, because great books make great readers. It features The “Have You READ It?” Game, a TV-style Quiz Show hosted for laughs by Bob Bookmark and Rita Digest in which the whole audience competes, parents included. It’s great to see kids jumping up and down in their seats with answers to such questions as “What kind of eggs does Sam like with his ham?” The questions and challenges are designed to remind young readers of all the fun they’ve had with books they’ve read and to introduce them to other great books so they’ll want to read more. And we bring to life some funny poetry from great authors such as Shel Silverstein and Ogden Nash.
Jack and the Beanstalk starring audience volunteers: The Magic Dancing Bean
Plus there are special guest stars: Professor Fineprint lectures on “1001 Uses for a Book” (but he doesn’t know you can read them); and the very popular Beatrice the Bookworm enlists younger audiences to join in her pledge to “always read my books before I eat them”. The grand finale is a hilarious rendition of “Jack and the Beanstalk” with kids playing the parts onstage and a 60’ beanstalk growing through the audience. The Bodacious Book Show was created to support reading programs in schools and libraries by reminding kids of the fun books they’ve read and interesting them in new ones, because the best way to develop good readers is to let kids discover books so fun they can’t wait to read more.
In 2011, the Bodacious Book Show was selected to host the kick-off celebration for the Target Read Across America literacy initiative at the New York Public Library, and introduce the celebrity readers such as Mark Ruffalo and Uma Thurman.
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SPECIAL DISCOUNTS available forLibrary Performances.
CONTACT US by email: info@agostinoarts.com, or call 516-771-8086
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Agostino Arts Theatre has been presenting programs in schools, libraries, theaters and other venues throughout the Tri-State area for nearly 30 years.
Libraries we appeared at in 2011 include:
Mechanicville Library, Hewlett-Woodmere Library, Garden City Library, Sayville Library, Atlantic City Free Public Library, Harborfields Library, Wyandanch Public Library, Farmingdale Library, Lynbrook Library, New London Library Festival, East Williston Public Library, Riverhead Public Library, Newburgh Free Library, West Milford Township Library, South Huntington Library, Goshen Public Library, Mastic-Moriches-Shirley Libarary, Burlington Library, Bryant Library, Jamesburg Public Library, Half Hollow Hills Library, West Babylon Library, Rye Free Reading Room, Connetquot Library, Big Flats Library, Horseheads Free Library
When Target planned their launch for the Target Read Across America literacy initiative at the New York Public Library, they asked us to host the kick-off celebration. Beatrice the Bookworm opened the show, then Bob Bookmark and Rita Digest played the exciting “Have You READ It?” Game with the entire audience in between a stellar lineup of celebrity readers, including Uma Thurman and Mark Ruffalo. http://reading.target.com/read-across-america/
Our Bodacious Book Shows involve the entire audience in the fun
Jack and the Beanstalk - The Singing Golden Harp Duet
“A beach is a place where a man can feel he’s the only soul in the world that’s real.”
— Pete Townshend, Quadrophenia
There is a concept within folklore that this world is divided into many worlds, such as the visible world we live in and the invisible spirit world. Other divisions include the world of the earth (the world which mankind lives in) and also the world above the sky and the world undersea. Standing on the beach at the ocean we are standing at the edge of our world, or rather, the edge where our world meets another.
We took a vacation to Sanibel Island, Florida, over the break between Christmas and New Years, and standing on the beach I felt that I was on the edge of the mystery. A few years ago I wrote a folktale that spoke of my feeling that the ocean itself is alive. There is so much life at the beach on Sanibel, reinforcing that image—I could feel that undefinable life before me under the waves, the ocean as “other”. On the first day here, small fish must have been grouping just along the shore because sea birds swarming in the air were diving into the water all day long, in addition to flocks of sandpipers running along the water’s edge, and pelicans, crows, the occasional egret or heron. Sanibel is famous for the amount of shells that wash up endlessly, day after day, and that too speaks of life under the ocean surface.
We look up at the sky and see nothing but sky, maybe some clouds. When we look up at the sky it takes an act of belief or imagination to determine there is a world at the top of it.
To look at the ocean is to see the other world right there, its vast surface concealing the world beneath, and whereas we are in a world of earth we have dominated and remade in our image, the ocean remains mysterious. The beach is the portal, the transition place between the world of Man and the mystery of Nature. Sitting at the water’s edge on our final day here I focused on this aspect of the beach as edge. The waves marking the transition point. The sound of the waves an audial fractal, if such a thing is possible, repeating without repetition, predictably and without pattern—each wave the call of the entire ocean, all of the waves together speaking with one voice.
I also wondered who is the guide? In folklore there are creatures that traditionally guide the adventurer who journeys between the worlds. The frog, because he can move from pond to land; the snake, because he moves from the surface through rock to the underworld. For the ocean off Sanibel, who is the guide? Maybe a cormorant? Or a pelican? Maybe it’s time to write a new story.
“Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made,
those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade but doth suffer a sea change
into something rich and strange.”
—Ariel from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act I, Scene ii
In my transformation tale, The Sea Change, Wistful walks along the beach at sunrise every morning to see what shells have washed up, and she is lured into the ocean by a sea monster
At the end of the tale she is rescued by Steadfast, but by then the sea has changed her as it does all things, and she has become a Mermaid, who can return to land only when the moon rises just so.
