Magic Island Storytelling Theatre: Strange Tales From The Isle Of Arran: Ghost & fairy tales & more.

Sorry it's been a muckle long time since I last posted an episode, but I've had a lot on in both work and life this year. My audio drama for Audible, THE DEAD OF RANNOCH MOOR -- exactly the sort of folk horror tale I perform a lot on the M.I.S.T podcast but done on a far grander scale, with real actors performing it (Chris Reilly & Shirley Henderson) and a wrap-around immersive soundtrack by Joe Richardson and music by my fellow Arranach Electra Perivolaris --was released on the Audible app in October; plus my stage show The Passion Of Tam Shanter was premiered in August, and several other things have been in the works which it's still too early to speak of.But the impulse came to me to put aside momentarily all the grand complications of Big Time Showbiz and record another no-frills, unplugged, improvised performance of a traditional folk tale in the traditional manner. So here we go, with my very Scottish version of what started life as a creepy Bohemian folk tale....

I've written a lot of things over the years, many dramas for the BBC and Wireless Theatre Company, a smattering for Big Finish, and now a whole decades' worth of epic productions for Audible, many of them performed by some of the famous people imaginable - no nonsense movie stars, indeed. But still, such is the nature of my career and my body of work, the piece that means most to me is the one that's found least of an audience. This is my novel Dances Sacred & Profane, my most personal work, which I tentatively published on Kindle but never did much to publicize, most of all because it was so personal, a deeper revelation of the person and the artist that I am, and the more of an audience I drew to it, the more I feared some callous online remark, or cluster of such, that would wound me deeply: in many ways DSP is as personal as a diary - of myself at a certain crucial moment in my life, certainly. But that moment is past and so now I feel the confidence to perform the story myself here and see if it doesn't find a wider audience. It's an unusual story, seeking the more unusual listener: though it's a kind of sequel to a classic vampire story (I won't say which at this stage, as it would give too much away), it's essentially sui generis, by no means a fangs-and-coffin blood-and-thunder shocker, having strong elements of historical novel and romance and plays freely back and forth between these generic levels in a non-generic way. Here's chapter one (this is going to take some time), but if you want to read the whole thing in one go, here's a link to the book itself -https://www.amazon.co.uk/DANCES-SACRED-PROFANE-Gothic-Romance-ebook/dp/B00858QERM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=618EPBGMNR0B&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.sWZuRZQE4S13Q2JvUdAfhg.T8Q93Ja8uUlMxuz2WAUEHKXAMAIbJsQ-xHantlcPOyc&dib_tag=se&keywords=dances+sacred+and+profane+marty+ross&qid=1746793289&s=digital-text&sprefix=dances+sacred+and+profane+marty+ross%2Cdigital-text%2C67&sr=1-1Also, make allowances for my voice - the narrating character is female and should ideally be performed by a female actor, but I couldn't ask such an actor to make the kind of long term unpaid commitment this is going to require, so please make imginative allowances.

And so at last we come to the conclusion of this dramatic, darkly romantic lycanthropic tale inspired by a Swedish follk tale from Upsala, but relocated here to the Isle of Arran. With the curse lifted from Tod and passed instead to Moira, Tod and Fiona seems set for the traditional happy ending. But things are set to be a little more complicated in this unsettling dramatic epilogue, which contains imagery some listeners might find disturbing.

And so we come to the penultimate episode of this dark, dramatic tale inspired by Swedish folklore but relocated here to the Isle of Arran. A ferocious man-beast on the loose, a stepmother sunk in guilty dreams after casting a terrible curse, her stepdaughter striving to do all she can to lift that curse before it claims her own life, a ghostly grey figure hovering in the shadows of the derelict house that is our setting... all is prepared for a very dramatic climax. Though, be warned, this isn't quite the end of our story... one more dramatic episode to go!

So Fiona has found that her jealous stepmother Moira means her no good - and Moira has likewise worked a terrible and magical transformation upon Tod for preferring Fiona to her. Now as Fiona flees into the forests here on Arran, the scene is set for a startling and disturbing encounter in this latest chapter of a very "Arran" reinvention of an old Swedish folk tale. WARNING: this episode contains explicit elements of sexualized lycanthropy which some will find disturbing.