Scary stories and ghost stories have been used for thousand of years to gather interest in young people towards learning a new subject. Eric Wolf says “From ghost stories to strangers giving your child candy; scary stories have been used to help young people identify danger in the world.” Useful scary stories and ghost stories are based on truth, teach valuable skills and leave the audience feeling empowered against the villain or evil of the story.

Eric Wolf host and producer of the Art of Storytelling Show with over 100,000 downloads to date is the longest running, most successful show ever produced dedicated solely to perfecting the art of storytelling.

For more information: http://www.artofstorytellingshow.com/category/scary-storytelling/

Sunday, October 25, 2009
For Immediate Release
Contact: Eric James Wolf
Phone: (937) 767-8696

I will not share or give away your email address.

And don’t forget to subscribe by iTunes or your browser to The Art of Storytelling Podcast so you can get bi-weekly inspirations from Bother Wolf direct to your desktop. Read the info on the right to find out how. It’s free and it’s super simple.

Press Play to hear Elaine Wynne who is a clinical psychologist speak's on uses healing stories with children on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Elaine Wynne was a Storyteller first. Stories flowed freely around the kitchen table and from an Anishinabe/Irish man who lived on the farm where she grew up. She told stories to her young children and then in the early 70's finished a degree in Storytelling and Image Development for Non-Profits. She began to perform as a storyteller and then in 1982 got a degree in the Psychology of Human Development (Storytelling and Healing as a main focus) and became a Licensed Psychologist.

She worked six years at Mpls. Children's Medical Center and developed a story called "The Rainbow Dream", used by children and adult cancer groups for many y ears. Later, her work using storytelling to teach self management to 2-5 year olds with asthma (with Daniel Kohen, M.D.) was published in the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis, and in numerous medical and psychological journals in Europe. R esearch on using stories and games as teaching methods showed significant reduction in emergency clinic and hospital visits over a two year period.

Elaine has performed and taught storytelling (and storytelling as a healing art) in Norway, Sweden, England, Ecuador, Japan, and Singapore, as well as in numerous places around Minnesota and the US. Last year, she presented a performance workshop at the 12th annual Pediatric Emergency Management of Humanitarian Disasters in Cleveland. She won Grand Prize with her husband (Storyteller Larry Johnson) at the Tokyo Video Festival for a storied exchange between children in St. Paul and London. She and Larry conduct and teach about Cousin Camp which they developed with their 13 grandchildren.

You can read more about her in this cool article in the Daily Planet

Press Play to hear Loren Niemi who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on Honoring Elders and Apprentices on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Loren Niemi writes...
I’ve been a storyteller for 30 plus years and yet in so many ways I feel like a beginner learning how to do now, what I learned how to do then. It is – LOL – a very “Zen and now” approach to storytelling: beginner’s mind.

At this point in time, I understand clearly and fondly what a gift I received when I came to storytelling. The gift of generous mentors – specifically, Ken Feit and Rueven Gold – who took a “Zen and now” approach offering friendship, access, who posed and (sometimes) answered questions, encouraged and gave permission for me to find and develop my own voice rather than adopt theirs. They welcomed me wherever they were telling and often made space for me to tell a story at those gatherings.

They were prolific in suggesting, cajoling, handing me books and lists of books to read that would ground me in the storytelling traditions. It is one of the laments I have about a significant portion of those coming into storytelling now, that they do not read (or feel they have to read) widely and deeply. My mentors understood the value of reading anthropology, mythology, theater, folklore collections as well as the importance of listening to stories and storytellers of all kinds from many traditions to enrich our understanding of the power of this art and the breadth of its reach across cultures.

They are dead now, but the stories I heard them tell still resonate for me. What they taught directly and indirectly has served me well over these many years. Many of the tellers (Marshall Dodge, Ray Hicks, Gamble Rogers, Jackie Torrence, Duncan Willimson) who were here at the beginning of the American Storytelling Revival are dead now but I was fortunate to have heard them and cherish the fact of it.

As the generation that is the root of our storytelling culture pass, I also understand that I have been at this long enough to be able to mentor others. I welcome the opportunity. It is consistent with the tradition of storytelling apprenticeship. It is both a responsibility and a pleasure to nourish “tongues of fire.” It is not a matter of ego or authority, but an understanding that if storytelling is to flourish I have a vested interest in passing on to those who would take it, the gift of craft and knowing.

Inevitably I will pass. But stories, perhaps even some of mine, will abide and I would hope that as I have honored my elders I will have shared the joy and terror which is storytelling with my apprentices.

Loren Niemi Bio

“I began as a child fibber
but soon discovered that I was less interested
in telling lies than I was in improving the truth.”

Storytelling is also the only sensible explanation Loren Niemi can offer for forty plus years as a community organizer and public policy consultant, trainer and Lobbyist working with non-profit groups to articulate their dreams, shape their messages, and resolve their conflicts.

