19:45, Thu 1st – Sun 25th August 2002 at The Underbelly (Edinburgh)
Summer Vacation

This new piece adapts tales from Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. These classic medieval tales will be set in the new context of a seminary in 1950s Catholic Italy. Our group of seminarians and nuns smoke, tell dirty jokes, and enthusiastically exchange and enact medieval tales among themselves. They become involved in the tales as if they have been recast in the weird and disturbing interior workings of each other's imaginations.

Familiar tales are interspersed with some unknown gems: Well known tales likthat of The Wife of Bath, and the deadly tale of Chaucer’s Pardoner are mixed in with the riotous and strange inventions of Boccaccio. We will be performing tales like that of Ferondo, a jealous husband who is convinced by an abbot that he is in purgatory and beaten for eight months (while the abbot has it away with his irresistible wife). You will also see the tale of the cockerel, Chanticleer, as you have never seen it presented before! Don’miss an extraordinary performance of some compelling medieval tales!