Sekabo – Utopia on t’Moors?

Sally Bavage writes:

Photo courtesy Shanghai Daily

Richard Woolley was founding Head of the Northern School of Film and Television at Leeds Metropolitan University (now Leeds Beckett University) as well as founding Dean of Film and TV at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, all part of an illustrious CV. You could describe him as a musician and composer.  Or filmmaker.  Or scriptwriter.  Morphing into a serious novelist.  

Speaking at a LitFest 'Between the Lines' event in the intimate surroundings of the Heart centre's café yesterday evening, he told his audience that he was first set thinking about the premise for this novel after watching Chris Patten in tears on the eve of the handover of Hong Kong, a place where the British tried out political, social and economic experiments which disturbed the watching Chinese.  And still disturb the present Hong Kong youth.

This imaginative teller of tales has written his third novel, Sekabo, strongly influenced by close to two decades living in Leeds and a decade living in Hong Kong.  It has two time frames – 1990 and 2097 – and two key locations – England and Sekabo.  It has two parallel plots that gradually interweave in sometimes expected, sometimes surprising ways, leaving you uncertain as to your powers of prediction.  Plots and sub-plots abound in a tale that is as much about entertaining contexts as it is about the fates of our heroine and hero.

Cover graphics designed by Daniel Reeve

The book is a lively “mix of research, imagination and personal experience”, clearly written by a writer employing strong visual imagery; it intercuts the plotting to maintain the suspense with the immersion in another timeframe.  Vonnegut undertones and many subliminal sci-fi references fuse into a book that really is Something Else. 

Be prepared to be surprised, drawn in, perhaps slightly shocked - there are a few raunchy episodes.  Most of all, enjoy the many references to local places around the North Yorkshire Moors.  You have probably walked there.  Prescient comparisons - political, social and technical - are referenced more obliquely but give many pauses for wry thought.  Utopia on t’Moors? 

And the denouement?  Ah, you’ll have to buy the book - or download it to an early prototype reading device that by 2097 will be viewed as a museum piece. 

Read this piece in The Shanghai Daily:

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sunday/book/Richard-Woolley-Future-UK-intrigue/shdaily.shtml

SEKABO

Sekabo is the third novel by Richard, who as as well a novelist is a successful screenplay writer and film director. He was the founding Head of the Northern School of Film and Television at Leeds Metropolitan University (now Leeds Beckett University) and is a former Director of the Dutch Film Academy, founding Dean of Film and TV at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, inaugural holder of the Greg Dyke Chair of Film and Television at the University of York and, most recently, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Performance, Media and English at Birmingham City University. 



The café will be open especially for this free event, which is presented as part of the Between the Lines programme of Headingley LitFest. 

Mimika - completely enchanting

Small Worlds - Saturday 1 November - Mimika

(A LITFEST 'BETWEEN THE LINES' EVENT)

Gail Alvarez writes:

Waiting to be invited into the tent

Picking apples from an unsteady ladder,and the broken ankle that followed, did not stop Jenny, one half of Mimika children’s theatre, from working with partner Bill in four sell-out performances at the Heart centre in Headingley. Thanks go to her sister Sheila for helping out and ensuring the show must – and did – go on. Fortunately, Jenny's part in the production involved mainly crawling about, out of sight, on the floor of a large, custom-made, igloo-shaped tent.

Not long before the beginning

Old and young alike packed each show, which held audiences spellbound.  I half expected to see some of the adults sucking their thumbs too, so intent were they on the small world created inside the intimate and cosy world of the tent. Utterly absorbed by the unfolding drama, eyes wide, mouths agape.  The children in the audience too!  Lovely to hear  those children giggle in delight and stare in concern at a form of entertainment which was born thousands of years ago but which is still such a good medium for sparking imaginations.

No wonder that Mimika provide such a gentle but profound experience, taking us all to a (small) world we can see, hear, imagine, describe and talk about in our mind’s eyes and our internal conversations.  Film clips, hundreds of sound effects, music geared to the action, puppets and props create a microcosm of rural life for a small living things. The creatures get larger as the show develops. There are butterflies of various hues, a pink-spotted bug, honking geese (soprano and bass), a mother fox slinking through the woods and looking after cubs in the sett, a green lizard which is squashed by a child's bicycle before it can snap up flying insects, a girl straight out of a six year-old's drawing - for forty-five minutes the audience was captivated.  

Owls are always welcome

What ideas have been planted in our observers by these tiny tales?  Time will tell but storytelling always starts in the mind’s eye.

Audience comments include:

Mesmerising!  The detail is wonderful. Thank you for coming to Heart.  Please come again.  Everyone should see this.  Julia.

So wonderful to see handcrafted settings and such a different, unusual mixture of media.  Captivating!  Loved the foxes and bugs particularly! Music was beautiful too.  Would definitely come again! Luisa

Beautiful, engaging, very magical for the kids.  Would love to see more. Liz

A magical experience – I emerged bemused, enraptured – full of questions!  Thank you.  Lis

It was absolutely beautiful.  Magical.  I was almost crying which is unusual for me!  Thank you!  Lucy

Truly enchanting and I could not help but wonder at the huge amount of time and energy involved in the making and production of the performance - the art work, model making and the combination of digital film and immersive sound was inspired. The audience - young and old were truly engaged and spellbound. Douglas

Bill Parkinson and Jenny Ward                                Photo: Richard Wilcocks