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VOYAGE OF THE WAISTGOLD: Storyteller Odds Bodkin Debuts Original Epic Adventure

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

VOYAGE OF THE WAISTGOLD: Storyteller Odds Bodkin Debuts Original Adventure Sunday Feb. 27, 2022 at 5 pm, LIVE at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square.

The “consummate storyteller” (New York Times) is returning to Grendel’s Den, the renowned watering hole on Harvard Square, to perform his original feature-length work. After four seasons of live shows before adult audiences, he switched to Zoom during the pandemic, but on Sunday night he once again regales his Grendel’s audience with voices and narration, live and in-person.

Here’s a tale of murderous pirates who steal a mystery ship and soon discover it is like no other. It has a mind of its own. To double the intrigue, the beautiful young witch queen who built it arrives in the middle of the trackless sea. Impossibly, she has found them. Worse, she wants her ship back.

Humor, horror and social commentary come together in this wild piece of high fantasy storytelling. Come feast and drink like a pirate, then be the first to hear it!

Tickets are $35.

No children please.

 

Odds Bodkin

VOYAGE OF THE WAISTGOLD

Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022 at 5 pm EST

Grendel’s Den, Cambridge MA

Tickets $35

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pox On You All! You Ain’t Gettin’ This Ship!

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

A POX ON YOU ALL! YOU AIN’T GETTIN’ THIS SHIP!

After Phineas Krull murders the Grand Builderguilder and he and his pirate crew steal The Waistgold, they think they’re free of the denizens of Port Sqwunk. But that’s not the case. Their pursuers want one thing: The Waistgold and her gem-studded wood.

Me spyglass reveals a damn sixty-oared frigate,
Five times our size easy and loaded with Sqwunks.
With at least ten sails up and her cannons, 12-pounders,

Bebristlin’ her rails, she looks ready fer blood.
Below in ‘er galleys, big Roachers be rowin’,
Singin’ songs ‘o the spirit to pass off their pain,
Hungry eyes on each other to see who’ll die first.
Never thought they’d be comin’, but then I sees why.
‘Tis a damn Builderguilder, not ‘im who be dead,
But another––he the brother?–– with a glass to ‘is eye.

Right, the dead one’s brother or a partner in crime
All hot full ‘o vengeance and wanting ‘er back.
Seein’ me seein’ ‘im as we stares ‘cross the space,
I says, “Pox on you all! You ain’t gettin’ this ship!”

Here’s a quick video introduction to this new performance work by Odds Bodkin:

Be in the audience at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square this coming Sunday the 27th for the live show!

VOYAGE OF THE WAISTGOLD

A Premier Performance

Sunday Feb. 27, 2022 at 5 pm EST

LIVE AT GRENDEL’S DEN on Harvard Square

Tickets: $35

If You’re in Boston…

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

If you’re in Boston this February 27th, make your way to Harvard Square. There, tucked away down a set of brick stairs, you’ll find Grendel’s Den, a legendary watering hole. You’ll see a small stage beneath lights that sports a lectern and a microphone. Be sure you’re vaccinated (they won’t let you in otherwise) and find your table. You might even be given a free test kit, new from MIT.

Music will be playing over the sound system, but it won’t be long before I’ll appear onstage and the music will fade. I won’t have my usual 12-string guitars or harp; instead, I’ll open a simple manuscript.

“Voyage of the Waistgold: An Untrue Tale in Doggerel Rhyme by Odds Bodkin,” I’ll begin in my ordinary American English, the one I use to talk to people in the real world. “Chapter One: The Builderguilder’s Boat.”

Ah, but then, Captain Phineas Krull will begin to speak. He’s a terrible, murderous pirate on a fantastical sea, my narrator and the one who lives my 90-minute adventure. His voice is rough and gritty. He even sounds dangerous.

“So I hires me a crew o’ drug suckin’ thieves/To help me to steal ‘er, that fine filly ship./With one goodly mast, like Priapus himself,/Buried deep in ‘er hold ‘neath a parquetry deck/And a gem-crusted wheel fer the high dudgeon winds/ The Waistgold, we seen ‘er, my silver sea slipper/Tied placid ‘twixt other and far lesser boats.”

So begins the saga of how Krull murders the local Builderguilder and escapes with the salvaged Waistgold, only to discover that the gem-laden ship has a mind of its own. A dark magician himself, he’s baffled by his new boat’s powers. And he’s worried, because he doesn’t know how to control them. It makes more sense when he finds a dead scribe’s book, written in blood. In it, Krull reads about Queen Ood, the enchantress who built the boat, who or may not be alive.

This story reads somewhere between William Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

According to Wikipedia, Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver’s Travels “to vex the world rather than divert it”. Voyage of the Waistgold is much the same.

For Adults Only.

Voyage of the Waistgold

A World Premier Event

Februry 27, 2022 at 5 pm EST

Grendel’s Den, Cambridge MA

Tickets: $35