The Room Behind the Bookcase ~ Episode 5 ~ The Four Chambers of the Heart

Posted: March 31st, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Podcast | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Click here to listen!

Or subscribe with Feedburner.

This podcast features Clare Murphy and was recorded by Tom Donegan of The Story Museum.

The intro music was from Hymir’s Maidens used you as a trough by Prometheus Project. The outro music taken from Death Jig by Sharron Kraus.


Jonathan and David at The Miller

Posted: March 27th, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Blog | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

I’m very happy to announce that I’ll be telling my version of Jonathan and David as part of Tailspin’s Night of the Storyteller.

The chosen people cry out for a King. An aged Prophet looks at his sons and knows they are unworthy. And God knits the souls of two young men together, binding them in a love that will rip apart families and stain the hills with blood.

Mixing biblical sacred love with stories from the lives of gay people of faith, join Tim Ralphs as he asks some questions about the divine nature of sexuality.

This is a show that I originally developed for Hidden Perspectives as part of their 2013 Festival. I interviewed gay and lesbian people of faith, including trainee ministers, listened to their sexual and religious stories, and then wove them across the incredible narrative that is Jonathan and David. I was deeply humbled by their openness and by how powerfully their words resonated with the ancient text.

On 16 April 2015, I’ll be performing the show at The Miller, Snowfields Road, London Bridge. Show starts at 7.30pm Tickets are £7 on the door, with money off for cyclists. It’s going to be a great night of stories and music, and it would be grand if you were there.

Night of the Storyteller

Night of The Storyteller


The Oxford Culture Review reviews The Four Chambers of The Heart

Posted: February 16th, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Blog | Tags: , | No Comments »

L. C. Broad reviews “The Four Chambers of the Heart” in The Oxford Culture Review. I’m really glad she liked it. The Four Chambers is a very important project for Clare Murphy, Cat Gerrard and myself, and I hope you’ll be hearing more about it soon.

The universe, wrote poet Muriel Rukeyser, is made of stories, not of atoms. Poetic sentiment maybe, but when told well, stories have the ability both to let us explore new worlds, and to make us look at a familiar world afresh. This week, in a sparsely decorated room in the Story Museum, storytellers Clare Murphy and Tim Ralphs presented a collection of tales that without doubt achieved this. Set against a black backdrop decorated only with fairy lights, the two transported the audience to realms with spirits who can change your gender, and bowls that turn their contents into gold. In each of these stories, though, was the ordinary and the everyday—the young couple who wish to love without facing judgement from others, daughters with troubled relationships with their parents. They may have travelled beyond the constraints of the earthly in a single evening, but Murphy and Ralphs never once left behind the human and intimate in their stories.”

Read the full review here!