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About : In 2008 Cartoon de Salvo created Hard Hearted Hannah and Other Stories. Each night is an brand new, entirely improvised adventure.  To begin we elicit a ‘simple title of, for example, a movie that’s never been made’ from an audience member. Then they choose a few songs from a playlist of our band’s repertoire. We think for a few seconds and then we start, working in those songs and the show lasts between 50 mins and up to 2 hours.  We never limited ourselves to any place, genre or time.  We place implicit trust in each other’s narrative instinct. The idea is, having been exposed to stories all of our lives, we all have a very developed sense of what should happen next.

This series of Diffusion eBooks explores some of the patterns that came randomly out of the air, as told by Brian Logan and illustrated by Alex Murdoch.  The first two books are ‘Classics from Nowhere’ – where we tapped into story structures from myths and fairytales and ‘World of the Strange and Bizarre‘ where our unconcious minds led us into some very odd situations indeed.  Over the coming months we’ll be publishing four more books on the themes of mysteries, music, silent characters and relationships.

Look out for the show on tour at the Plymouth Drum from 28th April – 25th May, The Showroom, Chichester on 6th May, Tobacco Factory, Mayfest, Bristol from 7th – 9th May and this summer at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre Workshop as part of the British Council Showcase.

Hard Hearted Hannah and Other Stories is created by Cartoon de Salvo.
Co-commissioned by Farnham Maltings and the Lyric, Hammersmith

Published April 2009

Cartoon de Salvo are of the few companies in the UK working with whole story, rather than sketch-based, improvisation formats. Read more about the artistic process on their blogs at www.theatrevoice.com and visit www.cartoondesalvo.com
Cartoon de Salvo is Rebecca Hurst, Brian Logan and Alex Murdoch with Neil Haigh, Paul Kissaun and James Turnbull.