Guest Blog: Farhana Sheikh Talks TALES FROM THE ARABIAN NIGHTS

Southwark, in south-east London, has been famous for stories since the 14th century - it's where The Canterbury Tales begin. Rather more recently it's been home to the London Bubble Theatre Company, where the art of storytelling is very much alive.

The Bubble is a survivor. It was known in the 1990s and 2000s for its promenade productions, but a decade ago, cuts to arts spending hit the Bubble hard. As a community theatre company, its activities continued, but promenade passed beyond its reach.

Now, though, promenade is back in the Bubble's calendar, and I'm very glad this is happening. At a personal level, this is because some of my best experiences of theatre writing came with my scripts for the Bubble's promenade plays: Gilgamesh in the streets of Rotherhithe and the shadows of Oxleas Wood; Gulliver's Travels all over London - from Highgate to Redbridge, Chiswick to Lewisham; Punchkin Enchanter, with crowds of performers flooding across the fields at Three Mills, next to the River Lea.

And I'm glad more generally that the Bubble is reviving the promenade play, because the Bubble - more specifically, Jonathan Petherbridge, its artistic director - has the knack of bringing together a company of very talented actors and musicians, inventive designers and composers, and producing something that's relaxed, witty and beautiful. Before the cuts came, Bubble did this again and again, year after year, and I'm delighted they're back - delighted we're back.

I've been working with a script -Tales from the Arabian Nights - which I first wrote more than 20 years ago. It was performed across London parks, then quickly revived for another tour the following year, and then transported (if that's the right word) to Adelaide, Australia, where it seems to have been well received.

The Arabian Nights - or One Thousand and One Nights - is a wonderful collection of stories from many centuries and many places, across Africa and Asia, when borders were open and stories travelled freely. Folk tales and courtly tales; tales of power and tales of love.

Like Chaucer, the Tales employ a frame story, a kind of thread on which they are all woven. Scheherazade has to keep telling stories to save her life: if she doesn't keep the king entertained, her life is over. Every night there's a new story, to keep death away.

It's a very grim situation, a kind of marital hostage-taking, which our play does not let you forget. The Tales are never far from the hard stuff of life - punishment, retribution, the grave always just a couple of breaths away - and in this sense, they're close to another masterpiece of storytelling, Boccaccio's Decameron.

But it's not just this grimness that I hope the audience will take away. It's impossible to overstate how much life there is in these tales: wittiness, wild flights of imagination, clever portraits of proud or insecure or vengeful people. They are fantastic, literally, in a plenteous and endlessly inventive way. And it's this rich and teeming life, evoked by Scheherazade in her stories, which may ultimately save the city from the violence of the king.

I first came upon the tales unwittingly, through my own mother's stories. Later, I was amazed to find that she hadn't made them up herself! I encountered them again through the English translations which, since the 18th century, have made the stories part of British culture too: I have taken the liberty of working a few lines from Richard Burton's 1885 translation into my own text.

I've worked with a handful of these stories. What's drawn me to them is just how well-populated they are with powerful characters: kings and slaves, lovers (true and treacherous), workers and intellectuals, hungry people and those who are frankly overfed and, of course, the near-human creatures (talking apes and the like) with whom the Tales are fascinated.

We've reworked our 1994 version very substantially: added some new songs, deepened some of the characters, and even expanded the cast. But most of all, I have tried to make the script speak to our current experience, battered as we are by years of insecurity, and aware as I hope we are of the sheer unfairness of life outside the charmed elite. So the fisherman and the escaping slave are as important to our play as the princess, the king and the courtesan.

In the year when our politicians have begun to speak of the 'many not the few', I hope the play reaches the audience it seeks.

Tales from the Arabian Nights at Southwark Park 1-6 August, Greenwich Park 9-19 August

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