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Upcoming Events, Shows & Performances:

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

SHE BUILT IT. LET HER HAVE IT.

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

SHE BUILT IT. LET HER HAVE IT.

In Voyage of the Waistgold, Phineas Krull, a poisoner and pirate, steals a ship he sees at the docks. With a waistband of gold around its gunwales, the ship is unlike anything he’s seen.

 

‘Tis not just the wheel what’s becrusted with gems,

For the ebony beams sport fat emeralds in rows

Seemin’ lit from behind inside finely carved scrolls

Among faces, creatures, temples, odd leaves,

And wrought geometrics o’ the Golden Mean.

 

In a blood-soaked book Phineas reads who ordered it built: young Ood, an orphaned enchantress queen from far to the north. According to the book, she’s probably dead. Her land was in flames when the scribe who wrote the book escaped.

The problem is, it turns out Queen Ood is very much alive. And once she does the impossible and finds Krull on the open sea, she wants her boat back. He lets her and her soldiers come aboard. A confrontation soon follows.

 

“I’d like you to leave,” she says, facin’ the windows,

Unwillin’ to share any truths in ‘er eyes.

“As ye wish, lady queen. Ye may sleep in this cabin.

Know this, though: The Waistgold, tomorrow at dawn,

Sets ‘er sails as she was, ‘fore your boats come a’flyin’.

We’s still headin’ west. Ye can fight, leave or ride.

So please do consider just what ye might do

To avoid unpleasantries fer ye and yer crew.”

 

She understands the danger she faces demanding what is now a pirate ship. It’s the beginning of an astonishing relationship.

I’ll be performing Voyage of the Waistgold in one week, at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square. In this original fantasy world, I’ll perform the tale in pirate patois, with Phineas Krull as the narrator. If you come, be sure to bring a thick skin; this story is guaranteed to leave no one unoffended. It’s adult fun.

Have some food and drink, and then be among the first to experience this tale.

Odds Bodkin

Voyage of the Waistgold

Sunday, Jan. 27, 2022 at 5 pm EST

Grendel’s Den in Cambridge MA

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

 

TWO ODDS BODKIN ZOOM CONCERTS COMING UP: BEOWULF and TALES FOR GIRLS

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Over the next three weeks, Master Storyteller and Musician Odds Bodkin will be live on ZOOM for two very different shows–BEOWULF, a brooding adult show, and SHE’S CLEVER, THAT ONE: FAIRY TALES FOR SMART GIRLS, a funny, rollicking concert for the whole family.

BEOWULF: THE ONLY ONE, his storyteller’s version of the oldest known work in English literature, goes live Sunday Feb. 28th at 5 pm EST. A riveting, feature-length tale with music to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Grendel’s Den in Cambridge MA, this is among his best-loved tellings and is a favorite on Harvard  Square. Tickets are $25.

 

 

Then, on Sunday March 7th at 5 pm EST, it’s SHE’S CLEVER, THAT ONE: FAIRY TALES FOR SMART GIRLS in celebration of International Women’s Day. Odds uses 12-string guitars and Celtic harp to animate four of his classic fairy tales for kids, each featuring a brave and clever girl hero. Tickets are $25.

Some fans say they prefer his ZOOM shows because of the close-ups on his face and instruments. Judge for yourself from the comfort of your home.

Your ticket purchases your Zoom invitation with a password for the show.

 

 

 

 

Coming Up Oct. 18: Odds Bodkin’s Zoom Performance of HERCULES IN HELL

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

 

A Professor of Classics should know what he’s talking about, and Joseph Walsh of Loyola University Maryland certainly does. He and his students experienced an Odds Bodkin Zoom performance just three weeks ago. Here’s what he wrote:

“Odds Bodkin has been thrilling our students every Fall for years now with his live performances, and this year’s zoom performance of Iliad Book 1 was every bit as successful. We have gotten a good deal of feedback from the attendees, and it indicates that they were mesmerized, as usual.  Indeed, several students who had seen Odds perform in the past – and he has fans who come back every year – considered it even better.  They loved the fact that they could see his face up close, watch his fingers dance across his guitar and harp, and they thought not a bit of the usual intensity and beauty of his performance was lost.”

Now you can have a front row seat for yet another dynamic telling of a Greek mythology classic, HERCULES IN HELL. This GOLDEN HEADSET AWARD-winning spoken word tale features amazing voices, a score on 12-string guitar, and an exploration of the shocking myth of Hercules. His murders, his labors, his enslavement, his triumphs.

This is an adult storytelling. No children please.

