The Show Goes On ... And On!

Well, we are amazed to say that we are fully booked well into 2008 with plenty of interesting options brewing for 2009 and beyond. Something in this show seems to have struck a chord with audiences. Perhaps it's the timeliness of the environmental message - or the fact that people just love the simplicity of a good story that's well told.

After a recent Saturday morning show, a boy told us that was the sixth time he'd seen the show - and he's planning to see it a seventh time during the Fringe!

We were reminded that on the last day of the Fringe 2007, another boy came with his mum to see us. She had asked him what he'd like to do as a treat for the last day of the summer holidays. His reply, "I want to see The Man Who Planted Trees - again".

ABOUT THE STORY

Jean Giono was asked by the Reader's Digest to write something for a feature entitled 'The Most Extraordinary Person I Have Ever Known'. They loved his story until they discovered that Elzéard Bouffier, the main character, never actually existed. Giono said, 'If you didn't want fiction you shouldn't have come to a novelist'. They never printed the story. It was first published in Vogue and Giono subsequently gifted it to the public domain.

"I wrote this story to make people love trees, or more precisely to make people love planting trees. Of all my stories it is one of the ones of which I am most proud. It has never earned me a penny and for that reason it has accomplished the very purpose for which it was written."
Jean Giono, 1957

There is some debate, however, as to whether Giono based the character of Elzéard Bouffier on a real person. We recently met a headteacher on the Isle of Mull who used to work as a forester in France and told us that there were forested areas of Provence which according to the maps should be just scrub land. No-one knows where all these trees came from.

But this is much more than a story about forestry: it is a wonderful parable of life - the tale of a human being who saw a need and decided not to ignore it but to "put things right" . He received no payment or recognition, yet his life of dedication brought him great happiness and health. The story is also known as 'The Man Who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness'.

We have tried to dramatise the story as Giono wrote it - i.e. as if it were a true story - and in many ways it is. Fiction can be full of truth.

Maybe we all have a supply of acorns hidden away somewhere...

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
Anne Frank