A Southern African Storytelling Spectacle
Heads and Tails
Outline
Southern African animal stories performed in a unique way with audience participation and interaction throughout, by professional storytellers Andy Copps and/or John Kirk.
Performance length – 45 mins
Locations – Schools / Festivals / Library Authorities / Community Events. Online performances can be arranged.
Audience type – All ages
Fee - Performance prices start at £150. This is subject to the number of participants, the venue and number of performances required. Rest assured that your budget will be taken into consideration. For all pricing info CLICK HERE
‘Heads and Tails’ is an interactive storytelling performance, exploring the folklore and fables of African animals.
The session will seek to encourage the audience to engage with a complementary series of age-appropriate books (for example Aesop’s Fables and ‘Just So Stories’) to demonstrate the connection between reading and storytelling.
How did the idea of ‘Heads & Tails’ come about?
Like many other ancient tribal cultures in Africa and around the world, the San people of Southern Africa have a belief and established culture, tens of thousands of years old, derived from the world around them and are the living evidence today of how humans co-existed with all things natural. as ‘Hunter- Gatherers’.
Andy will tell you, this performance set is 10 years in the making, and has been told in a variety of versions, under different titles and as individual shorter stories.
When Andy and John started to work on a school and festival length show, they adapted the stories and characters to create a unique and engaging performance.
Andy was adamant to only include the animals and so the stories have a fable feel about them with anthropomorphic characters.
And so ‘Heads and Tails’ came to be.
Expectations and Objectives
This performance workshop will demonstrate a direct link between the printed word and performance storytelling.
The diverse use of animals in the performance should resonate with the community across all ages and cultural demographics. Something very relevant too for Black History Month in October.
The stories are pertinent to themes of ecology and the natural world.
Many of the stories are moral tales that echo community values such as respect, kindness, tolerance and caring for the environment.
Audience interaction and participation plays an important aspect in this performance.
It is important to highlight that this performance workshop is designed and will be facilitated in a way to be inclusive of everyone, including any audience members that may require additional support, including physical and educational needs.
Looking after our natural world is a strong message from the performance and so the way the performance was designed was to include common household items and recycled materials for the interactive props.
It is also expected that as this is an inclusive family performance workshop the stories told should resonate with the older generations in the audience. The hope and intention is for the older generations to remember stories they were told as children and be inspired to share them with their family and visit local libraries.
The performance has a primary objective to inspire and motivate the audience to want to read, create and share their own stories.
How will the performance workshop be facilitated?
Audience will arrive and assemble on the floor (and/or seating if available).
The performance can be delivered by 1 or 2 facilitators, by co-creators John Kirk and Andy Copps. It was purposefully designed this way, should either facilitator be unavailable.
This workshop can be delivered in any space available and will also work well in an outdoor setting. Given the limited use of props and accessories, it will be easy to deliver without any significant impact to the space and time in set-up and take down.
The use of paper and art pens will be available for those wishing to draw while they listen (a technique that Andy uses to ensure maximum engagement).
What others have said about ‘Heads and Tails’.
‘Heads & Tails’ was performed at the Croydon Central Children’s Library a part of the Remix Croydon in April 2024. Two performances were delivered to family audiences across a diverse age and cultural demographic. It was very well received by the library management and Remix project team.
“Andy is a brilliant storyteller, who captures the imagination of his audience. He shared African stories to family audiences in Croydon Children’s Library as part of the London Borough of Culture finale. The audience were enthralled with his stories, helped by a couple of parents acting out parts, much to their family’s enjoyment! He has a great manner and is able to instinctively adjust his storytelling in accordance with the audience energy! I would recommend Andy and look forward to the opportunity of working with him again.”
“Andy Copps visits us twice a year to help us celebrate storytelling and World Book Day, but came today to perform a new show Heads and Tails. This interactive and engaging performance alongside John Kirk had our Prep children captivated and entertained. An immersive theatre experience, the children were participants in the show, gaining much more than they would as just an audience member, becoming a part of the story. Andy and John expertly told several African stories, inspiring the children’s imaginations and creating a new world filled with animals and baobab trees! A big thank you for always supporting our children with your storytelling expertise. ”
“‘Heads and Tails’ was performed in five of our libraries and our audiences thoroughly enjoyed the shows. Andy easily adapted the performances for large and small numbers, and interacted well with adults as well as children of all ages. I recommend ‘Heads and Tails’ as a professional, fun and engaging storytelling experience for all the family”
Creative process and Copyright
The creation and design of the performance set was achieved through the research and work by Andy Copps and John Kirk. They are named co-creators of ‘Heads & Tails’ and due to the unique and original narrative design, are the copyright owners so there is no need for any further permissions to be obtained or royalty payments made.