Press Play to hear David Gonzalez talks about how he almost had a storytelling event on Broadway on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
David Gonzalez writes…
The Way of the Artist
What compels someone to commit themselves to the absurdly uncertain, and certainly absurd, road of being an artist? It is a wonder that so many of us actually make the decision to take a detour and get “off the grid” when so many viable possibilities, alternatives and conventions surround us. Sometimes it is ego pure and simple, but that is rare, and often passing. The truth is, while each of us has a story, at the root of that story is the overwhelming necessity to matter to the world through our capacity to imagine, create, and wonder. The artists I admire have found the balance of personal expression and service to a common good – an idiosyncratic voice calling out to the world.
Storytelling on Broadway (almost)
The New Victory Theater on Times Square has exactly 499 seats, a number calculated to render it exactly one seat short of Read more »
Press Play to hear Angela Lloyd talk about the Listening Way of the Storyteller on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
Angela Lloyd writes:
Eric Wolf and I met for this interview in the lobby of the Warner Center Marriot on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 7 AM. We were attending the bi-annual National Storytelling Network Conference in Woodland Hills, Ca.
I mention this so you can see the landscape, and note the time, for these are details that I value as a listener and worker of the word.
What you will find here as the conversation unfolds is a dialogue focused on a number of themes close to my heart.
1. How the teller listens in various ways to the story they are telling.
2. How the structure of a story plays a large part in understanding its path.
3. How Read more »
Press Play to hear Octavia Sexton talk about Jack Story and how this traditional tale belongs to everyone on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Show.
Octavia Sexton writes…
I think most people probably know that a Jack Tale is a trickster story and Jack. They’ve been around for over 800 years – originating in the British Isles. The stories came to North America via European settlers. The stories told in the Appalachian Mountains began to change through the years to reflect the environment and cultural traditions that emerged among the mountain people.
I grew up in a storytelling tradition and stories were a part of life. I heard a variety of stories not only through kinfolk but also at school. I went to a one-room school and the only thing to do at recess was sing songs, tell stories and play games that did not require ‘stuff.’ We didn’t have any ‘stuff’ to play with because we were all just a bunch of poor country kids. I think I established myself very early as a storyteller. I remember being 5 years old and standing on a big rock in the yard of one of my uncles’ houses and telling tales to my cousins, aunts and uncles who gathered on the big front porch. We had all kinds of stories, but I never knew what a Jack Tale was until I went to college.
After eighth grade, Mommy asked me if I wanted to get married or go on to high school. I went on to Read more »
Press Play to hear Sankofa, aka David A. Anderson speaks on Historical Storytelling and Cultural Identity on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
David A. Anderson/Sankofa
In 2009, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture convened, at the Washington Mall, several members of the National Association of Black Storytellers (NABS) to “give voice,” to “explore the expressive power of the creative African American verbal arts and oral traditions in the shaping of American culture and communication.” Through stories [and] words of wisdom, . . . we NABS sisters and brothers . . . evoke[d] themes dealing with “hearth, home, and community.” Read more »
Press Play to hear Kathy Collins speak on being a Comedian who tells stories and being a storyteller who uses comedy on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
Although I began storytelling as a teenage in high school forensics competitions, I have always felt like an imposter among “real” tellers. I consider myself an actress, one who memorizes lines and portrays characters, as opposed to a wise and wonderful wordsmith. Over years of performing, I’ve become a lot more comfortable with straying from the script and improvising, but it still seemed more like acting than telling. On Maui, I have a greater reputation as a comedienne than a storyteller.
Then I was blessed with the chance to perform this summer at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Project, where I was billed as one of several poets in the La Casita Festival. Talk about feeling out of my league… now I’m a phony poet too? It seems to me that all poets are storytellers, but not all storytellers are poets. Or are they/we?
Fortunately, this summer I also attended a storytelling festival in Canada’s Northwest Territories. At a tellers’ workshop there, I was surprised to hear Read more »
Press Play to hear Rafe Martin speaks about Zen and the Art of Spiritual Storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
Rafe Martin speaks…
Many years ago (staring in the early 1970’s and on) I began walking two traditional roads – that of formal Zen practice and that of storytelling. My first public storytelling events actually took place at the Rochester Zen Center in 1973. For many years the two roads went running in happy parallel, sometimes visible to each other from across the ravine, sometimes hidden by bushes, boulders, trees and vines. In the later part of the 80’s the two roads began to join up and intertwine, weaving in and out, braiding and re-forming from story elements old and older, ancient and new. The worlds of oral storytelling and Read more »
Press Play to hear Victoria Burnett speak on Stories that Sing on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
It has always been my belief that the arts represent a key component in the effective presentation of the storytelling experience. From my earliest experience as a classroom teacher in the Washington D.C. area and later as a librarian in California, I recognized the power of integrating the arts in storytelling to teach through various curriculum.
If we as storytellers and educators recognize and respect the fact that Read more »
Episode List, Healing Storytelling, Personal Oral Narrative, Professional Development | Brother Wolf | 
December 25, 2010 12:59 pm | 
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