The Parade
Collegepark, Kilkenny
Ireland
Saturday 1 & Sunday 2 June 2019
11am to 4pm – (3 different storytelling sessions at 12, 1:30pm & 3pm, with medieval music, mayhem and fun in between!)
Kilkenny Castle Park
FREE Admission
OPW is delighted to present the wonderful medieval mayhem that is Trouvere – a Troupe of Medieval Minstrels – who will entertain all the family with music, masks and knockabout comedy.
The audience will be transport back 800 years (to the period when Kilkenny Castle was first built by William Marshall), whilst mixing medieval music and drama in a vivid and lively retelling of the tales of Reynard the Fox.
Reynard was the great trickster figure of the middle ages – the original antihero and the star of countless stories. Masks, slapstick and interaction, together with the authentic music of the period, played on amazing medieval instruments, bring a selection of these stories and characters alive for a modern audience, whilst remaining true to the medieval source.
As well as being enormous fun, these stories were used and interpreted in the middle ages as comments on their times. Nobles, clergy and peasants were all targeted, and the setting is very realistic – if you ignore the talking animals!
Twelfth and thirteenth-century audiences would have recognised characters and situations and understood specific details and references. In their stories, they stay true to this element of the stories with their own touches of the contemporary – including some deeply dodgy dancing.