Loren has also spent thirty as a professional storyteller, creating, collecting, performing and teaching stories to audiences of all ages in urban and rural settings. He has served as the Humanities Scholar in Residence for Northern Minnesota, the ringmaster and tour manager of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre's Circle of Water Circus, and is one third of BAD JAZZ, a performance art trio with Michael Sommers and Kevin Kling, experimenting with theatrical and storytelling forms. His work has been called “post-modern,” “on the cutting edge of storytelling,” “with the dark beauty of language that is not ashamed of poetry.” It is, as storyteller, Kate Lutz said, “a sensibility that owes more to the New Yorker than to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.”

He is the co-author, with Elizabeth Ellis, of Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories, from August House Publishers and the author of The Book of Plots, on the uses of narratives in creating oral and written stories, published by Llumina Press.

Loren has a BA (Philosophy and Studio Arts) from St. Mary’s College (Winona, MN) and a MA in Liberal Studies (concentration: American Culture) from Hamline University (St. Paul, MN). He teaches Storytelling in the Communications Department of Metropolitan State University (St. Paul, MN) as well as providing organizational and corporate message framing, storytelling branding and community building workshops around the country.

Loren was one of the founders of the Northlands Storytelling Network, a five state storytelling education and advocacy organization, and spent four years as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Storytelling Network, the 3000 plus member advocate and promoter of America’s storytelling revival. He was the 2005 recipient of the Oracle award for national leadership and service.

Press Play to hear David Novak who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on storyteller’s compass using narrative as guide on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

The Scattered Brain

by David Novak

“I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and T.V.’s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there”
David Bowie, Five Years

I’m dreaming about a legless blind man when the radio alarm wakes me. In the short time it takes me to crawl to the bureau to turn off the radio (an arrangement designed to get me out of bed) I hear the DeeJay tell me that 5% of men surveyed admitted to wearing women’s underwear. I drift to the kitchen to feed the cat and dog and pour the coffee and juice. I go to the front door to collect the morning paper which informs me of the multimillion dollar judgement against O.J. and of an area magnet school which teaches children how to play the bagpipes. By the time I step back inside, my son is awake and Darkwing Duck is “getting dangerous” on the TV. I’ve been awake for less than 30 minutes and already I’m drowning in a sea of information, images and stories.

The day is far from finished. Everything is far from finished. I feel like my life is in the hands of an insomniac channel-surfer: unfinished stories in constant collision with one another adding up to one story: life today. It is all so scatterbrained. I worry: what am I adding to the noise as a voice telling stories in the thick of all this? Who am I to enter the fight for everyone’s attention? What is the point of storytelling in the technologically determined culture of today?

Exo-Brain

Technology enhances us: clothes enhance skin, glasses enhance eyes, wheels enhance walking. Such enhancements extend our physical bodies outward. Our techno-bodies can “see,” “hear,” and “reach” farther than our bio-bodies. We technologically express our bodies outward, forming an exoskeleton of clothing, cars, and houses. Inasmuch as our communica- tion media express images, ideas, and informa- tion, we express our minds outward too, forming an exo-brain. The exo-brain is the scattered brain.

In The Global Village (1989) Marshall McLuhan and Bruce R. Powers discuss the way technology affects cultural change. New technology, they suggest, begins as a distinct figure set against the current cultural ground. Eventually that technology becomes the new cultural ground. As our new technologies become assimilated they reform the ground which determines our culture. McLuhan and Powers:

“Media determinism, the imposition willy-nilly of new cultural grounds by the action of new technologies, is only possible when the users are well-adjusted, i.e. sound asleep.”

To be “well-adjusted” in this sense, is to be accepting yet unthinking; to be an open receiver like a well-adjusted antenna. For such media determinism to be possible, it helps to have a populace that is illiterate, anti-intellectual, inarticulate, and emotionally reactive. The well-adjusted user is hungry (literally and figuratively); dissatisfied with what he has (”been there, done that”); afraid of the unknown (”brand x”); afraid of the outside (the only safe places, we are told, are the places where you find an approved point-of-sale that accepts the right credit card); accepting without thinking (uncritical and thereby open to shallow rhetoric and “sound bites”); has a short attention span (being therefore less likely to scrutinize merchandise or ideas very closely); and is impulsive (reacting to ersatz emergencies from headline news to one-day-only sales.) In short, the well-adjusted user lets the scattered brain do its thinking. The scattered brain directs our attention to what it considers important, leaving what does not interest it to be forgotten.

If this is the culture we live in, it is also the culture that welcomed a revival of story- telling. Why?

A Gentle Reminder

I have just finished a story program for a family night at a local school. The occasion is a combination of book fair and turn-off-the- tube week. During the program I presented some cats cradle figures and used them to tell Jack & The Beanstalk (see Storytelling World vol. 2, no. 1, Winter/Spring 1993.) Children come up to me, chiming the giant’s refrain and asking how they can learn more about string figures. Adults come up to me with a slightly different response. For the children, this is new information. For the adults, this is old information that was lost until they were reminded of it. I will call these two responses: minding and reminding.

