Spoken Ink Present the Short Story

Spoken Ink is a well-mannered and whole-hearted collective of authors, actors, musicians and stage designers who are here to breathe life back into the short story format.

Spoken Ink’s main innovation is their website where, from Saturday 21 November, you will be able to download short stories by well-established authors such as Angela Carter, to untapped talent such as Spoken Ink’s own wordsmith, Edmund Caldecott. These stories are shepherded into categories, from the wonderfully exact Ripping Yarns for the Adventurous to the deliberately abstract Stories About Who You Are. What unites all tales – and indeed the language of the website – is the evident enjoyment of precise yet sumptuous language.

You need look no further than their about section for confirmation of their artfully constrained joy.

Spoken Ink also put on performances in which actors read out stories in atmospheric settings. For example, ghost stories in a yurt in Green Park on Halloween.

No detail was neglected at this spooky soiree. The area surrounding the yurt was covered in painted polystyrene tombstones. The added touch of spray-painted graffiti provided that ‘nothing is sacred’ feel so distinctive about the Noughties.

The inside of the yurt was covered in goatskins and, as an early dusk began to fall across the park, we hunkered down – avoiding the gaze of the man in the Barbour jacket who stopped to have a good old peer through the mesh windows.

Two actors and one musician told eight stories with the sort of attention to costume and delivery that shows a transcendent understanding of how to bring words to life. There was a pale and statuesque brunette from whose lips we heard about Angela Carter’s sexy Red Riding Hood in The Company of Wolves. There was a primly-dressed governess whose beautiful consonants spoke of serial killers in Mick Jackson’s The Pearce Sisters. Finally, there was a mournful-looking cellist in gypsy rags whose sweet voice sung about love in such a way that it seemed quite terrible.

Yet when it was all over, I was in love.

With a polished ability to select and perform, Spoken Ink makes even the most depraved tales delicious. For those of us willing to suspend morality – and where’s the fun in not doing so – Spoken Ink provides a loving guide through parts of the imagination that most others leave alone.

Spoken Ink will be performing a Christmas event in Hyde Park and at David Carter’s Bedtime Stories on 9, 10  and 11 December.