MISCELLANEOUS Productions starts its 2021 off with an online event, Resurrecting Dead Fairy Tales, viewing online on February 17th. Renowned folklore and fairy tale expert Jack Zipes will examine the importance of little-known tales from the first half of the twentieth century, in this free Facebook Watch Event, created for youth audiences.
With the goal of, as he describes it “unburying and reinvigorating dead fairy tales and their creators”, the lecture will bring back to life subversive stories created to oppose the rise of Nazism and other forms of totalitarianism internationally. World events today and their impact on youth make this lecture and conversation sharply relevant. In discussing these works, Zipes hopes to introduce youth to what they might be missing by not paying attention to certain periods of history, such as the early rise of fascism at the beginning of the twentieth century.
For example, in Yussuf the Ostrich well-known political caricaturist Emery Kelen tells the story of a young ostrich who helps defeat the Nazis in northern Africa during World War II. In Keedle, the Great , first published in 1940, Deirdre and William Conselman Jr. sought to give Americans hope that the world can overcome dictatorships. To the authors, the title character Keedle represented more than Hitler, but all dictators then and now. Perhaps timely for today’s political climate.
The Facebook Watch lecture was filmed in October 2020 at the Victorian Walter Library- Upson Room at the University of Minneapolis and will conclude with a live, moderated Q&A with Zipes.
As Zipes states: “History is doomed to repeat itself. We must preserve the things that make us human, and stand up to forces that would tear our society apart”.
Resurrecting Dead Fairy Tales is part of a series of workshops and events leading up to MISCELLANEOUS Productions’ next community-engaged and youth-centred theatre work Plague, a professionally produced hip hop music theatre work, which will explore issues that have arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring the plague through fairy tales, myths, and animal wonder tales from Indigenous and international cultures.
Once a vaccine is developed and distributed, MISCELLANEOUS Productions will work in a long-term, community-engaged collaboration with culturally and socially representative youth to create Plague, to be presented at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in 2022.
Visit miscellaneousproductions.ca for details about these and other upcoming presentations.
Follow facebook.com/miscellaneousproductions to join in the free Facebook Watch viewing of Resurrecting Dead Fairy Tales on February 17 starting at 5pm (PST)