Finding Shiny Buzzard and Tall Tales

Shiny Buzzard - Telling Tall Tales

    One of my new programs that I have added to my website is my cowboy tall tales program called Shiny Buzzard. After my experience working with the now Defunct Pantagleize Theater ( it is in limbo at present waiting for a new home)  in Fort Worth on the cowboy version of’ A Midsummer Dream in Texas’  based on Shakespeare play with veteran director Violet O‘ Valley ( I played Snout the Tinker) I decided to revisit my cowboy roots and work up a new program. In my early days I was not very interested in tall tales because my focus was on history. So now I am some what aged and have 3 grandchildren (at this writing) and I find the concept of Tall Tales very appealing. Plus my stage experience ( my first ever play stage experience)  helped me to find the fun side of storytelling. This is something that has eluded me all these last 15 years. I have always leaned on the heavy side.

   So I wrote a mess of stories and ideas and began playing with them. Drawing on my past experiences in storytelling and acting ( we did perform the play 7 times) I started developing ideas and concepts. The stories came first and the character developed out of the stories and then I refined the two together. The stories by the way are still on going. I based the stories on tall tale concepts and applied the old One Shot Story to my first completed tale based on Shiny’s character. I added in a little fact to the fiction as should be done in any storytelling scenario. One Shot got me going and the other stories followed easily.

   Shiny is a character for sure much like Snout in Midsummer Dream. I perform Shiny in my cowboy duds and I’ve even added music ( painful music admittedly but it still music) in the form of my itty bitty guitar 

( actually a Ukulele). When performing the program I start out with a painful rendition of ‘You are My Sunshine’ and get the kids laughing with my terrible efforts ( I have used music before in the past , through my harmonica but I could never actually use it as part of the program).  Once I get the kids into Shiny’s Character I launch into the story usually laying a background. After that I have them.

  Shiny is extreme and fun.  He is loud, animated and just plain crazy. I have already performed Shiny in two different programs, a school program and an all day cub scout program with great success. I plan to push him hard in the following school year and to libraries.

  Once I have Shiny established I will start pushing Medieval Max, 

another tall tale teller. He will be the focus of my next blog.

Shiny Buzzard
at Spicer Elementary 2013 picture courtesy of Cathy Linehan