First of all, minding. The telling experience brings a wealth of stimulation to the young listener in the form of images, rhythms, patterns, sequences, emotions, and ideas. The aural stroking between real-time-and-place teller and real- time-and-place listener is something that our sciences have begun to verify as essential to brain growth in early childhood. The recognition of this importance is bringing a new validation to the storytelling art in a culture obsessed with technology.

4/18/97

AP-Washington – In a day of “talking about baby talk” and how brains grow, President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton offered parents simple child-rearing advice: Songs and storytelling fire up infants’ brainpower.

When we tell stories to children we are truly minding them.

Next, reminding. Adult listeners at storytelling events are often surprised by the recognition that storytelling evokes. Listeners tell us, “Gee, I haven’t thought about that in ages…” “I’d forgotten what it was like to…” “I remember when…” and so on. A wealth of dormant memories and experiences are invited up from the deep past to the surface of our present minds. Such storytelling reminds us, literally re-minding: giving us back our minds. It is as though we have lost cognizance of who we are amidst our scatter-brained lives.

What’s going on? Why are people having little epiphanies in the company of storytellers? I believe that there is something missing in our modern media saturation that the storytelling revival is providing us. Something primary to who we are. Something that our daily distraction has lead us away from.

In a prophetic essay for Harper’s in 1938, E. B. White wrote:

“Clearly the race today is between loud speaking and soft, between things that are and the things that seem to be, between the chemist of RCA and the angel of God. Radio has already given sound a wide currency, and sound “effects” are taking the place once enjoyed by sound itself. Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote. More hours in every twenty-four will be spent digesting ideas, sounds, images – distant and concocted. In sufficient accumulation, radio sounds and television sights may become more familiar than their originals.”

These days we are enchanted by the Elsewhere and attend to matters “distant and concocted” at every turning. Admittedly, storytelling itself advertises the Elsewhere: “Once upon a time, long ago and far away.” But there is a difference. The medium is the message and the very medium of the told story carries a message distinct from other media. There is a different kind of Elsewhere being advertised by storytelling. We are urged to look away from that which distracts us to that which has become the most remote: the primary and the near.

Version x.x.x

Each new software package is incrementally defined as version x.x.x of an incomplete and never-finished idea-set. Are we cracking the silly idea that a thing is made and maintains its shape immutably? That meaning is constant? All things change. All things are in some state of iteration, always shifting. Set in stone? It is the property of stone to diminish. Organic? Living? If so, then growing and evolving. We live between the last version and the next version. Storytellers have always known this. But the market place has a vested interest in keeping things unfinished in order to keep the customer. “Keep the customers satisfied” becomes “dissatisfy the customers in order to satisfy them.” This is how Scheherazade survived: with perpetually unfinished stories. We are sold software and systems that are not ready and then charged for the more complete (but still unfinished) version, paying for the privilege of beta-testing someone else’s product. While we rush ahead to get the latest version, all new and improved, we are littering our lives with all the old, obsolete versions. Our lives are cluttered with the hard and soft wares we abandon on impulse as our scattered brains chase the latest hot item. The more we neglect the past, the more we will be burdened by it. How did grandma get to be sick and alone in a wolf-infested woods, anyway?

Story Technology

Stories, as technology, enhance memory and understanding. Storytellers are a sensual, human medium. Modern electronic media pretends to respond to its users, but is hopelessly remote and uninvolved. The user who stays too long at the hearth of such media may suffer a kind of sensory deprivation. The storyteller brings touch in the form of aural stroking and warmth in the form of being truly present. Neuroscience now confirms what ancient voices have always known: storytell- ing is important emotive and cognitive technology. Storytelling as true virtual reality, transfers experience while massaging the listener and influencing growth.

Storytelling is re-minding the user at the center of the scattered brain; directing attention back to the primary and the near. Storytellers are strengthening our ability to endure long, considered thinking: to listen, to reflect, to discern, and to feel deeply and knowingly. McLuhan and Powers continue: “There is no inevitability where there is a willingness to pay attention.”

Within our scattered brains we seek something, hungrily, in the bright distracting lights around us. Yet we are perpetually dissatisfied. We are like Nasruddin searching in the sunlight for the gold coin he knows he lost in the dark.

Clockwise

So busy were we
moving papers around the room
we failed to see the East
and the dawning of the day.
So worried were we
at the tallying of doom
we failed to see the South
and the brightening of the bay.
So certain were we
at the importance of our task
we forgot to note the West
and the fading of the light.
So lost were we
we forgot to ask
the sirens of the North
the meaning of the night.