Sunday, Oct. 18 at 5 pm EST on Zoom

Tickets are $15.

 

Sponsored by Grendel’s Den.

SCHOOLS, UNIVERSITIES AND CLUBS MOVING TO ZOOM SHOWS WITH ODDS BODKIN

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

With all the uncertainly surrounding school openings, Loyola University Maryland has decided to go completely remote. Students won’t be on campus, but to preserve a twelve-year Odds Bodkin September tradition, the Department of Classics has chosen to invite Odds once again, only this time via ZOOM. The performance: THE ILIAD: BOOK I.

Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square, a location in Boston where Odds has regaled adult ticketed audiences for years, wants to preserve the magic. The two shows coming up on ZOOM sponsored by Grendel’s? THE ODYSSEY: BELLY OF THE BEAST on September 20th and HERCULES IN HELL on October 18th.

Simonds School in Warner, New Hampshire had to postpone a 2-day GOLDEN RULE: WORLD STORIES ABOUT EMPATHY residency for K-2 and 3-5 last spring with Odds. But with an HD video and sound ZOOM studio, he’ll be visiting the school anyway. Two performances on full-screen, followed by interactive workshops with the students will take place on September 21st and 22nd.

Yes, there’s a pandemic. Crowds of listeners crammed into big rooms, especially crowds of kids, are problematic these days.

But Odds’ brand of performing arts—always a complete one–man show—doesn’t require a troop of actors onstage, sets or backup musicians. Odds provides all that in his musical storytelling shows. Even Classics and Honors students and their professors at Loyola know that.

If your kids or grandkids go to a school, give them live Odds Bodkin stories by suggesting programs to teachers and principals. Every seat is a front row experience.

To find out more, go here.

GAIA’S MONSTERS: Mythological Background for Odds Bodkin’s ZOOM Performance this Sunday at 7pm/FALL OF THE TITANS

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Up until this point in FALL OF THE TITANS, Gaia the Earth has brought forth perfect human-like children with Ouranos, her husband, Titan of the Sky. She’s given birth to twelve Titan babies in all, each soon in charge of creating an ecosystem.

But this new infant is different. This newborn is a Cyclops, already gigantic as babies go. Even Titan babies.

“I love all my children equally, Ouranos,” Gaia says to horrified Ouranos as she cuddles the one-eyed infant. “And not everything I make is perfect.” She gently pokes the baby’s chest. “Hello, little Arges.” The infant glares at her and then screams like a thousand stabbed goats, even though he’s just been nursed. His Cyclops tummy is full, but still he makes this unnerving sound. It certainly unnerves Ouranos. He has no idea what this means, but it does not bode well.

In a nutshell, here is Gaia, the Earth Mother, the first being of all beings in Greek mythology, or as Ouranos calls her, “Queen of Us All.” Just as with our modern earth, in this fanciful mythological tale, life pours forth from Gaia all across her surface.

Her job is to make life, and in FALL OF THE TITANS, she does so, at times to a fault. She cannot control her fecundity, and she doesn’t really want to because it’s just too important to keep on creating. After all, one of her very first creations is Eros, the attraction between things, which binds the Universe together, and she’s still just as endlessly driven by the lust and love Eros brings as anybody else.

The only difference is, Gaia can create any living thing she likes.

Of any size.

In any form.

She can do it all by herself if she wants to. Ouranos secretly hopes that’s what she just did to create this baby Cyclops.

Maybe he’s not the father, Ouranos thinks. It would be nice if that were true. Maybe she used parthenogenesis, and created this little beast the same way she created Ouranos himself, long ago, from the flesh of her flesh.

He has no idea of the monsters to come.

FALL OF THE TITANS

An Odds Bodkin Virtual Storytelling Event

Sponsored by Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square

Sunday, July 19th at 7 pm EST on ZOOM

TICKETS: $15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GAIA: AN ANCIENT MYSTERY

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

The name “Gaia” entered the popular lexicon along with the “Gaia Hypothesis”, a theory proposed by scientist James Lovelock that views the Earth as a vast, self-regulating organism. Gaia hails from the mythology of the ancient Greeks, who viewed her as the originator of life on Earth, and as the Earth itself. This is all pre-scientific thinking, of course, but nevertheless, Gaia’s story is a creation myth worth knowing.

With Nature in revolt in many formerly livable lands across the planet due to an excess of human activity, the consequences of which are drought, flooding, see-sawing periods of hot and cold, crop losses, human migration, pandemics and social stress, among others, renewed interest in the original Gaia story isn’t surprising.

