Preparing for North Texas Irish Festival and Beowulf Retold
I love working the North Texas Irish Festival ( NTIF ) held in Dallas at Fair Park (this year March 6-8, 2009). It is by far the most fun and enjoyable festival in all of Texas. It has the best music and entertainment and is run far better than any annual weekend festival I have ever worked for. Not only is it the best but those who run it treat their performers great.

As a storyteller I have known Dawn Sparacio for well over 5 years now. I first met her when I was working the Celtic Heritage Festival in Bedford Texas which is pretty much defunct now. She was running the childrens area for the festival and it was obvious from the first that she is a creative and inventive soul who had a big heart for kids. She eventually gave up on the Bedford festival and went over to NTIF. They gave her full reign over the children's area and she over the years moved this program up a quite a few notches. Last year she technically resigned from running the area because she remarried and moved to another state but she still has her hands in the general organization of this program. I owe a lot to Dawn. Now Dawns Daughter has taken her place and is continuing with Dawn’s same vigor.

I wrote Dawn a few months ago and asked her if there was anyway I could get an adult stage to do my Beowulf Program (I could not do this program in the children’s area) . She plugged me into Connie Ener and I told her what I would like to do and she listened. Connie told me that she would see what could be arranged but didn't promise me anything. In the meantime I created my youtube presentation of my opening segment of Beowulf Retold and posted it on in the last week of November 2008 ( a link is posted on my website to this presentation on the home page).

Once I saw that my youtube video was getting a favorable response I sent an email to Connie and gave her some background on the video and sent a link of it to her. I can only assume that it made a difference in some way or form or fashion because the next I heard from her they would try to find me an adult stage, which they did. Finally I was contacted by John Hebley who is running that stage and I was set up. I will get my chance to do Beowulf Retold on the Traditions Stage at 2pm Saturday March 7, in the Creative Arts Building at the 2009 festival this year.

Of course I am pretty excited about this opportunity to do this program at the NTIF. I did get to do this program at the Bedford Celtic Heritage Festival on a main stage last year but this festival was so poorly attended that I only had an audience of 30 by the time I finished the program and that was in the big tent. I was told that the program would be advertised and that was one of the reasons I came back to the Celtic Heritage Festival but the only promise that was kept was that I got to perform on the main stage. I had no other form of advertisement besides the sign and all it said was my name. And adding to that I was never paid for my time and performance because the festival made no money.

Still it gave me an opportunity to do the program on a main stage with my hand made lyre to complement the presentation and with a professional sound system and sound man. In that it was great. I started out with an audience of 6 and ended up with 30 and I sold 5 CD's which turned out to be the only money I would get for that festival. This is how it is sometimes for a storyteller such as myself.

It is my hope to be able to present the entire Beowulf Retold or in other words the entire Beowulf story in my version when I am done. I just recently finished writing the 3rd and final section, the part of the story dealing with Beowulf as King of the Geats and his battle with the dragon. I finished and refined the 2nd section last year. I will probably have the 3rd section completed (refined to final form) by this summer. After that I will start memorizing those final two sections just as I did with the first one. Through memorization I will be able to present Beowulf as I see it and in the words that I see it being told in. The entire presentation performed with my lyre will probably take one and a half hours, maybe less. I won't know until it is finished. My ultimate goal with this presentation is to make it presentable for stage and to take it around Texas and beyond when I retire in a couple years or maybe even before.

The script for Beowulf is the only script that I memorize when performing. Even with that it still varies on occasion because it is an intense presentation and not designed for younger audiences. Normally a storyteller does not memorize their story. They learn the basic plot, names and or structure of the tale and the story is literally remade before the audience eyes and ears. It is a thing of beauty. But with Beowulf Retold I decided early on to take a different tack with it. The first script covering the first section of Beowulf took me nearly two years to write, mostly because I wanted something original. I tore up a lot of scripts that did not do what I wanted. When I finally stumbled onto what would be my final approach to telling this tale I soon realized that in order for it to work that I would have to tell it just as I had written it. Nearly word for word. Believe me when I tell you this, memorization is not my thing. It took me nearly three months to learn the first section and will most likely take me at least twice that time to memorize the entire program.

Why? You ask should I torture myself like that. Good Question. The answer is quite simple.
When I began writing the first script I had been studying Beowulf for around 10 years. I had fallen in love with the original version. I had found it enthralling. Yet I understood quite well that it was archaic and challenging to modern day audiences. I myself had to resort to all kinds of translations to figure the story out. But once I had accomplished that, much became clear and the beauty and power of this tale unfolded before me. In the beginning I was just trying to write a version I could perform in schools. Then that progressed to trying to do it at festivals and other settings. Now I want to turn it into a stage production and that explains the decision to memorize the entire program. If I am perform it on stage for repeat audiences it needs to at least be similar or exact every night because that is what audiences like that pay for. That is what they want to hear and see.

So there is my goal for Beowulf Retold.

So hopefully by 2010 I will have the complete program ready. In the mean time I plan to try and hit more stages to do the first part of the program on and to try and develop a following for my version of Beowulf. For those of you who know me, you understand that I am quite passionate about this program and often with passion comes the unexpected. So if you have not heard my version of Beowulf, please come see me March 7 on the Traditions Stage at 2pm at the North Texas Irish Festival. I will be looking forward to performing for you.