Seanchai Library has outdone themselves this year with so many great events it seemed unfair to cover just one so we have expanded our usual Seanchai Library column to show you everything.  Get your date books out because you will not want to miss these. Snow

Halloween is coming and Seanchai Library is getting into the spirit of the season, planning to raise some hairs, chill some bones and tingle some spines with  BOOFest and a special production of War of the Worlds

They start the month in partnership with Branwen Arts to present BOOFest! This two-day celebration of stories, best told around the blazing autumnal fire, features a gathering of virtual story presenters at their spooky and scary best.

 

“The debris wasn’t even clear from StoryFest last March before we said ‘We have to do this in October and tell ghost stories!” said Derry McMahon, chief librarian of the Seanchai Library, who worked in partnership for the weekend festival along with Branwen Arts and the Stories Unlimited! subscriber group. In the meantime, Seanchai Library and Stories Unlimited! went on to present the popular Shakespeare weekend, Bard on the Virtual Beach, under the StoryFest banner in August.

All BOOFest! presentations will be live in voice.  All the performers are volunteers and the sessions are free to all Second Life residents.  All events will happen on the Branwen Arts home turf of Bran - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bran/68/99/24 - with presentations on October 1 from noon to 4pm and October 2 from 10am to 2pm and 3pm to 5pm – all times SLT.

 

“We have an interesting mix of presentations already on the docket,” said event organizer Caledonia Skytower, “with everything from traditional telling to literature of all kinds, including a trio of performers presenting Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market.”

 

Returning presenters include Crap Mariner, Freda Frostbite, Derry McMahon, Shandon Loring, Aoife Lorefield, Dubhna Rhiadra and more.  The final schedule is due for posting September 25.  For details regarding BOOFest visit http://bit.ly/seanchai or http://storyfestsl2011.blogspot.com.

Later in the month Seanchai is adding their own particular brand of literary spookiness to the mix with a faithful rendition of the 1938 War of the Worlds radio play created by Orson Welles for Mercury Theatre (see separate article elsewhere in this issue).

Welles created mass hysteria with a production that mixed news reports and radio programming, voiced by skilled actors, to replicate the events H.G. Wells wrote about in his 1898 novel.

"War of the Worlds scared the pants off people back in the '30s, using the power of voice to persuade folks this was real. We plan to generate that same feeling with our production,” said McMahon.

Seanchai's own Caledonia Skytower is directing the production, drawing on the skills of the library's cast of storytellers for a modern-day re-creation, working from the original script by Howard Koch.

“I remember hearing the L.A. Theatreworks production of this script in the 1990s and imagining what it must have been like to have been listening that October evening in 1938. Orson Welles and company presented it in keeping with the spirit of the Halloween season,” said Skytower.

Seanchai's War of the Worlds features the voices of Shandon Loring, Bear Silvershade and Kayden O’Connell. Add in the voices of Crap Mariner, Elder Priestman, Caledonia Skytower, BigRed Coyote and others, and this production promises to be a treat for the ears.

“Working with a cast like that, how could you possibly go wrong?” said Silvershade.

Seanchai plans three performances of War of the Worlds, starting on October 22 with a 5pm performance at Blood Evolution Kingdom, at noon on October 23 in Spooky Fruit Islands, and a final performance back at home in Seanchai Library at 7pm on October 26.

"But, once the scary and spooky stuff is finished, the heart-warming stuff begins," said McMahon.

 

Since its inception in Spring 2008, Seanchai Library has celebrated the winter holidays with favorite offerings for the season, including their version of Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol, adapted by Aoife Lorefield.

 

Seanchai additionally fulfills its mission to bring stories of all kinds to life in Second Life by celebrating not just Christmas, but the ancient traditions of Hanukkah and the more recent festival of Kwanzaa.

 

“There is so much rich literature written around the winter holidays, it is a pleasure to embrace as much of it as we can, whether it is tales by author Isaac Bashevis Singer; stories inspiring Kwanzaa drawn from African folklore or the annual The Night Before the Night Before session filled with different versions and spoofs of the Clement Moore classic,” said Skytower, who will be directing the Christmas Carol production this year.

 

Join the Seanchai Library group or keep an eye on their blog at http://irelandslstory.blogspot.com for information on these events and Seanchai's regular story sessions. Or drop by the library and sign up on their subscribo to keep up to date.

 

All Seanchai presentation are read live in voice.  All the performers are volunteers and donations are accepted to support established charities around the world.  In 2011 these have included Habitat for Humanities, The American Heart Association, Project Children, The American Red Cross (Tsunami & Pacific Earthquake Relief), Water for People, Heifer International, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

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