Light & Dark

There is a house in Mailbu, halfway up a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I was a guest in this house when I was in Malibu to tell stories. The evening of my performance, my hosts had left early to prepare for the event and I was leaving the house to join them. Out of habit, I checked to be sure I was turning off the lights as I left the empty house. I noticed a bright light coming from the bathroom and reached in to flick the light switch off. The switch was already off and I was momentarily confused as I tried to determine the source of light in the room. Then I realized that the light I was seeing was coming from the late sun shining low over the ocean and through the bathroom window. I was trying to turn off the sun. I had somehow forgotten that a room in a house can be lit by sunlight.

Today our manipulation of light puts the day/night cycle into our hands – or perhaps more correctly – the illusion of the day/night cycle into our hands. Lights are on at all hours and there are many times when we begin our artificial days long after the sun has set. The time to turn out the light is the time of cessation: bedtime, sleeptime, endtime, deathtime. “Turn out the light, then turn out the light” remarks Othello before extinguishing the candles and then extinguishing Desdemona.

So what does this have to do with a storyteller turning off the sun on his way to tell stories? In his introduction to the Pantheon collection of Grimms Fairy Tales, Padraic Colum writes: “The prolongation of light meant the cessation of traditional stories in European cottages. And when the cottages took in American kerosene or paraffin there was prolongation. Then came lamps with full and steady light, lamps that gave real illumi- nation. Told under this illumination the traditional stories ceased to be appropriate because the rhythm that gave them meaning was weakened.” The prolongation of light has pushed back the shadows of the hearth where, once upon a time, stories were told. Further, the prolongation of light has weakened the “rhythm that gave them meaning.” That rhythm, simply stated, is the time for light, the time for dark, the time for work and the time to tell stories.

We have prolonged the light: we can work whenever we want (and more than we wish) and we have prolonged the seasons: I can buy fresh corn in February. We have changed the ancient rhythm. Is there only cacophony? Or is there a new rhythm?

“Today, while raking the front lawn, Todd said, “Wouldn’t it be scary if our internal clocks weren’t set to the rhythms of waves and sunrise – or even the industrial whistle toot – but to product cycles, instead?”

“We got nostalgic about the old days, back when September meant the unveiling of new car models and TV shows. Now, carmakers and TV people put them on whenever. Not the same.”

Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

The Hearth

The tradition of the hearth is still among us and played out regularly in many technologies. When we go to the cinema, popcorn in hand, to watch shadows flicker on the wall, we are practicing a human behavior as ancient as the first domestic fire. (As an aside, it is interesting that popcorn is so intimately linked with the cinema ritual. Certainly, on the American continent, popcorn has been enjoyed by fireside story listeners for a long time!) There is something soothing about sitting in a dark theatre. The cinema is a communal hearth creating adhoc communities that exist for a few hours and then are scattered. The television set and the computer screen provide the hearth of the modern home. This hearth is available at all hours. We can bathe in its stories and images, from waking to sleeping, whether the sun is shining or the moon is full.

For a long time now, the modern hearth has maintained the broken rhythms of the scattered brain.

Reversal

McLuhan and Powers describe the cycles of technology as moving through four phases: Enhancement, Obsolescence, Retrieval and Reversal. For example, the automobile en-hances travel, obsolesces the horse and buggy, retrieves walking as recreation, and reverses into the inefficiencies of the traffic jam.

The modern hearth brought the Elsewhere into the home and rendered the need to be out there obsolete: we could stay home and still be in the Elsewhere. We could, as The Firesign Theatre told us, be in two places at once and not anywhere at all. We were brought indoors to look out of doors. The hearth still functioned as a hearth: it was the organizing principle of the home. But the rhythm of this hearth belongs to the scattered brain. The technology that enhanced information and cultural unity is reversing into insanity.

The insanity of the scattered brain is driven by an insatiable appetite. If storytellers are not careful, they stand to be consumed by that same appetite.

Appetite

In the storytelling revival we are fond of drawing sharp distinctions between “our kind of storytelling” and other story media. The thing we don’t often admit is that we all serve the same appetite.

Our bodies have certain basic appetites. Today we are able to satisfy those appetites to excess. We suffer illnesses from our over consumption of fats, sugars, and salts, and have learned the importance of a balanced diet and exercise in order to maintain our health. Similarly, we have an appetite for images. Today we are able to satisfy that appetite to excess.

Stories are rich in images. When we tell stories we are feeding that same insatiable appetite that consumes T.V. radio, cinema, billboards, magazines, etc..

Are there consequences to a surfeit of images? Are there illnesses of the mind and the soul that can result from too many images, all cluttered and confused?

Less is More

It is easy to say that what the world needs now is more storytelling. But what if what the world needs now is less storytelling?

Traditional storytelling was often restricted to certain seasons and certain times in balance with the life of the community. Taboos against telling stories out of season were (and still are) common. If we are genuinely concerned about the health of our storytelling culture we will have to come to terms with the notion that there is a time to tell and a time to be silent. In a way, we try to do that with efforts like “turn-off-the-tube-week.”

The idea of less storytelling is a heresy, perhaps. My intention is to challenge some of my own assumptions about the relationship between our current storytelling revival and modern technology. I think there is a need for more of certain kinds of storytelling. Yet even as we are serving that need we are in danger of losing our direction and succumbing to the rising confusion around us.

