The Crane Bag Podcast

Performance storyteller Jay Leeming brings the sprawling epic of the Iliad alive with all of its birds, thunder, and goddesses intact.    www. JayLeeming.co

Once again Finn MacCool stumbles into relationship with the Otherworld, in this story from the Irish Finn cycle brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www. JayLeeming.com

Do we live in a world of infinite possibilities, or of barriers and limits? A wizard, a blue snake, and a mermaid help us to explore this question in this story from deep within the mythic cosmos known as  Stories from One Thousand and One Nights.   www. JayLeeming.com

Though these stories seem to focus on the exploits of Finn and his band of poetical warriors, the Goddess is always present in all her forms and liable to show up in the most unlikely of circumstances. In this episode Finn sets out into the wild but soon finds himself in a territory of weakness and forgetting unlike any he has stumbled into before.   www. JayLeeming.com 

Here's a rowdy dream-vision involving a house thatched with feathers, pigs that never die and a sea-god for whom story is the fire that warms his house; it's the journey of King Cormac into the Otherworld as brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.  www. JayLeeming.com

Storyteller Jay Leeming and playwright Geetha Reddy discuss her recent adaptation of the Mahabharata.

The Irish epic of Finn MacCool, brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The Irish epic of Finn MacCool brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com 

There's trouble out there, big nasty toothy trouble and this life isn't just sitting with bread and honey by a warm fire. That's the truth expressed in this age-old narrative of innocence becoming wisdom, a primal building-block of story explored by storyteller Jay Leeming and who knows if on the way we might also meet the Buddha on the road? www. JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming. www. JayLeeming.com

A live and unscripted riff on hunger, myth, and the origins of poetry by performance storyteller Jay Leeming, unedited and rowdy as an apple on a branch. www. JayLeeming.com  

The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The epic of the Odyssey brought to life by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.   www. JayLeeming.com

The Odyssey as brought to life by performance storyteller and poet Jay Leeming.

Jay Leeming tells Part Six of the Odyssey.

Could some stories really be 100,000 years old? A meditation on oral memory, story, and the constellation of the Pleiades, complete with music (played on the dilruba of India) for our winter darkness. www. JayLeeming.com

Jay Leeming interviews the Welsh storyteller Daniel Morden about the Odyssey , his path to storytelling, and much more. 

The age of Kali begins, kingdoms are destroyed and Yudishtira and his brothers set out for the otherworld, all in this final episode of the Mahabharata as told by performance storyteller Jay Leeming.

In the aftermath the river Ganges returns as the luminous, magical thread joining every part of this story, healing the survivors and joining the three worlds. Meanwhile Yudishtira wrestles with his doubts and seeks the wisdom of Bhisma, still clinging to life on the battlefield beneath the circling stars.