Category: Blog

  • Can the Mountains Love the Sea?

    Surprise! I have a new show coming out in May for two dates in London. As yet there are no further bookings confirmed so don’t take a risk and miss it! I love this story. It has viking podiatry hygiene. Loki does something hilarious with a goat. But mostly, it’s a story where the wedding…

  • Mimesis and Diegesis

    ‘Mimesis’ and ‘Diegesis’ are two terms from drama and narrative theory that I tend to use a lot, so I thought I’d take a moment to explain them here. To put it simply, both mimesis and diegesis describe ways of presenting a story. In mimesis, the story is acted out. In diegesis, the story is…

  • All Things Girl Interview – Exciting Edinburgh News

    By some weird coincidence of gender and timing, I was the January “Man of the Moment” for All Things Girl. Melissa A. Bartell took the time for a lengthy interview and you can read it in full here. I talk about storytelling, my ministry and life stuff in some detail. Here’s an example of one…

  • Fun with Egos Interview & Bargehouse Shout Out

    Just in case you missed it, I was the Halloween Guest Star on the Fun with Egos podcast. On the show I talk about how ghost stories were traditionally rolled out for Christmas (rather than All Hallows) Eve, so why not supplement the saccharin cheer of your festive season with the Devil story featured at…

  • The Story Forge featured on Sheffield Live!

    Way back in October we had one of the most crowded Story Forge open floor sessions yet. In part, this was because the Off the Shelf festival was ramping up and the city was buzzing with excitement about spoken word events. Sheffield Live sent Laurence Peacock who listened, made some recordings, interviewed me, some tellers…

  • Rebranding Beelzebub: What Superman and The Devil have in common

    I was tweeting about my latest show, Rebranding Beelzebub, and poet Sarah Thomasin replied to say: @TimRalphs I'm so excited about this. It's worrying how well you do "devil". — Sarah Thomasin (@wordgeeksarah) June 12, 2013 So I thought I’d take a quick moment to unpack exactly how I approach Old Nick in my stories,…

  • The Pentamerone: Part 1

    The Pentamerone is a collection of fifty folk tales written by Giambattista Basile in the Neopolitan dialect. It’s based on oral stories he collected while he was traveling around Venice, Crete and wherever he’d find people who would tell him a tale. It’s a phenomenal collection, containing just about every major motif of the European…

  • The Drama Instructor

    There’s a story I’ve heard about a drama instructor. He was berating his students one day for failing to grasp the most basic points of theatre. “You!” He said to one of his students. “Walk onto that stage, say ‘Look at that moon!’ and point upwards.” And the student did. And when she had finished,…