Shearwater from timdalling on Vimeo.
Shearwater: seabirds, stories and songs
by
Tim Dalling and Malcolm Green
Shearwater opens a world of beauty, loss, longing and timeless truth through personal and mythic stories and songs. It gracefully balances the heartfelt and the humorous, never losing its footing but letting the audience know they are on the edge.
In 1969, storyteller Malcolm Green spent three months on a small, uninhabited island off the coast of Iceland studying huge colonies of seabirds. His experiences there form the frame into which many different journeys are woven: from the extraordinary life of the shearwater to a young man's coming of age and the transformation of the gull-woman.
This show was created not simply as a piece of entertainment but to help raise awareness of the very real threats to the survival of seabirds.
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"Malcolm and Tim embodied the birds and we flew with them. It's not often these days we recover our awareness of the basic kinship of all nature's community. And all this thanks to a couple of blokes and a blackboard..."
Joshua Gabila.
"Rich stories and vibrant music, presented by two master storytellers. I was informed, challenged, entertained and enchanted - what more could one ask?"
audience member at Caedmon Hall, Gateshead.
"Malcolm and Tim evoke the world of our seabirds from the inside out in these tender, layered stories."
Linda France
"What comes across so vividly is their passion for and wonderment at the British wilds and at seabirds - from the majestic Manx Shearwater to the fattest puffiest puffin
"..you can almost feel wings beating in your face, smell the salt spray and hear the sea crashing against the rocks. There follow more tall tales and songs sung in Gaelic and Siberian, some recipes for puffin and the prophetic story of the demise of the Great Auk.
"It's impossible not to be moved and transported by Shearwater, and at the same time also disquieted by the ineluctable effects of global warming on delicate eco-systems and their winged and finned inhabitants."
Venue Magazine, Bristol