PETE MEETS MICHAEL HARVEY
(From F&F#46 August 2003)

In May I had to be in Cardiff 'on business' so I contacted Michael, whom I'd seen perform at Flying Donkeys in Derby a few months earlier, and we met up for a chat at the Patagonia Cafe.

You get billed as a `Welsh Storyteller'... Are you Welsh?

No, I was born and brought up in Glasgow and went to school near Perth, three years at Nottingham University and then came to Cardiff in 1984 and have been here ever since. People know that I work in Welsh and I tell Welsh stories but I don't promote myself as a `Welsh storyteller' but if you ask me, as a person, whether I'm Welsh or not I will say "yes", because it's like a choice, an inevitability, because I could choose not to be. I married a Welsh woman, I live in Wales, I've got Welsh kids, I speak Welsh with my kids, what else could I be? So I don't actually promote myself as `a Welsh storyteller' but what happens is that, if you're in the kind of venue or event that likes putting a country next to your name, people put `Wales' and it's a bit like the Commonwealth Games. Then you're, sort of, representing a country! Which I understand people have to do for promotional reasons, but I never go to see someone because they're from a place, I go to see them because of who they are.

So how did you come to speak Welsh? Was it because of the stories?

No, no, no. It was before I ever learned any stories. I was just curious. I went to an evening class, found that I could do it, and then did an intensive, I think it was, an hour and a half every morning for two years. I got a bit obsessed really and went for it. I wasn't really doing it for any particular reason. I wasn't doing it because I thought it would further my job opportunities or anything; it was just something I really loved doing and didn't see any good reason to stop! And then I got out of the other end and thought "Oh! I can speak this language now!"

I liked the way you put the bits of Welsh in your stories at Derby - Taliesin and so on...

I'm never quite sure what effect that's going to have. I can't hear it the way non Welsh speakers would. I can't hear the sound any more, I hear the meaning. Taliesin was the first story I started to put Welsh into consciously, because Taliesin is a poet and he speaks Welsh and you're going to want to hear what he sounded like, so I take his words, which have survived in the manuscripts, and modernise them so a modern Welsh speaker would understand what it is. The basic principal is that when he speaks poetry he speaks Welsh and the context will, hopefully, give people the idea of what's going on. It's like watching opera!

How much of your repertoire is Welsh?

In absolute terms not a great deal, partly because I love telling wonder tales and, I suppose, in a set the wonder tale is the main course if you like, and... there were no Welsh wonder tales! They don't exist, as far as I'm aware, they don't exist. You've got the longer material, the Mabinogion and all that kind of thing, and lots of little tiny tit bits - place name stories, tall stories, saint's stories; but nothing in between. I love both ends of the spectrum but the opportunities to tell at the ends of the spectrum aren't things you get every day. And I hesitate before I tell mythical material because, frankly, after a hard days work the audience is not always in the mood. Also it's not a story where you think "Oh, shit, half the audience is not up for it, still, they'll like the next story, if the story is half an hour or 45 minutes long!

Are you a purely full time professional storyteller or do you have another job too?

Yes. I started... when did I start? The first Beyond the Border. Someone said "Come to the storytelling festival." I saw various performers there, some were good, some were bad, some were indifferent. I was pleased that I could spot quality straight away. The big fear with storytelling is that one bad storyteller will spoil it for every one... I'm not quite sure how true that is. I think people can spot when a teller is just crap. I saw Abi Patrix telling `The Companion' and, my background is in theatre and I thought it was the best bit of theatre I'd ever seen. Ever. And when he'd finished I thought "That is what I want to do". I was doing a lot of street theatre at the time and I'd hurt my back and couldn't do the physical street theatre any more, had to stop, and I thought "I could do this..." And the library had booked me to do this little show I did for kids and schools and so on... so I said "I do storytelling now" and I mugged up a few stories and, kind of, blagged my way into it. Bit by bit, my repertoire grew and I did a couple of training courses at St Donats that David Ambrose ran - they were great - and went full-time six years ago. I was lecturing in drama at the university and it was hard going, and then I was offered a project which would have made me unavailable for the lecturing and I didn't hesitate, I just went for it. It's been full on since then, really.

The theatrical background is interesting because it was an advantage to begin with because I wasn't phased by getting up in front of a group of people, although the first time I told a story I'd never felt more exposed on stage. I think that's a common experience. I'd been doing improvised comedy and street theatre which was meant to be quite risky but I'd never felt I was taking as big a risk as when I opened my mouth to tell a story in front of a bunch of kids! So to begin with it was good, but then there's a sense in which theatre, sometimes, is like a big monster that gobbles up material. It doesn't really care where it comes from. It uses material for its own ends. I felt rather uneasy when I found myself doing the same thing with stories - reading something and thinking "I could do that. I would look good doing that." There was a context that I was not aware of or honouring.

Then I went to Cape Clear, which was my first big job, and I thought, "Hey! people actually want me, so I must be doing something right." I did my thing and I went down well and I told them loads and loads of stories and then I came back and had this really weird sensation that I never wanted to do that again. This little voice said "Never do that again." Meaning - never do what you've just done. And I had this conversation with myself - "But this is what you wanted," "No, it's not right." And then I got an offer from a local authority not far from here to do some work with schools that was much more to do with connecting landscape and story and working across arts and the kids making creative connections between the landscape and their own stories and that kind of thing, which was the answer to that prompt really. Now, having said that, I still do operate in the same way as I used to: I will take a story from somewhere and tell it, but that's not the sum total; and if it was I wouldn't enjoy what I was doing. There's a balance there. And there are certain stories that... if I'm required to be a cultural advocate, unless I feel I'm qualified I won't. So I've worked on Welsh Gypsy stories and I'd never pretend to be an advocate for the Romany people but, because I've done the research into the family, because I know one of the surviving members of the family, and she's got the family tree and everything, and I know about the family and I know the area where they are, I kind of feel qualified to speak, and tell people about the family, because I know - well, I know enough to be able to talk with some degree of knowledge about what's going on.

