Reinventing the literary reading

A bit more about the collaboration between Nimble Fish and writer Katherine May. We've just emerged from the first public outing of Katherine's performance piece based on her novel, 'Burning Out', and we're very happy with the results. For more on Katherine's view of it, check out her blog.

As Katherine says, we are aiming to create something that, we believe, doesn't currently exist in the universe of presented literature. Most live presentations of books, whether fiction or non-fiction, hew to a particular form: something approaching a live audiobook, where an author reads excerpts from his or her work and then answers audience questions. I know the form well, as I toured and read extensively when my book was published in 2005.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this form, except that it is rarely challenged...and, as an author, pretty frustrating since one one can only convey the barest sense of a work that is, after all, designed to be far more than the proverbial sum of its parts. We think the 'live audiobook' reading is often boring for audiences, too, as evidenced by the near-extinction of author tours and the dwindling audiences at those still surviving. In these credit-scrunchy times--and with the publishing industry on celebrity-fed life support--we felt there was an opportunity to try something new; something that might give writers a new way to connect with audiences.

In thinking about what we wanted, two performance genres were ever on our minds. 'Live literature', mostly in the form of poetry performance and various forms of spoken word, already occupies a sparky, spiky domain outside the staid environs of 'straight lit' events like Hay and Edinburgh. But most live lit relies on lit written to be performed live, a very different creative proposition than literature written to be read privately. Nor did we want to create theatre; if that were the case, we'd go for adaptation, a successful genre in its own right. In our minds, the live presence of the author was still essential to whatever we created, and we were adamant that he or she should not have to become an actor for the purposes of presenting a different view of their work.

Have we succeeded? Well, as Katherine says, it's still a work in progress. But we think we're onto something and do join us in Folkestone on 13 November to see for yourself, and to tell us what you think. In the mean time, some photos of the process so far:

We began by creating a visual 'map' of the book's themes, moods, locations, and ideas...

...and then added some objects we thought connected with essential themes and characters.

We created a new narrative of the book using only its text, but sometimes in a different order than found in the manuscript.

We played with projection and sound, with the rule being that all 'tech' must be straightforward enough for the author to set up and manipulate without additional help.

Here is Katherine giving it a bash on 30 October at the Canterbury Festival. Special thanks to Peggy Riley and East Kent Live Lit for the opportunity.