On Becoming Two Very Different Monsters

In my storyteller’s version of Beowulf, Grendel doesn’t speak, but his mother does. As descendants of Cain and the last two forest demons of their kind, they represent all that was terrifying to humans in the medieval darkness. Forests were always thick and close back then, and no electricity lit the earth. Let’s hope those times don’t return.

Robert Zemeckis, in his animated 2007 film version of Beowulf, made Grendel a multicolored, hairless giant. Straying even further from the original story, Zemeckis presented Grendel’s Mother as a sexy Angelina Jolie with smooth golden skin, naked most of the time. Both Grendel and his mother spoke words.

For my version, I’ve gone a more traditional route and followed the basic Beowulf text, imagining Grendel as giant wolf on two legs who can roar, and that’s about it. His mother is a female version of this species of ancient forest demon, covered with fur and just as big. She speaks in a terrifying shrill voice. There’s nothing sexy about her.

Tasked as I am to create voice characterizations for my tales, I spent considerable time exploring my lowest, most guttural vocal register for Grendel. What he emotes is roaring fury. Unbridled, explosive fury. He possesses cruel confidence, both in his invulnerability—he has magic, blade-resistant fur—and in his ability to kill, at least until he meets Beowulf in the mead hall. His persona takes a lot of energy to create. I dread to think what I look like when I enact him.

I don’t watch myself do these things. I just work in my trance.

Grendel’s screechy, crafty mother, on the other hand, is signaled by a rapidamente motif on 12-string guitar and her heavy running footfalls. “Killer has a sword,” she thinks in her underwater cave as Beowulf sinks down toward her, “what kind of sword?” If a blade is giant-made, she fears it. Human-made blades cannot cut her. Instead, they vaporize, something Beowulf discovers to his horror when he tries to cut off her head, and it doesn’t work.

Two very different monsters. Two very different voices.

There are plenty of other character voices in Beowulf: The Only One, including Beowulf, Hrothgar the King and various thanes.

 

 

Odds Bodkin

Beowulf: The Only One

An Adult Storytelling on Zoom

Sunday, Feb. 28 at 5 pm EST

Tickets: $25

“DAD, I FIGURED OUT WHY IT TRANSLATES”

I’ve been a full-time professional storyteller since 1982, and in all those years and across all the recordings I’ve made, I only sell one video. It’s of The Iliad: Book I performed live before a high school audience. All the rest are audios, because, well, my business is to urge people to imagine. I use words and music to do it.

When I turn on a screen, however, I don’t want to imagine. I want that to be done for me ahead of time by actors, directors and composers, with scene changes. I want to watch what they’ve imagined, not some talking head. Usually I’m live on a stage a few feet away from a front row of listeners; the audience stretches out behind them, as far as the PA system can send the sound. They listen and imagine. I never thought I’d give that up.

Enter the coronavirus.

No more live audiences, right?

Gavin Bodkin, my entrepreneur middle son who helps run the ultra-cool company called Circular Blu, now in his thirties, has graciously become my Zoom producer as well because—oh, I’ll just say it–he loves me a lot and wants to see me keep performing. I live in an old three-storey house and the attic is pretty big, big enough for an area of it now to have become my new “Zoom Studio.” I’ve done a few shows on full-screen over Zoom, but until the other day remained skeptical it could really work for people.

And so I was shocked when Gavin said, “Dad, I’ve figured out why your Zoom shows translate.”

“Do tell,” I said, wondering if he meant it.

“No, seriously. It’s your eyes.”

Unlike an actor with a fourth wall, as a storyteller I always make eye contact with my audience, an old habit. It builds the storytelling spell. Now, since there’s nobody to look at, I’ve been making eye contact with the camera lens, just a couple of feet away.

Gavin went on. “You’re close up and your eyes are locked onto the camera, even as you’re playing your instruments. I think that’s why it works.” While he’s producing, he watches all the people’s reactions at home. Kids dancing and smiling. Adults laughing, even clapping. I don’t get to see any of that because I’m busy with the art aspect, this photo of me being an ogre who’s holding an imaginary fairy notwithstanding.

“They’re all imagining, dad. I think this whole thing is going to work.”

My next show is coming up this Sunday, July 19th at 7 pm EST on Zoom. I’m working with Grendel’s Den in Cambridge MA. It’s early Greek mythology. FALL OF THE TITANS. Tickets are $15. Drop by and let me know afterwards if it translates. There will be a Q&A.

Oh, and no kids, please. It’s an adult show.