
STARRY LITTLE STORIES
Contemporary Middle East Performance Group DUBAI
ARTIST COLLECTIVE STATEMENT
Our world is Story. We speak it in many languages - through words, movement, and silence. Ours is a channelled world; we claim no ownership of these pretty, surreal dreams. They live through us, and our goal is to thread them all a new each time. We believe in simplicity, and trust that good stories can rivet and transport as much with high production values as without.
STARRY LITTLE STORIES are, in essence, a quest to recapture that natural wonder of childhood, where shadows were never shadows but strange, horned creatures, and simple sticks were capable of destroying worlds.
WE ARE STARRY LITTLE STORIES
To understand our performance group you need to understand Dubai and us. You need to believe in simplicity. You need to believe in the future and trust that good stories can rivet and transport as much with high production values as without. Our theatre work is in essence, a quest to recapture that natural wonder of childhood, where shadows were never shadows but strange, horned creatures, and simple sticks were capable of destroying worlds. We are looking for the tangible elements of the world with particular attention to the everyday actions. This realism is placed in a strange environment in which reality is questioned, looking for the fiction, the fears and the absurdism in reality. What remains is the reality of the theatre itself.
OUR WORLD IS STORY
We speak it in many languages - through words, movement, and silence. Ours is a channelled world; we claim no ownership of these pretty, surreal stories. They live through us, and our goal is to thread them all a new each time. Our past is like an old damaged projection created by telling the story of the story. Our window is a view on the most futuristic, ambitions city of the world; Dubai. A city dark faces of hope and fears. We look at it every day a see people come and people go. Building friendships here is a waste of time.
WE GRAB PEOPLE AROUND US
They create with us, but we know they will leave us. Like stories have a beginning and a happily ever after. We take them and act out our primal fears. We shout what we can remember; our darkest dreams and happy histories. There is no real ending. Just a place and time where we stop the story.
OUR HOME IS THE MIDDLE EAST
From the desert in the heat. After sunset, we tell you stories under the stars like our Arab ancestors. As little people under the old universe. New stories from today. Stories alone in the dark. Our performance does not have the ambition of an outcome with finding a fact. Disorientation is an important tool. Through missions, questions and challenges we move. We get lost, must return and disoriented.
WE LOOKING FOR A TEMPORARY POSSIBLE IDENTITY
Dubai is a fledgling cosmopolitan city, a city that 30 years ago started in an endless desert.
A harmony between Islam and Western culture, and especially with a hopeful and optimistic view of a futuristic future. This optimism inspires us. Just like so many other things in Dubai, artistic projects are pioneer work, but at the same time offer enormous possibilities. Our world is Story. We speak it in many languages - through words, movement, and silence. Ours is a channeled world; we claim no ownership of these pretty, surreal dreams.
They live through us, and our goal is to thread them all a new each time. We believe in simplicity, and trust that good stories can rivet and transport as much with high production values as without.
Starry Little Stories are, in essence, a quest to recapture that natural wonder of childhood, where shadows were never shadows but strange, horned creatures, and simple sticks were capable of destroying worlds.
STARRY LITTLE STORIES PROJECTS
DROP YOUR FEARS HERE
Premiere date: Saturday January 10th , 2015, Dubai, U.A.E.
With: Dhruti Shah D'souza - Ryan Kayello - Pascal Buyse
"Drop your fears here" was the first performance from Starry Little Stories in Dubai. At the contemporary cultural space: 'Creekside' in Deira, Old Dubai we build a market stall where we invite visitors of the market to drop their fears. The small action was to write a fear on a small piece of paper en drop the paper in the month of a old mask.
During the drop the visitor has to act their fears out. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses, perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” That’s what poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke once spoke when citing the essence of fears.
“Drop Your Fears here” is a theatre concept curated to let each one evolve beyond the silent fears you carry within. Through dance, words, sounds, movements, breath and all those gifted senses, here is a way forward to feeling liberated, alive and thrilled to celebrate oneself. 'Nothing is sacred' is the motto. Whatever needs to go, will go, in its own way, without judgment, no matter how dark it is. And while you are at it, having fun “letting go” is the mightiest best thing since sliced bread! Think of Drop Your Fears as an exorcism, without the projectile vomit and the creepy head-spinning we've come to imagine. You let your demons go, instead, through dance, words, song, and, frankly, whatever the hell occurs to you to express all that's eating you up on the inside. 'Nothing is sacred' is the motto. Whatever needs to go, will go, in its own way, without judgement, no matter how dark it is. And why not have a bit of fun while you're at it?" READ MORE
THE OFFICE
This play takes place in an office, conveyed through taped lines across the floor that everyone must follow. Not only are we controlled by our boss, but by the audience as well, who choose exactly in what order they wish to see our mini plays within the piece from a menu they are given.
Autonomy is foreign in this world; everyone functions as they are told. But, in the end, there is a rebellion: The audience can no longer dictate our play, and neither can our boss. We step outside the lines as we please, and tape our boss inside a box he can never leave. It dawns upon us that the lines were only as real as he made us believe, and that, when you drop your fears of the unknown, there is a world much freer, much more beautiful than you know. READ MORE

LIBRARY OF THE UNSPOKEN
I remember the first time I felt deathly guilty. I was, I think, two, and I threw a kitten into the ocean - for the sole reason that it was very, very cute. I don't know why, but whenever I see something cute (whether it's a baby or a cat or anything, really), I feel like suffocating the hell out of it. That was actually the first thing I did to my brother when he was born: I stuck two fingers up his nose and I had to be carried away because I'd almost killed him. So I threw that kitten into the ocean, and I ran away. But before I ran away, I saw it struggling to swim back to the shore and I felt horrible. I went to my parents, who were jet skiing, and I just couldn't stop thinking about what I'd done. I told Papa, but he didn't understand what I was on about. So I made him come back with me to the shore and I told him to help me look for Kitty. 'Kittens don't come out of oceans, silly,' he said, and laughed. And I was distraught, and guilty, and in tears, because I never found it again. READ MORE