MOBY DUCK performs stimulating, challenging and accessible stories for young people and adults that celebrate the common ground between cultures.This, combined with original live eastern/western music, South Asian dance and mime, breathtaking animated projections and charismatic mask/puppets, creates a rich and exhilarating (and sometimes scary!) experience too rarely seen in theatres. The result is accessible and celebratory performances, appealing to all.You can get in touch by phone 0121 242 0400 or by email info@moby-duck.co.ukSince 1999, Moby Duck has made fifteen brand-new shows and toured them nationally and internationally.Education: Moby Duck works with children and adults, sometimes through stand-alone projects and sometimes through programmes specifically constructed to complement touring shows. The company is committed to sharing its members’ skills through:

• workshops and residencies in nurseries, schools and colleges
• training younger artists to the point where they can perform professionally alongside more experienced company members
• exchange of skills and approaches with teachers and artists both nationally and internationally• writing and storytelling
• dance, mime and movement
• eastern and western music
• international cookery
• flying object design
• puppet and mask making and operation
• living history
• 2D and 3D visual arts
• selected electronic mediaArtists: Moby Duck consists of a pool of artists, most of whom perform with the company — though others with special skills are co-opted for individual projects. All are experienced workshop leaders (most with over 20 years’ experience); and many also have had mainstream teaching experience at earlier stages of their careers.

Tour 2009: Our next show, ‘Don’t Mess!' (Age 8+) will be touring from September 2009. Phone 0121 242 0400 or email HYPERLINK "mailto:guyhutchins@blueyonder.co.uk" info@moby-duck.com if you’d like to talk about it.
‘Don’t Mess!’
Words by Guy Hutchins
Dance by Chitraleka Bolar
Music by Ed Briggs
Projections by Arnim Friess
Design by Purvin
Described by one reviewer as “Their best show yet”, Don’t Mess! comes from two traditional Indian folk tales: Panchkuina, and Rajkumari Baingan, both in circulation long before Snow White and Rose Red, or Sleeping Beauty (to which they are related) entered the European canon.
Deeply absorbing with powerful themes of jealousy and dispossession, sin, punishment, confession and forgiveness, the show is delivered with the unsentimental elegance of Greek tragedy. Balna is a princess born from a magic aubergine. When her mother dies, her father quickly falls in love with the Stepmother from Hell, who duly lives up to expectations by demanding the girl’s heart, lungs and liver on a plate. However, at this point the ancient Hindu gods don’t agree, and step in with spectacular consequences …
Don’t Mess! is the company’s latest international collaboration between British and South Asian artists. Guy Hutchins’ storytelling is interwoven with Chitraleka Bolar’s stunning South Asian dance. Ed Briggs captures every changing mood and fleeting sound on a range of eastern and western instruments. Purvin, artistic director of The Fetch puppet company, has designed haunting, evocative puppet/masks "and an elegant set" (reviwsgate); and Arnim Friess has returned for his fourth Moby Duck show to provide stunning digitally animated projections.
“This show really keeps audiences absorbed,” says Guy Hutchins, artistic director. “When I stepped out into the auditorium after the first schools’ matinee, I noticed all four hundred audience members had forgotten to open their crisps!”Meet the author:Guy Hutchins is a writer and storyteller whose work has been broadcast in over fifty countries and heard by several million people. Theatre includes plays for Birmingham Rep, Pentabus, Midlands Arts Centre, Little Angel Theatre and ten shows for Moby Duck; and storytelling includes performances, workshops and collaborations in Cuba, South Africa and India as well as around Britain.Other artists include:
Chitraleka Bolar’s reputation as a dancer and choreographer is formidable in India, Canada and the USA as well as in the UK. She has been creating and touring major national and international dance productions for the last twenty years. This is her twefth Moby Duck show.
Ed Briggs’s music for Moby Duck has included a glass orchestra, a coffee table and the world’s first xylophonic equiphone as well as more conventional eastern and western instruments. This is his third Moby Duck show.
Arnim Friess’s award-winning projections include work for Birmingham Royal Ballet, St Paul’s Cathedral and Legolands as well as a wide range of theatre and opera companies on both sides of the Atlantic. This is his fourth Moby Duck show.
Purvin is one of the country’s leading mask and puppet makers. Over the years he has been co-artistic director of Pentabus Theatre, founder director of Portugal’s Teatro Regional Da Serra Do Montemuro, and artistic director of his own company, The Fetch. He also has longstanding ongoing collaborations with a range of theatre artists in the Punjab. 'Don't mess' ON TOUR:

Coming soon …ONCE UPON A TIGER - Our latest Korean collaborationTouring February to June 2010By Peter Wynne Willson, Yoon Won Hye and sixty children from two continentsIn an old house there’s a tiger skin. Sit on it, and believe, and stories will swirl out ? tall ones, short ones, fat ones, thin ones … Peter Wynne Willson and Yoon Won Hye are working with two groups of 4 ? 8 year olds, one in a small village in Korea and another one in England, sharing everything from their daily preoccupations, small and large, about family life, to their wildest dreams and fantasies. Villages have always been the cradles of folktales, all around the world ? and folktales have always been shared with children. By taking modern village children from opposite sides of the world, and asking them to share their dreams, sometimes fun, sometimes scary, we will create a brand new tale with international resonance. Expect the extremely unexpected: the last time we explored this way of working, the show included a bin man, three tigers, a volcano, a rainbow, a lizard who is wise and an exploding birthday cake ? who all wove in and out of a plot that of course made perfect sense! In Moby Duck’s latest collaboration, Korean and UK performers combine storytelling, physical theatre, live music, puppetry and wild, exuberant Korean humour in the captivating mixture that is the company’s unique, unmissable performance style.

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