About this Event
Join us for a family friendly afternoon exploring our 'Treasures of the Deep' exhibition and stories by Mark Borthwick.
The War of the Birds is a new one-person storytelling show in 2025 from Mark Borthwick Storyteller. Funded by Creative Scotland the Scottish Storytelling Forum, it premiered at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival in 2025. It is currently booking dates to perform in the UK.
The War of the Birds is a collection of famously untold Eastern European Stories. Unpublished and rarely translated into English, the War of the Birds is a Babushka doll of nested narratives, each exploring class, identity, and place, in the old world where things were darker, colder, and altogether stranger.
Set against a backdrop of Klezmer dancing and evolving ambient soundscapes - these stories take us through lands of strange symbols, to the great grassy plains of the steppe, and deep into the Kamchatka sea. This is storytelling steeped in the Samovar, smoked by the teamakers, with a deep familiarity and deep strangeness imbued over long winters by our Northern neighbors.
In the War of the Birds Traditional Storyteller Mark Borthwick weaves traditional and electronic music together with full-blooded stories of the old world to transport us to the shores of a new one, where stories are currency, and memory is home. An exploration of postwar migrations, family histories lost to time, and the stories which made us all that we are, a long time ago.
“Equally masterful in narrative and lyricism.
” ★★★★★ (The Scotsman)
“Scottish Stories told in that brilliant Scottish way.
” ★★★★★ (Derek Newland)
“Consistently powerful, blending past and present to produce an effortlessly stirring piece of folk storytelling.
” ★★★★★" (EverythingTheatre)
“A great piece of theatre, intimate and open but still flooded with a sense of secret welcome. A brilliant performance.”
★★★★★ (BritishTheatreGuide)
Best Fringe Theatre Shortlist - Scotsman 2023
City of Edinburgh Award Nominee - Creative
Edinburgh 2023
Spirit of the Fringe Award - Edinburgh Fringe 2023
Best Storytelling Award - Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Sold out show - Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Schedule
1:00 - 1:30 Welcome and Exhibition Tour
1:30 - 2:30 Storytelling Performance by Mark Borthwick
2:30 - 3:30 Seaweed Tasting with SABG's Marijke Winton
About Mark
Mark Borthwick is an eco-folklorist and Doctor of Fish (actually true), who trained as a storyteller with the travelling folk of the North of England. On roadside and fireside, from lay-by to lane’s end - Mark is well-known in all venues with excellent craic across England and Scotland. For the past three years Mark has been the fearless leader of the Young Edinburgh Storytellers, a storytelling company which explores queer and ecological themes in myth. Now he is producing storytelling shows and pieces of writing which provide the poetic metaphors to imagine ourselves more complexly, and cut deeply into the bone of culture, teaching us who we are, providing us the tools to become.
Treasures of the Deep is a three-month pilot programme that takes the St Andrews Botanic Garden’s algal collection as its anchor and point of departure. Through a series of lunchtime talks, workshops, and an exhibition, we invite our audiences, local and international artists, writers, academics and organisations to explore seaweed as both a biological material and a medium for reflecting on broader environmental, social, and feminist issues. Together, we will examine how algal collections can inspire new ways of thinking, providing insights into our past, present, and future relationships with the natural world.
To increase accessibility, we have chosen a sliding scale for our ticket prices. If you can afford a full-price ticket, and would like to support others to attend, please choose an upper-tier "pay it forward" ticket. If you would like to attend, but affording a ticket is a barrier, please feel free to book a reduced ticket - we are happy to offer discounted and free tickets to those who would otherwise face barriers to access. All donations and ticket sales are essential in allowing us to continue offering events such as these - we're grateful for all our supporters who attend our events and are advocates for our work.
This event is supported by Creative Scotland/ Mark Borthwick.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
St Andrews Botanic Garden, Canongate, St Andrews, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00 to GBP 11.55