The point is: the appetite for image is insatiable and it is being served at a feverish pace throughout our culture. Storytellers such as myself, who are on the verge of the entertainment industry, are in danger of being consumed by the scattered brain. Doing so we may become famous for 15 minutes, but we may also cease to be true storytellers and render ourselves obsolete.

What is the relationship of the storyteller to the other storytelling media? Is it simply that of the story-producer? (I’ve got a story to tell and a story to sell.) When you put a storyteller in front of a camera and broadcast that storyteller, you turn that storyteller into another TV program. The entertainment industry looks at the storyteller and sees one of two things: a writer or an actor. The media looks at the storyteller as a kind of product. If storytellers wish to get involved in the entertainment industry (and why shouldn’t they, considering the celebrity and the remuneration) they will have to come to terms with the voracious appetite for story that drives the industry. If the storyteller becomes merely a story-product, something essential will be lost. For the real art of telling stories is concerned not so much with being the producer of the unique story as with understanding when to tell and when to be silent and how to match the right story with the right listener at the right time. In short: the art of telling stories requires a good sense of rhythm.

To tell, we know, means to report; but we must remember that it also means to discern.

Wayfinding

“The Spider Woman taught us all these designs as a way of helping us think. You learn to think when you make these.”

-Navajo teenager speaking to folklorist Barre Toelken regarding string figures.

Consider the metaphors which abound in the new technology: Net Web Mosaic Link String. These are the first technologies. They describe pattern and complexity. These are the constants of the human experience, still alive within the mutable modern media. We are finding our way in complexity like Theseus in the Labyrinth. Many of the current video games concern themselves with wayfinding in mazes and worlds where the rules are unknown and waiting to be discovered. Does the mind get stronger from the exercise? Or lost, in Spiderwoman’s web?

“Wayfinding is a set of principles. An art. And at the center of the circle of sea and sky is the wayfinder practicing the art, trusting mind and senses within a cogni- tive structure to read and interpret nature’s signs along the way as the means of maintaining continuous orientation to a remote, intended destination.”

Will Kilselka, An Ocean In Mind

The new cultural ground now brings the center back to the user. The home video recorder breaks the broadcast schedule cartel and allows viewers to determine when they watch. The personal computer takes the next step: allowing us to watch when we want and to broadcast what we want. Control of the technological hearth is coming back into our hands. With it comes all the confusion and chaos of “the second Tower of Babel” that Victor Hugo describes. In response to this chaos we are developing more and more powerful “search engines” to help us navigate the madness.

The same need that brought about the search engine has brought about the storyteller. The art of the storyteller is the art of the wayfinder. The teller gives us the cognitive strength and the story constellations that we need to find our way. In keeping the ancient rhythm, the storyteller is here now to help us stand once again at the center and reorient ourselves to ourselves as well as to one another. The storyteller is minding and reminding the scattered brain.

Sources:

An Ocean In Mind by Will Kilselka University of Hawaii Press. 1987.

Introduction to The Complete Grimms Fairy Tales by Padraic Colum. Pantheon Books. 1944/1972.

The Dynamics of Folklore by Barre Toelken. Houghton Mifflin. 1979.

The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century byMarshall McLuhan & Bruce R. Powers. Oxford University Press, 1989.

Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. HarperCollins. 1996.

Notre Dame of Paris by Victor Hugo. English translation by John Sturrock. Penguin Books USA, Inc. NY, NY. 1978.

One Man’s Meat by E. B. White. Harpers Magazine, vol. 177. October, 1938.

Spiders and Spinsters by Marta Weigle. University of New Mexico Press. 1982.

Teleliteracy by David Bianculli. The Continuum Publishing Company. 1992
–
David Novak

A Telling Experience
“Finding ourselves together telling stories.”

PO Box 15122
Asheville, NC 28813
(828) 280-2718
www.novateller.com

Press Play to hear Janice M. Del Negro who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on revising feminist folk-tales: naming the women. on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Dr. Janice M. Del Negro writes
When Eric and I talked about a topic for this interview, he asked me what was I passionate about? I am passionate about naming the women.

That being said, I was reluctant to use the word “feminist” in the title of this podcast. The word “feminist” is a trigger word that elicits, in many people, a strong emotional response. Since I agree with Mark Twain – “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug”- the choice of the word “feminist” was problematic, because nearly everyone has a distinct personal definition of that particular word. Eric bypassed that concern, however: “people will search ‘feminist’ online,” he said to the library school professor. So here we are, “Revisioning the Feminist Folktale,” and I am not sure that two people on the planet have the same definition of what “feminist” means, never mind folktale, or oral tradition. So I’ll stick to passion.

