The Arabian Nights (known as 1001 Nights in Arabic) are like a long-lasting kiss that stretches on to avoid dying. And by emulating Scheherazade, Héctor Urién, a professional storyteller, will choose a different story each month at Casa Árabe, from the fictional universe created in The Arabian Nights. With contemporary sensitivity, and nothing but his voice, his presence and his speech, Urién uses the art of a Baghdad souk storyteller to transport us to a cave with a genie, and from the islands in the Indian Ocean to the domains of a serpent queen.

At each session, Héctor Urién uses a word as a common thread. It plays the role of an “Open Sesame” to tell us the tales from the Arabian Nights associated with that word in his lively voice.

Héctor Urién (Madrid, 1977) is a professional oral storyteller who has brought this innovative, original show to the stage, based on the structure of Scheherezade’s tale. As a professional storyteller, he performs his art and stage work at theaters in Spain and Latin America. Drawn by his inner curiosity and a deeply ingrained scientific streak, Urién has developed his own ongoing storytelling workshop in Madrid, where students and teacher discover the inner workings of stories and the mystery of the oral narrative together. A narrator of short, direct tales, he has taken part in several domestic and foreign festivals, as well as co-directing the annual festival “Ávila de cuento” (“Storybook Avila”) and in 2015 having an essay published by the “Palabras del candil” publishing firm: La narración fractal: arte y ciencia de la oralidad (Fractal Narration: Art and science of orality), in which he provides an innovative, surprising viewpoint of storytelling based on chaos theory and fractal geometry.

Illustration by Kay Nielsen (1886-1957). A very popular Danish illustrator from the early twentieth century during what is known as “the golden age of illustration,” Nielsen illustrated many different collections and worked with Disney to produce rich sketches and illustrations. The series produced to illustrate the work “Arabian Nights” dates back to the second decade of the twentieth century.