The Seven Ravens

***Part of Puppet Animation Scotland’s Showcase for spring/summer 2023***

Told through a unique combination of puppetry, projection, needle felting, and specially composed music and song, our story is inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, and tells the story of Ada, a young girl who finds herself visited by a Raven and thereby thrust into a dream world of quests, feathers and a Glass Mountain.

The audience is taken on a tiny world adventure over an extraordinary, felted landscape as Ada tries to work out what the Raven is trying to tell her.

Why this story? We like it because it presents us with a strong female protagonist who goes on a quest and rescues her seven brothers. This turns the usual fairy tale fodder of ‘damsel in distress’ on its head. We have also created a character – The Keeper of the Glass Mountain – who provides a simple and age-appropriate exploration of the issue of sharing images online without realising that once they are posted control is lost. The Keeper is not really what he seems. He is a collector, whose sole desire is to capture the images of all it encounters – and to keep them within the walls of the Glass Mountain forever.

Freda O’Byrne is a physical theatre director, storyteller, performer and puppeteer with a first-class honours degree in performing arts from Middlesex. She has trained in mask, clown, bouffon, devising, directing and Feldenkrais with John Wright, clown with Pierre Byland, Deaf and Forum theatres with London Bubble, Puppetry with Curious School of Puppetry and with Puppet Animation Scotland. She uses an eclectic mix of genres to explore the stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.