Printable version
"Family Entertainment Systems--Tradition New England Games and Storytelling"
This highly interactive performance features traditional New England family fun, including fantastic folk tales, stupendous stunts, brilliant brain teasers, polite (and not so polite) poems, ridiculous riddles and magnificent magic tricks. Think of Peter as an entertaining guest at a family gathering, leading fun for the whole family. You will learn the folk knowledge that entertained New Englanders before the days of computers and television. The program lasts about an hour, and is designed to be enjoyed by children as young as three and adults of any age. Peter is flexible and can perform in any venue that can provide him with a chair, a glass of water and an audience! After this show you will be inspired to set up your own family fun time.
3 and up.
$250 to $500.
This program is inspired by my childhood in a working class neighborhood in Providence Rhode Island. Unusually for that time, my family had no TV, so we had to amuse ourselves. At home we read aloud, sang songs, told stories and played board games, just as New England families have been doing for hundreds of years. New England is a land of emigrants. Each ethnic group brought their own traditions, so the New England folk tradition is a rich stew of different cultures. Each of my Grandparents came from a different country – Italy, Ireland, England and Russia, and each of them contributed their unique traditions to our family entertainments.
As a storyteller I have collected stories, games, riddles, magic tricks, poems and brain teasers from audience members throughout New England. Family Entertainment Systems combines elements from my childhood, the material I have collected from New England audiences and also my current storytelling work. Vermonters are a part of a living folk tradition of informal fun and amusement that goes back to the dawn of time. Family Entertainment Systems helps us re-capture those traditions and make them our own.
Peter Burns
PO Box 134
Winooski, VT 05404
802-655-2501, 802-658-0750
peterbu@howardcenter.org
heatofhistory@hotmail.com
www.talespins.com