Tell to Win – Review

Peter Guber, Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, has been a force in the entertainment industry for over thirty years. He has told memorable stories in the films he personally produced or executive produced, including Read more »

David Gonzalez – Bringing Storytelling to Broadway. (Almost)

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 »

Angela Lloyd – The Listening Way of the Storyteller.

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 »

The Secrets of the Storytelling Profession

Over at the International Storytelling School I have been busy building a catalog of answers to the most interesting questions on the Art of Storytelling.

Most of the answers are private, available only to people who join the International Storytelling School as audience members for a donation of a month. There donations have paid for new recording equipment and various other handy items that allow me to bring you the Art of Storytelling Podcast and Blog. Perhaps you would consider becoming a member and supporting the production of this show for pennies a day….

Here are a list of all the answers I have been laying out on the school website… Read more »

Octavia Sexton – The Jack Story a Traditional Tale for Everyone.

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 »

Literacy the Old Fashioned Way with Joy…

or Teaching Without Pressuring the Teacher to Teach or the Child to Learn

Stories and songs are natural teachers and create natural paths to literacy.
Stir a child’s imagination with stories, songs, and poems, and you feed the roots of learning. Once memorized, a single sentence from a piece of prose, a song, or a poem, creates a model for many hundreds of sentences to come.

The linguistic significance of these models looks deceptively simple, but every sentence or stanza, no matter how short, is packed with grammatical and syntactic models. Let’s take a closer look at one simple stanza from my song, Bug in My Hand:

There’s a bug in my hand,

bum, bum, bum, bum.

Here are a few of the grammatical (syntactic) structures in this one short stanza. Read more »

Sankofa, aka David A. Anderson – Historical Storytelling and Cultural Identity

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 »