I am passionate about retelling folktales. I am passionate about excavating old tales, tales that have already survived for centuries, for emotional truths that resonate with contemporary listeners. There is no definitive version of a folktale, no “original”; we can point to the earliest remembered, written, or preserved version, but not to an “original.” Folktales change over time in order to survive, and re-telling folktales for present-day listeners is a contemporary offshoot of what is popularly understood as the oral tradition.

Tales come to us differently today than in the past. A handful of contemporary American storytellers can say they heard folktales from family or friends, tales that were handed down orally, from mouth to ear, but many of us who retell folktales first meet the tales on the page. Sometimes the tales work just as we find them; sometimes they resonate oddly, indicating currents beneath the surface. Those currents offer an opportunity to retell from where the teller stands now, instead of from where the story stood then.

My stand includes my gender. I am a woman. I am fascinated by the women in folktales, not just the women characters, but the women storytellers. Many of the tales we have were collected by men operating within the social mores of their times. The stories these good men chose to collect and the manner in which they collected them were filters through which the stories travelled, affecting the tale’s content and presentation. I look at a folktale so collected and I want to know: what isn’t there? What would the stories be like if the women were telling them to each other in the kitchen, while the collector was making notes on the polite version in the parlor? Those are the stories I want to tell, and since no one collected them in quite that way, I make my own. Filtered through my own experiences, I try and make an old tale new.

Stories may be static on the physical or virtual page, but for as long as the storyteller is telling, the story has blood and breath. Every retelling of a folktale, imbued with the individual blood and breath of the storyteller, is unique. The storytelling community recognizes this in a practical and concrete way: there are many popular conference and festival programs in which several tellers elect to retell the same folktale, just to show what is possible.

I am enormously interested in the fact that many female storytellers choose to retell traditional tales from points of view not always represented in collected or anthologized versions of folktales. Milbre Burch, Elizabeth Ellis, Susan Klein, Barbara Schutz-Gruber, Megan Wells, my own students (and too many others to name even with unlimited bandwidth) approach folktales through their own artistic processes. I cannot speak to the specifics of anyone’s process but my own, and even my process is malleable; the process changes with every story, because every story speaks differently to every teller.

JMD

Janice M. Del Negro, PhD.
Author, Educator, Storyteller

Janice M. Del Negro is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, where she teaches Storytelling, Children’s and Young Adult Literature, and Foundations in Library and Information Science. Professor Del Negro did her doctoral work at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Del Negro has been a featured speaker, storyteller, and workshop leader at the National Storytelling Festival, the Allerton Conference (”Stories: From Fireplace to Cyberspace”), the Illinois Library Association, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, the Fox Valley Music and Storytelling Festival, the Champaign Public Library Children’s Literature Festival, and many other celebratory events. She has spoken and conducted workshops on various aspects of children’s literature and publishing, storytelling, and reading motivation for teachers, librarians, parents, and other educators in a variety of settings, including the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, the State Library of Illinois, the North Carolina State Library, and the University of San Diego.
Del Negro’s first picture book, Lucy Dove (1998) won the Anne Izard Storytelling Award; her second picture book, Willa and the Wind (2005) was an ALA Notable Book, and an Honor Book for the Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature from the Bank Street College of Education in New York City. Her recent collection of supernatural tales for young adults, Passion and Poison, published by Marshall Cavendish in 2007, received starred reviews in both Horn Book and School Library Journal.
Del Negro has performed and lectured extensively in libraries, schools, and community centers throughout the United States. Her specialties include retelling traditional folktales, reading motivation through literature and storytelling, and transformation stories, with a gentle emphasis on women and ghosts. Her first recording, Journeywomen and Ghostly Passages, was released in July, 1991; her most recent recordings, Romantic Wonder: Tales of Love and Magic, and Shadow’s Sisters: Shapeshifters, Wraiths, and Spirited Women, were released in April, 1999. She is currently working on a new recording entitled Fortune’s Daughters: Folktales and Ghost Tales, to be released in 2008. Del Negro has reviewed for Booklist Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, and School Library Journal, and is currently reviewing for Booklist.
She has served on both the Newbery, Caldecott, and Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award committees. In 2004-2005 Del Negro served as chair of the 2005 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award committee. and subsequently served as chair of the 2007 Caldecott Award Committee.
Del Negro was formerly the director of the Center for Children’s Books, a special collection of children’s books located at the University of Illinois. Before taking her position as Center director, she was the editor of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, a monthly review journal of books for youth. Del Negro went to the University of Illinois from the State Library of North Carolina, where she was a consultant for children’s services and public libraries throughout the state. Prior to this she worked for fourteen years as a children’s librarian for the Chicago Public Library, including five years as Assistant Director of Children’s Services.

Drum roll please….

