These medieval folk tales return a rare style of theatre to stage

In 1972, Michael Minions watched a semi-improvised play on BCTV. It told age-old folktales with a unique and somewhat obscure style – story theatre.

It’s characterized by actors breaking the fourth wall and narrating the play while acting it out.

“I fell in love with it 50 years ago and I thought, ‘I should recreate that,’ and I’ve discovered that nobody’s heard of it” he told Kelowna10.

That's culminated in the Red Dot Players latest fall production, Folk Tales: Grimm & Otherwise. The show is comprised of 15 short stories that are hundreds of years old and rooted in Italian, French, Irish, and other historical folklore.

Each story has a different director and the actors fill several roles in each story. The cast consists of Okanagan College students and broader members of the community.

The stories are generally fun, humorous, and simple.

“One of my production concepts is that these stories should be able to be recreated by an eight-year-old with common household objects,” Minions said.

For example, a hockey stick acts as an ax for a lumberjack, hung fabric represents a tree, and a large turtle shell worn by actor Graham Daley was made out of cardboard boxes.

“It’s basically actors playing actors. You go into the costume bin, you put it on and you’re narrating,” Daley said.

“And that’s one of the really neat parts is that when you’re narrating, you’re using your own voice and then all of a sudden, you might go into an accent of some kind. Just to keep those characters really in line.”

The 10-year actor from outside the campus is playing 11 different characters in the show.

Molly Harrison, a writing and publishing student at the college, is also slated for numerous roles; a ‘strange creature,’ an old beggar woman, a bee, and a crow, just to name a few.

“It’s just a really good time. It’s just fun for everybody who would come to see it,” she said. “It’s a family show. So really, from all ages, you’ll enjoy yourself.”