I have a feeling that Michael Harvey gives more through his storytelling than the audience, and even perhaps he, is aware.
His tales this night were traditional Bretton. They were – well, one word for them is preposterous. Also funny, sad, challenging, uplifting. He danced and sang his way through them, the words he spoke lyrical around the base rhythm
of his breath. Which said to me that he knows words, he knows the power they hold and how to work with them. It inspired trust.
Which given that one story, for example, was about a cross-dressing woman in whose male guise the Queen fell in love, only for the woman to turn her down, causing the Queen to accuse her of making a courtesan pregnant, which in turn
humiliated the Queen as she revealed her true sex, resulting in encounters over time with monsters and boyhood and redemption, was required, most definitely required.
Trust was also needed when we participated in the workshop Michael Harvey ran the following day. About Storytelling and the Body, it was intimate and freeing, and gave keys with which we were able to unlock Michael’s performance the previous night. He didn’t always have the words to explain what he was giving us, and waved his arms above his head to indicate this to us. Which says to me he is rather a wise man.