2pm, Sunday 22 May, 2016 at Aberystwyth Arts Centre
A Magical Tale with music for anyone over the age of 6 years. A tale about an Italian boy who comes to live in a Welsh mining village, where his parents fleeing from Mussolini’s Italy move to start a new life introducing pizza, ice cream and coffee to a welsh mining town. The boy feels lost and alone as his parents struggle to make their café a success. The cooing of Mr Evan’s champion racing pigeons reminds him of a sunlit Roman piazza and draws him into an unlikely friendship with the old man and helps him to start feeling at home living in Wales.
Together, they pin their dreams on a race across Europe and the special bird they hope can win it, ‘The King of the Sky’. But what will happen when the bird is sent across Europe to race back to the valleys town from Rome? Will the boy’s fragile sense of belonging unravel or will everyone find a new sort of freedom in the cloudy skies above the hills.
This is a story about the meaning of home and finding friends where you don’t expect to.
Writer Nicola Davies, lives in Abergavenny. She is the author of over 40 books for children; fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Her work focuses on the natural world and human relationships within in, and draws on her back-ground as a zoologist. Her topics range from climate change and conservation, to the natural history of faeces and the morality of whale watching. She is renowned for tackling difficult subjects and making them digestible for children. She began writing for television whilst working as a researcher and presenter for the BBC NHU, where she presented and wrote for the BAFTA award winning Really Wild Show.
Nicola works with children in schools across the UK and abroad, running writing workshops and promoting children’s literacy. She is a regular speaker at Literary festivals such as Hay, Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Bath. In addition to her work in schools and at festivals she has been involved with a number of arts projects and residencies, including several with the charity Operahouse, working with groups of children to create opera libretti for public perform.
Her books are widely reviewed in major broadsheets, trade papers and online , and have been translated into more than ten language. They have been short listed for and won awards in the UK, America and Europe, including the Blue Peter Book Awards, the English Society Award the Bologna Ragazzi, The American Association for the Advancement of Science Book Price, The independent Booksellers Award, and the Portsmouth Book Prize.
The cast includes Louise Collins, Sonia Beck, David Prince, Huw Novelli and Tessa Bide and directed by Derek Cobley.
Tickets are £8 (£7). To book, contact Aberystwyth Arts Centre ticket office on 01970 62 32 32 or go online www.aberystwythartscentre .co.uk
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