httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I6UB8aL4V8
I made a couple of mistakes here – for instance it should have been Birbal, not Bilal, in the 4th story. But hey, it was a lot to remember…
This is a tiny selection of the stories to be found in 1001 Nights and I mixed a couple of my own in there in the magpie tradition of the Arabian Nights that have absorbed stories from all over the Middle East over the centuries.
I tried to preserve some of the style of the original stories with the excessive descriptions and capricious characters. The original 1001 Nights were full of the sexual and racial prejudices of the time – to me that’s a fascinating cultural portrait and this performance is a tribute to a time that has long since disappeared.
