So much for the whizzy
bit! Now to the FACTS!
I can tell stories in
English, French and German, suiting the level of the language to the ability of
my hearers.
I can tell to adults,
or children, or both.
As well as Norse
myths, I can do Greek myths, as dark or as light as you want: House of Atreus,
or Echo and Narcissus…
And my repertoire is
constantly expanding… partly because I also invent my own tales on the basis of
traditional ones…
I can tell all day, if
you want me to…
But maybe you’d like
to learn how to tell tales yourself, so I offer:
Storytelling workshops
Stories
are made the way baskets are made. From a firm base, uprights project – the
events of the story, in the correct order – and round and between these are
woven other materials (of all kinds) to make the finished object, which holds
things securely.
Beginning:
The Storyteller tells the bare bones of a
story. This takes a few seconds. Then, for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour,
he tells a proper version of that story. Then he asks his listeners what was
added to it, and breaks down these additions into three categories:
Personalities
of the Characters
Atmosphere
and Description
Consequences
Workshop:
Students are divided into groups of four. They
choose a simple fable with which they are all familiar – it may be that one
member of the group needs to tell that fable to the other members –
that’s fine!
The
students decide who will be responsible for getting the events of the story in
the right order, so that information is given at the right time for the
audience to understand fully what is happening and what is going to happen.
Then they
choose who will talk about the characters, describing them mentally and
physically and explaining why they do things.
A third
person has to talk about the weather and the landscape and the time of day,
partly to give atmosphere, but partly to help explain why things happen as they
do.
The
fourth member of the group sees the consequences of what the others say, spots
characters who can’t stand wet weather and reminds the others that they will
have to wear raincoats and Wellingtons, which means they can’t run as fast, and
so on…
The
storyteller circulates and listens and suggests and advises and feeds material.
Then,
after twenty minutes or so, the groups are ready to tell their story, working
together, cuing each other, perhaps interrupting and correcting one another, to
make a complete story, to which everybody listens, because it’s actually a
story that no one has ever heard before – it’s just been created and is totally
fresh.
Fables are easy to start with. More advanced groups could do European
folktales, and older students with background knowledge could try Greek myths.
Each session should last around
an hour, giving five groups of four students time to hear a specimen story and
prepare and tell their own stories. If specimen stories are told in a plenary,
individual hour-long sessions could have twenty-four students.
Contact me for further details:
01980 862664