7) You love Eric’s podcast and want to make him feel accomplished for the hundreds of hours of work he has invested into the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Podcast.
6) You never heard of Eric or his podcast and feel sorry for him spending hundreds of hours on his podcast.
5) You love children (not in a weird way) and love to write and share about storytelling with children..
4) You want one more website with a decent google page rank to list your storyteller website and increase your visability on google.
3) You love to tell stories to children on the amateur level and want to belong to a storytelling networking community – and the professional storyteller NING is a little intimidating.
2) You recently had bad accident and are trapped in a full body cast unable to escape from your hospital bed except through the internet.
1) Your a social networking addict

Seriously though consider joining now because you love telling stories with children…
http://storytellingwithchildren.ning.com

Incase you missed it Eric Wolf’s Website
and Eric wolf’s Storytelling Podcast

Press Play to hear this interview that was recorded as a conference call on Tuesday June 3rd at 8 p.m. SWC #057 with storyteller, Dovie Thomason – Building Young Adult Audiences.

Dovie Thomason writes…

I enjoy listening… I enjoy dialogue…I hope to learn something from every group of listeners or every chance conversation. SO….join me/us for this podcast, which isn’t about “The Answer”, but a collaborative search for alternatives and new visions that speak to a question many of us are asking: Where are the Young Adults in our Audiences?

There is considerable conversation going on about the “graying” (I prefer silvering…) of the storytelling community. Yet, these conversations seem to deal primarily with the age of the Storytellers, not the age of the Listeners…. How can we issue an invitation and create a sense of inclusion and an appreciation for the vital role of stories at all ages, but particularly with the extraordinarily responsive and interactive and “plugged-in” 15-30 year olds (more or less…).

Overseas, particularly (in my experience) in Europe, it is not unusual to have strong representation from this age group at concerts, festivals and story clubs…but NOT because they are aspiring to become professional storytellers. It seems, rather, that the curiosity and examination of the world and alternative ways of thinking/viewing reality is drawing in these most thoughtful and critical listeners. Telling to this “audience”—I prefer to say interacting with these “listeners”— continually enriches my work and thinking and future dreams for my lifework.

In part, this is perhaps a cultural, indigenous perspective—as an elder-becoming, I think a great deal of my responsibility to these young adult members of our society. In all honesty, I think very seldom about creating a new generation of youthful tellers…but am troubled by the absence of youthful listeners, with strong critical tastes and perspectives, in the larger storytelling world.

So, I have a world of questions and thoughts I’d love to bounce around with participants on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Podcast…hope you will listen in as a storyteller or story lover and be a part of this open-ended conversation.
(Leave a comment to continue the conversation…)

About…
Dovie Thomason is an award-winning storyteller, recording artist and author, recognized internationally for her ability to take her listeners back to the “timeless place” that she first “visited” as a child, hearing old Indian stories from her Kiowa Apache and Lakota relatives, especially her Grandma Dovie and her Dad. From their voices, she first heard the voices of the Animal People and began to learn the lessons they had to teach her. For these were teaching stories that took the place of punishment or scolding, showing her the values that her people respect and wanted to pass on to her.

Her love of stories and culture set her on a path to listen and learn and share the stories—to give people a clearer understanding of the often misunderstood, often invisible, cultures of the First Nations of North America. The product of a “mixed” background that is urban Chicago and rural Texas, Internet and ancient teachers, elders’ teachings and university classrooms —Dovie began telling stories “publicly” while teaching literature and writing at an urban high school in Cleveland. So, she began telling those first-heard old Indian stories—stories about making choices—stories that could become a blueprint for a personal value system.
More about her…
http://www.doviethomason.com/

Written by Jeff Gere… March 9- April 2, 2008

BRIEFLY: I had a BLAST in an exhausting collage of faces and places starting with Atlanta, Kennesaw (curriculum mixes drama and storytelling) with Irish teller Eddie Lenihan. Then up through the Smokey Mountains: Cleveland, Knoxville, and Jonesborough (SUCH A LITTLE TOWN!) Connie Gil hosted me. Met with NSN (Bobbie) and ISC (Susan/ Jimmy Neil) about a national story radio show. I did a workshop & tell there, then did lotsa ghost tours with my daughter in Savannah, and caught my breath at her house in Jacksonville, Florida. Then a wonderfully intense long weekend at the Florida Storytelling Camp and home on one of the last ATA flights.

My Georgia has two cities: Atlanta and Kennesaw, and that’s a WORLD of fun! A lot of what I know as ATLANTA is due to two folks: Feriel Feldman and David Schutten. Feriel is the dramatic kingpin behind the Southern Order of Storytellers. She arranged for two evenings of dinners with tellers from SOS, and made sure I toured the hills of Atlanta’s Mansions, drove me to gigs, and to an Atlanta Puppetry Theater show, Duke Ellington’s Cat (WOW! A REAL PUPPET THEATER doing NEW WORKS filled with KIDS! This is SUCH a JEWEL! Atlanta should be very proud.)

David Schutten arranged for me to do a few days in schools (all ages, all black- unheard of in Hawaii). He’s an executive for the teacher’s union, and is a teller too. He has a hand in everything, but managed to drive me around a bit, which was illuminating.