Similarly with the Hindu stuff, the Indian stories. Because my hand has been held through the process of learning the stories and I've been told "It's not like this and it's not like that, and you need to say this for people to understand, but really it's like this" and have had help with the pronunciation and all the slightly cloudy and complicated double meanings that are involved. When I'm working with the dancers I'm given the role of speaking those words but it's contextualised for me by the dancers, so I'm not standing there in front of a bunch of people saying "This is what Indians believe" you know? I don't try to be an advocate for those people, to speak for them.
I think it's very dangerous when people try to speak for or teach about cultures which they don't know...

There's a friend of mine who's a Brazilian and she went into a school where someone had been before and had taught the kids a song in Portuguese and had told the kids that it was 'a Brazilian song which they sang in Brazil'; and it wasn't, at all. It was actually a religious song sung, not in Portuguese, but in a sort of African/Portuguese patois. In, I think, the north of Brazil there's a specific religion where they use this song to summon particular spirits. The person teaching them did not know this. So if you think of the implications of that - if the kids knew, if the teachers knew, if the parents knew they were actually invoking a spirit...! There's a distinct lack of responsibility there.

So how do you choose which stories you're going to tell?

Well, I just read around and if there's something that... I'm always on the lookout for stuff that I'm interested in and then I'll work it up and tell it. For me, for myself really, but hopefully I'll find a place where I can do it. Then you've got the briefs where there's a certain expectation; sometimes I've got a bit of a resistance to that. "I don't want to tell a story about that." But perhaps that's exactly the story I should learn, but I have to go out of my comfort zone to learn it. Sometimes I never touch it again but sometimes it becomes an absolute core element of my repertoire. And sometimes it's very interesting to have to tell something which is not normally what you would do, although I don't let bookers boss me around. Some people have the experience of bookers having very clear expectations of what they want. You know, "You will tell this story" and that kind of thing. Luckily no-one's ever really tried that on me and I'd explain to anyone who said "I want you to tell this story" that if it was something that I didn't think was appropriate I just wouldn't do it.

Bookers who are comfortable with storytelling have no worry about leaving it to you. They know it's going to be good. They're not quite sure how you do it but they know it's going to be good, whereas sometimes people equate it much more with theatre or literature where there's more of a product and they, kind of, want to know what the product is so they have time to think about it before they say yes or no. But it's not like that.

You mentioned earlier working with dancers... have you worked with other people as well?

I love collaborating, yes. The only down-side of storytelling is that you're often on your own. I work regularly with India Dance Wales so the dance side acts out stories and, when you know what's going on it's very clear what they're doing, but if you don't know the story or you can't read the hand gestures then it just looks like people moving on a stage so my job is, basically... I'm slightly disembodied, I'm on the side of the stage and I'm telling the audience what is going on. I'm quite a physical performer but when I'm working with them I have to be quite still and I have this weird impression that the dancers become my body. Something does happen on stage, something very special. I can't quite describe it. It's not just me being a guided tour in a museum or something, there's a definite frisson of `something happening'.

And I'm working with some animators at the moment which is interesting because they work so slowly, and I work so quickly! There are two animated projects - one in a high school and one in a primary school. The high school students, it takes them three or four times as long to do the work as primary school kids! It's astonishing!

And I did a show with Inez Aponte in Bristol which, hopefully, we'll be touring with, maybe in the autumn. That was a programme of Breton and French stories, with a musician.

I suppose the next big thing is the commission for Beyond the Border, that's Culhwch ac Olwen with a singer and a musician. I've worked with the musician loads before and a fair amount with the singer. They work very closely together as well and the rehearsals so far have been fantastic because they're just so good and it's a great working relationship. There's no bullshit. We just, kind of, get on with it. We know when it works and we know when it doesn't and we're confident enough to say so to each other. It's got to be good, because if it's crap everyone's going to know!

How would you say your work breaks down at the moment - solo storytelling, working in schools, collaborating?

The vast majority of my work is on my own in primary schools. But having said that I do very few one-off schools. The majority of my work is part of larger projects so there's, like, a context. Within that a lot of the work I do is Literacy based, looking at creative narrative and poetry and I do some drama as well which I haven't done for a while, but when I am asked to do it it's lovely. The kids' response to the stories, dramatically, is better than any of the drama workshops I used to do when I was working in theatre. There's a small amount of work in secondary schools and not nearly enough work for adults. That's the one thing I want to do more of, more evening performances. There's only so much to go round, that's the difficulty.

What's coming up?

The commission I mentioned just now... In August there's the Bleddfa Week of Storytelling which I jointly lead with Hazel Bradley. I'm doing a primary school project at the moment with Social Inclusion money - that's the second animation project. That's funded by the local authority, Rhonda Cynon Taj. That's just north of here, the Pontypridd area, partnered with European money. There's lots of Objective One funding for the Valleys in particular. Money's no object, it's a bit embarrassing really! They said to the head who's co-ordinating this cluster of schools "Here's all this money. Spend it!" Unusual! That's keeping me going until the summer and I'm not quite sure what's happening in September. Hopefully Inez and I will be touring the Breton show and then in the spring I'll be touring the show that premiers at St Donats. That's it really. Then I'm sitting waiting for the phone call!

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