Upon reading the Greek poet Hesiod’s most famous work, The Theogony, or “Birth of the Gods”, as a storyteller I decided to create a version of this old Greek creation myth from Gaia’s point of view. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, takes a similar tack only with the Arthurian legends: the author views the events of Arthur and Lancelot from the POVs of the women of Camelot and the Lady of the Lake.

In Babylonian mythology’s creation myth, the Enuma Elis, the primordial Gaia goddess is called Tiamat. In one benign version of the story she is the feminine salt water who mixes with male fresh water to produce early life. In another version, Tiamat is a monster, a vengeful bringer of storms and chaos.

In my FALL OF THE TITANS tale, Gaia is a little bit of both.

I’ll be performing it Sunday, July 19th at 7 pm EST on Zoom. A $15 ticket will buy you the URL and a password to join the event. It’s sponsored by Grendel’s Den, where I’ve told FALL OF THE TITANS to adult audiences before. I also performed it at the Boulder Climate Conference a few years ago. It’s a fun evening, filled with characters and music on 12-string guitar.

It is not for children, however, since there is treachery and sexual violence in the tale.

To read more backstory on FALL OF THE TITANS, scroll through my recent blog posts. You’ll find more articles about the characters and situations in the epic.

FALL OF THE TITANS

Odds Bodkin, Storyteller and Musician

July 19th at 7 pm on ZOOM

Tickets: $15

 

 

 

THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE, ELDEST OF THE GODS–Mythology Background for Odds Bodkin’s FALL OF THE TITANS Zoom Performance July 19th

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

 

Ouranos is a good guy. He’s the Titan of the Sky, after all, and father to Gaia the Earth Mother’s twelve perfect children. As one of the very first titans she created along with the mountains and the sea, Ouranos is flattered when Gaia asks him to become her king. He’s a gentle, protective father who revels in his children’s creative talents. He watches Oceanus turn the sea to salt, and Phoebe invent prophecy. Tethys creates streams and rivers. Hyperion invents the moon and sun. On and on. They’re a talented bunch. And yes, as they begin to marry one another, the whole thing is incestuous, but who else are the first beings supposed to mate with? It’s a myth, after all.

Tickets $15

When next a daughter, Rhea, is born, she has no obvious talent. She’s beautiful, but that’s about it. Ouranos even comments on Rhea’s mysterious lack of talent to Gaia, but she replies, “Not everything I make is perfect.”

Cronus, the last born of the twelve titan children, has no talent either, apparently, other than to covet everything he sees. He’s a greedy fellow who’s convinced he knows more than anybody else.

However, the real family-destroying problem arises when Gaia gives birth to a Cyclops. Although it’s just a baby, Ouranos knows it will grow up to be larger than any of the titans and will be very dangerous. “Why did you make that?” Ouranos asks her, shocked. Cooing at her baby monster, she replies, “Not everything I make is perfect.”

Things grow worse when she births two more Cyclopses and then three hideous, many-armed, many-headed beasts called Hecas, each the size of a mountain. After all, creating life is what she does and she can’t really control herself. All these monsters, once they grow up, will dominate the titans, Ouranos knows, and so he carves six prison cells into the rock walls of underground Tartarus and locks the screaming baby monsters inside them.

Tickets $15

“Free my children!” Gaia demands, but he refuses, claiming he doesn’t need her permission. This mistake proves terrible for Ouranos, because for the first time in her existence, Gaia grows angry. As volcanoes erupt and earthquakes shake the land, her calm, patient side vanishes and she plunges into a vengeful fury.

Deciding the Sky is no longer worthy of being her king, she sharpens a sickle and holds it up before her twelve children. “Who among you will castrate your father so that he is no longer king?” she roars. Horrified at the thought, eleven shake their heads. But then Cronus, he who covets power, asks, “If I do it, mother, will I become King of the Universe?” “Yes, my son, you will,” she replies.

As the story goes, Cronus ambushes Ouranos and does it, hurling his screaming father’s sex organs into the sea. A pink foam wells up from where they sank and upon it appears a seashell. The foam floats to shore, the shell opens, and out steps a tiny goddess, fully-grown and stunningly beautiful.

Thusly, from the sex of a fallen king, the sexiest goddess of them all is born, Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.

She is the first Olympian god. At this point, no others have been born.

No one knows what to make of her.

