Ragged Stories
Shows
As a storyteller with a wide repertoire and an uncontrollable imagination, I'm always creating, learning, dissecting, blending and reimagining stories to create fresh new performances. Below is a non-exhaustive list of available shows, please feel free to contact me to discuss bookings, commissions or creative collaborations.
The Inititation
“Stories are spells”
-60/75 minutes-
What happens when the hourglass of our life shatters into a thousand shards?
How can we pick up the pieces when the shape of the world is forgotten?
Old gods roam the streets of Bristol plotting revenge upon an aging empire, mad prophets proclaim the end is nigh, and the hammer of misfortune breaks open a head filled with story, releasing deep myth to correct a timeline in crisis.
Kestrel Morton tells the true and unbelievable tale of their transformational journey from mental breakdown, eviction and homelessness, into the underworld and beyond, in a perception-altering psychosis revealing the power of story to harm and heal our relationship with reality.
Words shall be forged into keys, the locked gateways of memory shall open, and the secret mysteries of the initiation shall be unveiled.
Toad King
"Three brothers' cursed to hunger, rage,
and laze away.
The dead will rise, the land will fall, and the Toad king shall come to devour all."
60 Minutes - with music by Heulwen Williams
If you weren't comfortable in your own skin and the world offered a chance to become someone entirely new, would you take it, even if that path took you through a wasteland of suffering? If the only way to be accepted was to leave your home behind, would you go, even though you could never return?
With their unique blend of storytelling and music, Kestrel Morton and Heulwen Williams weave an enchanting, absurd and eloquent queer-remix of traditional Scottish traveller and Grimm folk tales, invoking the spirit of transformation for troubled times.
Muddyfeet
"Blood and bone - Ash, water, smoke and stone - Let love be more powerful than greed."
-45/60 minutes-
In a city built on the ruins of past mistakes - in a land locked in a pattern of creation and destruction - is there a way to cheat the fates and break the cycle? Is a better world possible?
Kestrel Morton spins a visionary spiderweb of dark nightmares - glittering with the diamond-dewdrops of hope. A mythic recreation of a tale as old as time - Cinderella as you've never heard it before - Muddyfeet is a poetic epic, pitting dystopian future prophecies against the green shoots of change that seek to uplift and rewrite them.
A story from yesterday - told for tomorrow.
The Mynydd
"For each action there is an equal and opposite reaction."
-60/80 minutes-
A three-faced god and a golden feather, a whispering serpent and a monk's pilgrimage, a sheep stealer, a hooligan and a change of heart, all watched over by old Granny Chaos. Kestrel Morton weaves a stitch-tongued spell of language, enchanting all who hear it to follow its fantastical thread; into creation myths and wonder tales; through parables and into true stories; dancing on the sharp-knife edge between warnings and wonder in the wild world beyond the world.
Stealing the Sun-Calf
"Beneath the earth there is a red land.
And in that red land is a red castle.
And in that red castle is a red throne.
And on the red throne sits the red king"
60 Minutes - with music by Heulwen Williams
A standing stone hunches, alone in a field. The drovers no longer walk the road that passes nearby, but the stone still remembers them.
If you sit in silence and listen a while, over the whispers of water and wind, you may hear the stone telling old tales and singing old songs.
Listen well and it will tell - of the Summer when the sun never rose.
In this remix of traditional Welsh folklore, legends and archetypes, Kestrel and Heulwen blend stirring story with soaring song to welcome in the Summer.
Repertoire
"Magic pots and tricksters, dreaming trees and lucky fools."
Available to fit any occasion, any length of time, with a wide variety of themes and characters, drawn from Welsh, British and European folklore, classic Greek and Norse mythology, a personal pantheon of modern Gods and much much more... Kestrel weaves tales spun from the echoes of the wild edges where the lines between the real and the mythic are blurred and the otherworld overlaps with this one