Kingdom of the Sea
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
Rumi
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The Dawn Maiden can give you your heart’s desire, just be careful what you wish for…
This is the story of a woman who finds herself lost and alone in a hut surrounded by driftwood. It is the story of a man’s quest to find the ocean that lies at the very edge of the world. It is a story of love, loss and what lies hidden at the bottom of the sea.
Storyteller Siân Jones and multi-instrumentalist Annie Sheppard have adapted The Kingdom of the Sea from a literary folk tale by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, first published in 1916. Ivana was, in her day, compared to Hans Christian Andersen, was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature twice, and was the first woman to be a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Science and the Arts. Her collection “Croatian Tales from Long Ago” was heavily inspired by motifs taken from the ancient Slavic mythology of pre-Christian Croatia. Joan Aiken included an adaption of the tale in her collection “The Kingdom Under the Sea”, first published in 1973, and illustrated beautifully by Jan Pienkowski.
In this new adaptation Siân and Annie have woven storytelling, original music and song into a 65 minute performance that has been called “magical” and “spellbinding”.