Stories in Transit XV: It was and it was not...

Stories in Transit XV: It was and it was not

Palermo: Museo Pasqualino (Day 1), Casa Àncora (Day 2), Giocherenda (Day 3)

17-19 November, 2023

This three day workshop began with a session at the magical Museo Pasqualino (Piazza Antonio Pasqualino, 5, 90133)where storyteller Wafa' Tarnowska performed the story of the witches duel, a part of a tale from the Thousand and One Nights (a segment of the Second Dervish's Tale). We then took a walk from the museum to our lunch at Shapoor's, asking participants to draw and note anything they saw as we moved through the city. Bringing the tale and walk together, on our return to the museum we began in groups to make puppets and characters from the story.
We began the second day at our next venue, Casa Àncora (Piazza del Ponticello, 90134), we continued making masks, cotumes and some puppets to retell the story of the witches duel in performance. We also made banners!
On the final day we gathered at Giocherenda's shop (Avenida Aragona, 25, 90133) with all the masks and banners, along with musical instruments (from jars with beans in them to a synth and two violins!). We created sound effects / foley for the performance of the story, helped by Reneaux, finishing our time together with an impromptu performance (with people wandering in to watch from the street), dissolving wonderfully into dance and celebration. Throughout the three days, we were also joined by Silvia Maloni and Graham Thompson, two artist-filmmakers who contributed to the workshop their own playful, experimental processes.

Participants

Students of Centro Provinciale per l’Istruzione degli Adulti (CPIA) Nelson Mandela

Clelia Bartoli - teacher, writer and lecturer in Human Rights at the Department of Legal Sciences of the University of Palermo, she has served as an expert at the Italian Ministry of Integration

Valentina Castagna - lecturer, translator, writer, former Associate Research Fellow at the Birkbeck College (University of London), worked for several years as an independent interpreter and translator for the Law Courts of Palermo

Hannah Machover - workshop coordinator of Stories in Transit and artist-maker

Wafa' Tarnowska - children's writer, storyteller and translator

Philip Terry - poet, professor at the University of Essex, where he teaches Creative Writing; writer and editor of The Penguin Book of Oulipo (2019)

Marina Warner – writer and cultural historian, Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London, Fellow of the British Academy and President-Elect of the Royal Society of Literature