Today was a snow day!  Now that I’m down south, a little snow goes a long way, and all my classes were canceled.  This allowed me to work on several side projects today, including a new piece I am particularly excited about: Woe is Me (working title).

This piece is heavily influenced by his lordship, Lord Buckley, and I believe it is my funniest work to date.  To give a brief summary of this piece, Woe is Me is a tall-tale (of sorts) that looks at a helpless romantics emotional journey after he is dumped.  I’m excited to share this piece because of both the sudden tone changes throughout the piece (moving from romantic to satirical in one sentence) and because this is my first work with the tall-tale story structure.  I’m also curious to see whether other people will find it as funny as I do.  We shall see…

I intend to premiere this piece at the Acoustic Coffee House, Johnson City, TN at the next ETSU Tale Tellers performance (Next Tuesday), but if not at this near date, expect the piece at the same event occurring next month (I believe it will be February 26th at 8pm).  Well, I’m done sharing my excitement with you.  I look forward to being able to share this piece with you and I hope you are all having equally exciting times.

Best,
Lethan

So, here we go.  My first day where I actually have classes!  I’ve been back in Tennessee for a week, and already my schedule is starting to fill up with projects, and already I’m excited by them all, but now I get to begin the actual school work - the reason why I’m here.

I begin this morning with a class on story dramatization, we will be looking at stories from the Old Testament in the Christian Bible.  Perhaps we might slip in a little Lord Buckley’s ‘Jonah and the Whale’, and a whole lot more.  I’m excited to be approaching the Bible as a story source, not focusing solely on the religious content.

Well, now I must move on to continue getting ready for class.

Talk to you soon,
Lethan

Hello friends,

It’s the first day of classes today!  I don’t think I have any today, but the official start of the semester is today.  I’m excited.  I’ll be sure to keep you informed of the events that come about - as of now I can already see that it’s going to be a hard, but fun semester.  Booyah Fantastico!

Hello friends,

The official holiday season has come to an end, but it’s always fun to view every day as a holiday, so happy… we’ll call it Warf-Pickelopoligal day. Sorry, no extended break for this holiday, it’s not popular enough….YET!

As for myself, I’m excited to be back in Tennessee and continuing with my scholastics, not to say I didn’t enjoy the break: it was a wonderful holiday season for me: I got to see some of you at my performances, made some new friends, saw lots of old friends (including one who is currently staring in a Broadway play – bravo Jimmy Simpson), and had the privilege of traveling to Boston with a new friend in the international storytelling community. Speaking of Boston, while there I had the pleasure of watching the Blue Man Group perform…and it was one of, if not the, most nonsensical thing I have ever seen. I highly recommend it to everyone! They have permanent troupes in several cities (Boston, New York, Las Vegas), a touring company, and if you can’t make it to any of those performances, look them up on YouTube. I don’t want to give too much away, but the performance involved taking an audience member, covering him with paint, and throwing him against a canvas – hey, it’s art. Words cannot do this justice. It is Extreme Nonsense, much like Extreme Sports, except more EXTREME!

But that has moved on. Thank you to all my friends and family that helped to make the break an enjoyable time.

And now, as mentioned before, I’m in Tennessee again. And already I’m getting settled into my new groove. While I learned a lot last semester, and I did well in all my classes, I’m looking to dive into storytelling even more this semester. I’m placing myself on a new schedule that will be intense, but, assuming I hold to it (which I will!) I believe I will be able to explore storytelling in a variety of new ways and get even more from all I am already learning. I’m excited to see what the new semester brings.

I’m also in the process of arranging a Pennsylvania tour for this summer. I’m excited, because all the bits are beginning to fall together, and it looks like I will be performing in Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas) for about a week and a half and then I will be tumbling back to the Eastern side of the state for some spots around Bloomsburg, Lewisburg, and Kutztown. I will be performing a new set of stories specially collected for the Summer Reading Program: Catch a Bug at the Library. My program is titled: Bugs and Bugs and Bugs! Talk to your local library about bringing Traveling Tales to them this June. Events are still being arranged, so be in touch soon and we’ll get you on the schedule.

That’s my bits of information for now. As part of my schedule, I’m trying to make sure I get a post in nearly every day, so keep in touch and find out what adventures are happening with Traveling Tales. All the best and I hope to see you soon in my travels.

Best,

Lethan Candlish