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3 Pigs
 A sty full of stories and song. The Three Little Pigs, Susannah the Fanciful Sow and The Old Woman and her Pig are all brought to life with the amazing ingenuity of Rod Burnett and Storybox Theatre. A Porcine Show for piglets, sows and old boars of all ages!
This show has been touring since October 2008 and teachers, children and parents have been asking for some details about the origin of the stories and songs.
It should be said first of all that the West Country accent Rod adopts through the production is actually his real dialect. It is an accent from the east side of Bath, Bathford , where he was born and brought up. From his mid teens onward, when he left the area, he lost the accent and now speaks 'quite posh'.
The song 'Who's Pigs are These?" is an old traditional song and can be sung as a 'round'. The verses with Tom Potts - spots, and Mrs Potter's - trotters are the original words but the performers can always add more such as Prince of Wales -tails. More details of this in Teachers notes.
The song' Sussannah's A Fanciful Man' is again traditional and really was taught to Rod by his father. It is rarely heard but a web search will show that people know it in variations in Canada as well as in the UK.
'The Three Little Pigs" is one of our best known and best loved stories in this country. The performance is presented with plywood cut-out puppets made by Rod Burnett with small mechanisms in each puppet to make them work. Rod was trained as a sculptor and all the puppets and props in Storybox productions are made by him.
'The Old Lady and the Pig' is again an ancient tale and is a wonderful piece of nonsense. For this reason the story begins with a piece of Irish Diddling otherwise known as Mouth Music. This form of singing came from times when people could not afford instruments in their houses and developed a form of music which could be made with their voices. Rod also plays a washing tub lid as a drum (Irish Bodhran) in the music 'Little Bag of Piglets 'which in its true form is known as 'Little Bag of Tailors'.
This is a delightful piece of puppetry with the smiles of delight mixed with good humoured exasperation on the faces of the audience making it a wonderful piece to perform and watch.
A teacher in a school on one of our visits complained that our show was painful. With shocked horror we asked what the problem was and she explained that it is impossible not to have a permanent smile on your face during the whole performance because it is so delightful, but after 50 minutes its very difficult to get the smile off your face! We thought that was one of our best compliments ever
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