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The Storypeople are a diverse group of familial characters who live in Storyworld.

Bio[]

The Storypeople are meant to be like pieces of a game that the children play and make stories with: one or more Storypeople may appear in an episode. The Storypeople are usually given an object and explore its use in a way that typically creates a problem, leaving it up to the children to send them another thing to resolve their issue. They don't live in any houses, but live outside in a giant isolated habitat surrounded by a few trees, beaches, and mountains.

List of Storypeople[]

  • Grandmamma (played by Linda Kerr-Scott) - An elderly yet spry white woman. She has white hair and wears a dark red house dress, light blue jumper, white socks, and red shoes (sometimes black shoes).
  • Grandpappa (played by Robin Stevens) - An elderly yet spry white man. He has white hair and a white moustache; he wears a long-sleeved yellow shirt with done up buttons, black overalls, red straps attached, and white trainers.
  • Mrs Lady (played by Harvey Virdi) - A heavyset Indian woman. She has black hair and wears a loose light blue shirt, loose bright pink trousers, and pink trainers.
  • Mr Man (played by Mark Ramsey) - A husky Black man. He is bald and wears a short-sleeved pink shirt, white trousers, and black trainers.
  • Brother and Sister (respectively played by Manuel Bravo and Vee Vimolmal) - Latino and Thai children who are always paired and both appear to be in their late teens. Brother wears a blue T-shirt and red shorts, while Sister wears a red T-shirt and blue Capri pants, as opposites; they both wear white trainers.
  • Auntie (played by Sachi Kimura) - A Japanese woman. She has short black hair and wears a long-sleeved light purple shirt, blue trousers (jeans), lavender socks, and black shoes.
  • Little Dog Fido (played by Dash) - A Jack Russell Terrier. All he wears is a scarlet red collar.

Characteristics[]

Most of the Storypeople are depicted as being happy-go-lucky and carefree. Though they sometimes exhibit frustration or confusion, the Storypeople rarely, if ever, appear upset or sad. They do not speak - they interact and communicate by using pantomime.

Trivia[]

  • Robin Stevens, who played Grandpappa, also wrote some of the segments featuring the Storypeople.
  • A currently unidentified British toy company (most likely Golden Bear Toys) was going to produce dolls of the Storypeople, but they never materialised.
  • Although the Storypeople don't talk, their actions are often punctuated by various sound effects; in some episodes, they are capable of making vocal sounds like, for example, sneezing, drinking from a glass, sniffing, and eating something.
  • Unlike the Boohbah sequences, where the eponymous characters always appear together and are given nearly equal screentime, most Storyworld segments usually feature either one Storyperson or a group of one to seven characters. The only episode where all the Storyworld characters appear together is "Camera".
    • All the Storypeople, without Fido, appear in the episode "Umbrella".
    • Almost everyone, minus Auntie, appears in "Big Bass Drum".
  • Every time the Storypeople's pictures pop up after the children in the Boohzone give them a present, Fido is always heard barking when his picture pops up and disappears.
  • One can say that the Storypeople resemble the members of a family: Grandmamma and Grandpappa are the grandparents (grandma and grandpa), Mrs Lady and Mr Man are the parents (mum and dad), Brother and Sister are the kids (grandson and granddaughter to Grandmamma and Grandpappa, son and daughter to Mrs Lady and Mr Man, niece and nephew to Auntie), Auntie is the aunt (for unknown reasons, there is no uncle), and Fido is their pet dog (the Storypeople have no other pets).
    • Despite this, the Storypeople have never been depicted living in a house or houses (not located anywhere in Storyworld, either together or apart).
  • Although the Storypeople aren't depicted going to bed at the end of every Storyworld segment (akin to the Boohbahs heading back to their pods after dancing), some of them have slept or gone to bed in at least five segments: the Storypeople featured in "Musical Pipe" getting tired out after dancing to the music Mrs Lady makes with the titular pipe, Grandpappa trying to get into (and eventually sleeping in) a "Hammock" and napping after drawing a picture of a flower in "Pencil Sharpener", and Grandmamma trying to take a nap in "The Bed" the children give her and the "Stack of Cushions" that Fido has buried his bone underneath.

Behind the Scenes[]

To make it feel like the audience is in control of the action, the actors and actresses playing the Storypeople had to face the camera at almost all times. This took a long time for the actors and actresses to get used to, but they soon got the hang of it:

Our style of performance was developed to help children watching to feel involved in the action. There is a big difference between just watching a story unfold and feeling as if you are actually there, thinking things through for yourself.
It took us a long time to be comfortable looking to the camera all the time thus allowing the audience to feel they were directing our actions. It was of course great having no lines to learn, but getting a story over in pure movement is not easy.

Gallery[]

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