Award winning Author Robin McGrath and radio producer Chris Brookes team up with actors to produce Coasting Trade: a Performance for three voices with soundscapes.Rattling Books is proud to announce the release of Coasting Trade by Robin McGrath. This newest Audio CD release from Rattling Books is the product of a collaboration between author Robin McGrath, radio producer Chris Brookes and actors Robert Joy, Rick Boland and Anita Best.
Coasting Trade follows the voyage of a Yankee trading schooner, circumnavigating the island of Newfoundland sometime after 1865. As the vessel puts in at various ports, lyrical narratives weave back and forth through a century of change while the 19th century sailing directions remain timeless.
A smuggler who studies angels, a woman who knits a stove, green martyrs, a homesick immigrant, and a biologist studying the sexual characeristics of caplin all come to the attention of the navigator before he turns southward, to the joy of glad returning.
Coasting Trade, a performance for three voices by Robin McGrath with navigation notes adapted from Sailing Directions for the Island of Newfoundland by J.S. Hobbes (1865) was produced for Rattling Books by Chris Brookes and performed (in order of appearance) by Robert Joy, Rick Boland and Anita Best. Voices and soundscapes recorded and mixed by Chris Brookes.
Robin McGrath is the author of fourteen books, including Trouble and Desire, a collection of stories; Escaped Domestics, a volume of poetry; Hoist Your Sails and Run, a children's book; and the novel Donovan's Station which Rattling Books produced as an unabridged audio edition in 2003.
Chris Brookes is an independent radio producer whose award-winning programs (eg. Peabody Award 2006, Prix Marulic 2006, Prix Italia 2005, Gabriel Award 2003) have been heard on public radio in the U.S.A, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, England, The Netherlands and Canada. He runs Battery Radio from the Narrows of St. John's Harbour. Chris also produced and narrated Adrift on an Ice Pan by Wilfred Grenfell for Rattling Books.
Robert Joy is an actor and writer and the principal narrator of The Big Why by Michael Winter (Rattling Books upcoming 2007).
Rick Boland is an actor, director, producer and dramaturge involved in stage productions, film and television.
Anita Best is a singer of traditional Newfoundland ballads and a narrator of several Rattling Books projects (Merrybegot by Mary Dalton, In the Chambers of the Sea by Susan Rendell).
Listen to a clip from Coasting Trade.
Rattling Books are distributed in Canada through House of Anansi Press by HarperCollins. They are available online from rattlingbooks.com.
