Tim Bowley

Category: Narrator
 Curriculum

Tim Bowley forms a duet with Casilda Regueiro and has been making people enjoy with a great selection of oral-tradition tales for over twenty years. He started by chance in a festival in England, where he told a tale one night, accompanied by the music of some friends of his. The performance was a great success and since then, he has told tales all over Great Britain and several European countries.
Tim met Casilda in 1991 when she translated a course he gave in Spain. Six years later, they decided to present all over the world all those tales they told together in the courses. Casilda, who had already started his studies on theatre in Santiago de Compostela, organized their first performance in the most known place of the city for telling stories and gave free rein to a bilingual narration. The performance was a success and they went on with many other performances in the following years, to such an extent that Tim left England in 1998 and established himself in Spain.

 Work & Activities

They have participated in several festivals and narration contests such as the Marathon of Guadalajara, ‘Un Madrid de Cuento’, the Oral Narration Festival in Galicia, ‘San Juan Cuenta’ (Alicante), Festival in Los Silos’ (Tenerife), the Narration Contest in Beja (Portugal), the Theatre Fair in Huesca, the famous Classic Theatre International Festival in Almagro, ‘A Feira das Linguas’, Cultural Centre of Belem (Lisbon), the Book Fair of Seville, ‘Fiesta de la Palabra’ (La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona), ‘Segundo Encontro de Contos’, University of Coimbra (Portugal), Narration International Festival of Arzo (Switzerland), ‘8º Festival Iberoamericano de Cuenteros’ (Colombia), ‘XIV Festival de Narración Oral Escénica’, Agüimes (Gran Canaria) and Forum 2004 (Barcelona), where they told stories for forty years at the Petit Teatre Grec.
They also organize workshops for helping the assistants to take out the storyteller they have inside of themselves and showing the stories as excellent maps for the self-knowledge.
They tell universal stories that cannot be placed either in time or place, they come from different parts of the world. There are stories from the British Isles with a rich tradition of Arthurian and Celtic legends and European and Asiatic fairy tales, stories about American Indians and about Sufi and Zen traditions. Every performance is a new journey to an unknown destiny.

They have carried out about 900 public and private performances in the last years:
-2004: they carried out performances for 42 years: ‘Forum de las Culturas 2004’ (Barcelona), ‘De Bouche à Oreille’ Festival, Théâtre de la Parfumerie, Geneva (Switzerland), Faculty of English Philology (Cantabria), La Caixa Foundation (Barcelona), ‘9º Festival de Narración Oral Escénica’, Agüimes (Gran Canaria), Las Palmas Prison (Canary Islands), Tour of the Municipal Libraries (Madrid and Basque Country), Culture Municipal Foundation, Gijón (Asturias), third tour around the secondary schools of Lanzarote organised by the Culture Department of Lanzarote and Book Fair (Valencia).
2003: Tour around the municipal libraries (Madrid), ‘Semana de la Oralidad’ (Granada), Cajastur Foundation (Asturias), Tale International Festival, Arzo - Tichino (Switzerland), second tour around the secondary schools of Lanzarote organised by the Culture Department of Lanzarote, tour around the secondary schools of Navarra, Torre del Palau Foundation (Catalonia), Albatros Cultural Centre, Geneva (Switzerland), ‘Encontros do Conto’, University of Coimbra (Portugal), La Caixa Foundation (Barcelona) and Marathon of Guadalajara.
-2002: ‘Un Madrid de Cuento’, festival organised by the National Libraries (Madrid), Book Fair (Valencia), ‘Festival de Oralidad’ (Huesca), Conferences on Reading Encouragement (Ávila), ‘San Juan Cuenta’ Festival (Alicante) and ‘Festival de Cuenteros Abrapalabra’, University of Bucaramanga (Colombia).
-2001: Book International Saloon (Pontevedra), ‘Palavras Andarilhas’ Narration Contest, Beja (Portugal), ‘Un Madrid de Cuento’, festival organised by the National Libraries (Madrid).
-2000: Annual conference organised by Ediciones SM (Toledo), Classic Theatre International Festival, Almagro (Ciudad Real) and ‘A Feira das Linguas’, Lisbon (Portugal).
-1999: Los Silos Festival, Tenerife (Canary Islands), Cultural Centre of Belem Festival, Lisbon (Portugal) and Conference on teachers of English (University of Santiago).
-1998: First public performances, Faculty of English Philology (University of A Coruña) and Tale Martahon (Guadalajara).

 Other Interesting Aspects

They have been telling tales all over Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Colombia, in libraries, cultural centres, primary and secondary schools, theatres, pubs, churches, caves and prisons.