 

FALL OF THE TITANS: An Adult Storytelling on Zoom

Odds Bodkin

July 19, 2020 at 7 pm EST

Sponsored by Grendel’s Den in Cambridge, MA

Shiva, Parvati, Yudisthira, Ganesha, Bhima, Arjuna and a Faithful Dog in Mahabharata Tales for Adults

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Although the princes of two families grew up as demigods together, they have always competed for rulership of the city of Hastinapur. Each armed with fantastical powers, the Kurus and the Pandava brothers fight with magical mantras as much as with weapons. They’re not above trickery and murder. And it is their sweeping tale, arcing across history, bejeweled with hundreds of stories-within-stories, that is The Mahabharata.

When I first read it, I was stunned by the particle weapons and cluster bombs the characters wielded–this in a book created 2,500 years ago. I was also amazed by the immense floating cities. And by the Himalayan forests where emeralds were the leaves. And by the epic journeys encountering beings of all kinds. And by the Hindu gods especially, visiting humans like aunts and uncles on vacation from heaven.

It reminded me of Homer’s Iliad, and how the Greek gods whisked warriors away from death on the Trojan plain.

It’s a mythic storyteller’s dream, this great epic. And with my 12-string guitars and harp tuned to the world of Indian ragas, I’ll scratch The Mahabharata’s surface on Sunday, March 29th at Grendel’s Den in Cambridge, MA.

If you’re of Indian descent, please do come. You’ll enjoy it. It is highly honorable and Indian folks in Chicago loved it.

This fourth Grendel’s Den winter season has been a series of sell-out shows, and India’s Ancients: Tales from the Mahabharata and Beyond is the performance that fans voted for, out of a field of four adult tellings, to be the final one.

So this is the one I’m preparing for.

Some of the finest, most wondrous stories I’ve ever come across.

 

INDIA’S ANCIENTS: TALES FROM THE MAHABHARATA AND BEYOND

ODDS BODKIN

MARCH 29, 2020 AT 5:30 PM

GRENDEL’S DEN, CAMBRIDGE MA

TICKETS $20

VIP TABLES AVAILABLE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TWO EVIL DWARVES: They Who Kill for the Blood of Wisdom/Viking Myths at Grendel’s Den with Odds Bodkin

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

“Fjalar.”

“Yes, Galar.”

“I miss the mead. I miss those sips. I didn’t understand what happened to me when I drank it, Fjalar.”

“I did. Wisdom happened to you, Galar. That’s why you didn’t unders…”

Suddenly their heavy oaken door blew in and landed flat on the floor. There stood an old man in a grey robe and wide hat, his one-eyed, scarred face half-obscured in the swirling stone dust. He carried a gnarled staff in his left hand.

“Dwarves…” said the stranger, who, although they did not know it, was Odin, who was about to kill them. He’d finally found the murderers of his best friend. “Welcome…”

A mortal fear swept the two dwarf brothers of Nidavellir.

 

 

THE MEAD OF POETRY is the second story in ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS, an adult storytelling with music at Grendel’s Den in Cambridge, MA this coming Sunday, March 8th at 5:30 p.m.

Eat Viking food, drink mead, and then settle in for an evening of adult storytelling.

“a consummate storyteller” — The New York Times

“a preternatural ability to create characters with an array of simply inspired voices.”—digboston 2020

ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS

ODDS BODKIN

GRENDEL’S DEN, CAMBRIDGE MA

SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 2020 AT 5:30 PM

TICKETS $20 IN ADVANCE, $25 AT THE DOOR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next Sunday in Cambridge, MA: ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

As Loki hangs on while Thor thunders his chariot down Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge to earth, Loki hollers over the wind, “Thor, how fast can this chariot go?” The heavy vehicle is drawn by two He-Goats, Snarler and Tooth Grinder.

“I can cross ten leagues in an hour!” Thor proudly replies.

“Oh, then how many leagues can you cross in ten hours?”

Thor’s brows knit. He snorts, unable to think that far. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Loki!” Then a light enters Thor’s eyes. Ah, he has the answer. “Far enough!”

In Odds Bodkin’s telling of Thor’s Journey to Utgard, although Thor knows Loki is a liar and tells him so to his face, he still needs Loki’s cleverness. At least he thinks he does. Their insulting banter is constant as they make their way to Utgard, the capital city of the Frost Giants.

Thor is there to prove his strength. The outcome is altogether different.

This is one of two Viking myths, along with Viking lore, I’ll be offering Sunday March 8th at Grendel’s Den in Cambridge, MA.

Come eat Viking food and drink mead from Grendel’s Den’s complimentary Odds Bodkin glass!

ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS

An Adult Storytelling with live music

Sunday, March 8th at 5:30 p.m.

Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square, Cambridge MA

TICKETS: $20 in advance, $25 at the door

 

TAKE ODDS’ STORIES HOME WITH YOU.