When Andy Cannon declares he's off on a quest, the audiences he encounters along the way suddenly find they've been caught up in a Very Big Adventure themselves.
It could be that they're whisked back into a long ago time in Scotland's history - Cannon's your man when it comes to the devils and the details in Scotia's past. It could be that they've reconnected with their own family history. Cannon's starting point for some of the material in Tales of a Grandson comes directly from his own childhood memories of time spent, as a little lad, with his grandparents. Or it could be, quite simply, that they've had their imagination touched and tickled by the sheer pleasure of hearing a master story-teller in his element, bringing out truths from myths and legends while reminding us of how tales about our kin become part of a shared, collective family history.
If his title, Tales of a Grandson, is a nod in that direction, it is also an acknowledgement of the debt we owe to Sir Walter Scott and his Tales of a Grandfather. "During the past year, on my 'quest', I've realised how much Scott's work has influenced everything we read about Scottish history," says Cannon. "And that's as true of the serious books for adults as it is of the wee Ladybird books for children. A lot of what we know, or think we know, was put into print - made fact, if you like - by Scott. Donald Smith, the director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre, has been keeping pace with me throughout the whole of this project and he said, at one point, that before Scott, there was no 'Bruce and the Spider' - and I thought 'now you mention it...' Donald's been great that way, pointing me towards possible connections. Maybe because we're encouraged to see history in very separate episodes, the Victorians one day, the Vikings the next, we don't always see the connections clearly. I mean, how many of us think of Charles I as Mary Queen of Scots' grandson?"
His own grandparents, however, have proved a lynchpin and an inspiration to his current endeavours. There's no mistaking the affection in Cannon's voice as he tells of visits that found him rummaging in his grandad's shed, and - as would happen later in the award-winning shows he made for Wee Stories - using make-believe to turn everyday objects into the stuff of epic derring-do. He waxes lyrical about his granny's cooking.
"That's one of the things I've got in common with the children I've been speaking with during this year," he laughs. "We all agree that granny's food cannae be beaten! And yes, like Scott, I am a bit of a romantic but I've always felt that the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is a very special one. When you get older, you start to appreciate the history they've lived through as well. I can remember, as a wee boy in 1974, seeing my granny in tears over her brother's medals - he'd died in the First World War. That was a whole 60 years past, a long, long time ago to me then, but in this year, particularly, that memory has taken on fresh meaning."
Cannon admits that, across the 12 months of gathering and devising, he's acquired more material than he can use, even in the three parts of the performance he's about to bring to the stage. "I've structured it like a weekend that I've spent with my grandparents," he says. "And drawn on my own childhood experiences - like when my grandfather took me to Loch Ness, because I'd been explaining to him my theories about why this dinosaur was still living there. I remember us, in the Hillman Imp, him giving me this old map, me wondering why the road north went where it did - and then realising, in Glencoe, that this is where a road would have to be, had always been, long before tarmac, and just wanting to know more."
It's that curiosity that drives every facet of Tales of a Grandson. It's why Cannon has been working with choreographer Natasha Gilmore and two of her Barrowland Ballet dancers, Jade Adamson and Kaiwen Chuang. "I was interested in how the dance could make the story happen," he says. "Not as an 'add-on' but as the framework, the time-line, that I would have to fit into and I've been loving it. We've had kids in schools learning how to do a Galliard, and thinking it's cool because Jade and Kai are so cool!"
Previous collaborators, cellist/composer Wendy Weatherby and designer Brian Hartley, are also part of a creative team that Cannon says wants to give "a lesson in history, not a history lesson. You know when Scott wrote his history books for his grandson, he described them as 'understandable to a child, but not of disinterest to a grown reader.' That kind of sums up my own Tales of a Grandson. Whatever age you are, just come and share the day with us."
Tales of a Grandson is at the MacRobert, Stirling, on October 18 (www.macrobert.org) and The Studio, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, on October 25 and 26 (www.edtheatres.com)
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