Toby Thompson's poetry takes jazz-infused solo at the Vancouver International Children’s Festival
In renowned one-man show I Wish I Was a Mountain, the award-winning British poet leans on rhythm of deep musical influences
Toby Thompson’s I Wish I Was a Mountain. Photo by Jack Offord
The Vancouver International Children’s Festival presents I Wish I Was a Mountain at Performance Works from May 26 to June 1
FOR SOME, POETRY lives quietly on the page, but for British poet and performer Toby Thompson, music and spoken word come to life onstage. Known for his lyricism and heartfelt engagement with young and adult audiences, the artist returns to Canada with his renowned one-man show I Wish I Was a Mountain for his first Vancouver engagement.
Starting May 26, Thompson will present I Wish I Was a Mountain as part of this year’s Vancouver International Children’s Festival at Granville Island’s Performance Works. Written and performed by Thompson, the reimagining of Hermann Hesse’s 1916 fairy tale “Faldum” has been performed over a hundred times around the globe. As he looks ahead to the festival, the former Glastonbury Poetry Slam champion has found unexpected connections between the show and the Canadian landscape.
“In Canada, there’s a particular awareness or sensibility around the land,” Thompson says during a Zoom call. “Everything feels a bit more embodied and grounded. I can feel it in the theatre, the sense of this guy wishing he was a mountain and becoming a mountain, and the landscape shifting. There’s an extra frisson of appreciation or imagination that comes.”
There’s much to appreciate in this jazz-infused show that blends poetry with theatre, and its popular reception has made it a staple of Thompson’s repertoire. He began writing poetry as a teenager and has since written commissions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Geographical Society, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Even as he takes on newer projects, like his adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince that debuted last year, performing I Wish I Was a Mountain is like coming home and putting on his favourite old jacket. “There’s more of me in it—I’m me, telling the story,” as he puts it.
“I’m an only child and I spent a lot of my childhood listening to audiobooks and music,” Thompson says. “I’ve just always enjoyed listening to the voice and the music of language. There’s a bit of a sense the rhythms of language are in my bones or something.”
As the underpinning to his creative process, music is central to I Wish I Was a Mountain and an opportunity for Thompson to honour his musical palette during the project’s creation. For this fairy-tale retelling, he credits jazz favourites like Nina Simone, Bill Evans, and Horace Silver as integral parts of the show’s development. By employing record players on stage spinning some of his favourite vinyl, and a piano for the occasional instrumental riff, his poetry and storytelling become a multisensory, rhythmic experience. Though he calls it a hobby, Thompson’s passion for music and his musicianship are evident in his interdisciplinary body of work.
“I always write to music because that’s where the writing finds so much of its rhythm,” he explains. “There’s a long searching process of finding a piece of music that I am sufficiently enamoured of that I could listen to it for 300 hours and not get bored. It’s like finding a muse. A writing session is normally 15 to 20 minutes of sinking into it, and then I get into a bit of a trance where I’m weighing the nuances of every syllable. I love being in that kind of timelessness.”
Toby Thompson in I Wish I Was a Mountain. Photo by Jack Offord
Running until June 1, I Wish I Was a Mountain joins a diverse lineup of performances at the 48th edition of the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, the first festival of its kind in North America and Europe. This year’s roster blends local talents like Kym Gouchie and Cause & Effect Circus with international groups like Seven Circles and Kalabanté Productions, to present offerings in theatre, music, dance, circus arts, puppetry, and storytelling.
For Thompson, creating shows that engage children and adults alike has been rooted in authenticity and openness. “One thing we learned through doing [I Wish I Was a Mountain and The Little Prince] is that kids can take quite a lot of complexity,” he says. “There’s something about not dumbing down and trusting that if you enjoy something, there’s a good chance the kids can enjoy it, maybe for their own reasons. The design that [set and costume designer] Anisha Fields did and the music choices all feel quite sophisticated and understated. You wouldn’t see it and think, ‘Oh yeah, it’s for kids.’”
Perhaps it is this alchemy of music, spoken word, and theatre that makes Thompson resonant around the globe. I Wish I Was a Mountain won the prestigious Showcase Victor Award at the 2020 IPAY Festival in Philadelphia, and in 2022, Thompson performed the show on a six-month tour throughout China. Despite being an introvert at times, he embraces the travels and his audience of all ages.
“When you’ve spent all that solitary time weighing every syllable and working so hard, it’s then deeply satisfying to share that and feel it resonating in other people’s minds and bodies,” Thompson notes. “There’s a kind of completeness to the circle that happens. That’s a constant balance that I’m trying to find." 
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