Then to KENNESAW UNIVERSITY. John Gentile heard me tell at the NSN Conference in Bellingham, Washigton in 2003 and arranged this residency with THE Irish teller, Eddie Lenihan (looking a bit like a troll). He’s written a ton of books, one of which is full of new accounts of encounters with the faeries (the only new one since Yates). There’s lots of Scotch/ Irish/ English immigrant history in Georgia/Tennessee, and they brought their stories (Jack Tales) so Eddie has lots to offer such researchers. I learned tons of history of the South and of Ireland. We were wonderfully chaperoned by Hannah Harvey, a bright energetic professor from ‘the hills of Tennessee’. The Kennesaw Theater program is exceptional, giving students 1) theater training, 2) storytelling classes 3) innovative hybrids mixing the two. Prof. Gentile was directing his original adaptation of ‘Moby Dick’. The students are all in their 20s. The first evening we briefly participated in a student storytelling concert (many solo/duet pieces, all innovative and noteworthy in different ways). We’ll be hearing from students in this program in decades to come. I‘d send my (grand) children there.

On each of the next 2 days, Eddie and I would each do a workshop, rest and eat well in the late afternoon, and do an evening show. After the show, we’d ‘drink a few pints’, return to our quaint B&B, drink tea and talk more. I LOVED it- a great priviledge.

My 1st workshop followed my new CD (completed and packaged for the trip and 2 others) YAKKITY YAK- Talkin’ about Tellin’. It uses stories (on the CD told to music) to illustrate points and thoughts about storytelling. It went over very well (as the students told me. A former speech professor said it succinctly codified thoughts and points she’d been making her whole career). Then I did a shadow puppet workshop on the overhead projector and with my ‘laptop’ (the only time I used them the whole trip).

My 2nd workshop pleased me less. I talked lots on storytelling and media, recording ourselves, and showed video clips from my tells and from my Talk Story Festival (also the only time I shared this on my trip). At one point I asked the students how many of them use Final Cut Pro and many raised their hands. This is the future in storytelling. Duh! The question and answer session at the end was much better.

I was pleased with my tell the first night, but my voice was wearing thin. I arrived with a nose that needed blowing (long flights- I’m not used to this), and it got worse, dogging me throughout the trip. I only took my hat, scarf, and jacket off outside twice (in Florida). It was cold and I had a cold. This messed up my head for my second workshop and evening tell, but I muddled through it on technique and perseverance. Sigh… embarrassing (and unusual. I’m NEVER sick in Hawaii). I‘m proud that I insisted on recording Eddie’s outrageous traditional Tall Tale tell on the second evening. I hope the tremendously innovative work being done a Kennesaw will be recorded (and I hope to put them on my projected national story radio show.) Oh, they treated us well!

Then a series of days began, each filled with new ’story’ friends. It was exhausing fun and I learned so much as my yellow rental car drove from one appointment to the next.

It began with a drive to CLEVELAND, at the bottom of Tennessee’s Smokey Mountains. I joined a small group for a potluck at the house of Peggy Jones. After dinner I told some funny stories and heard about their tellings (Pete Vanderpool is Santa Clause and does a program warn kids about ‘danger strangers’ and safety).

The next day I got a tour of the Cleveland Museum and lots of history from Sylvia Idom, and a drive up a gorge where the Olympic rough water kayaking was held and the devastating copper mining at the hilltop (for years everything was dead). That night I joined the KNOXVILLE group organized by Janice Brooks-Headrick in the sophisticated log cabin of Susan & Stephen Fulbright. After dinner, everyone LEFT (it WAS a Monday night- wish we’d had more time) so we talked story as the news played. The next day Stephen told me about squirrel hunting (early frost= no nuts= not many squirrels= don’t hunt). I took his advice and drove a GORGEOUS backroad and saw wonderful landscapes (and trailer housing).

That afternoon I made it to JONESBOROUGH - what a KICK! A tiny old town by a little river, perhaps three blocks long, nice older buildings, and in its center the ISC- International Storytelling Center. THIS IS IT= The Epicenter of Storytelling in America! ISC has a little theater, and the outside wall has teller’s faces and quotes (including Bren & Lucille Breneman, the grandparents of storytelling in Hawaii.) I saw the little Gazebo for Spookies at the National Festival (as Lyn Ford described it to me)(I’d remove the railing to see tellers better.) I tried to imagine the grassy areas PACKED with listeners and the little town INVADED with audiences spilling out of seven big tents.)

I was generously hosted by Connie Gill, President of the Jonesborough Storytelling Guild. She allowed me to play hookie from the Guild Tell that first night in Jonesborough and we drove to hear the 90 year old Grand Dame of Southern Storytelling, Kathryn Windham. There we met several students from ETSU’s ‘Masters Degree in Storytelling’ Program (the first of many students/ alumni) and professor Delanna Reed. Some later came to my show. They’re an older, more diverse group than the Kennesaw students.

I want to do a National Storytelling Radio show. It’s time. I’ve created the blueprint in Hawaii (go to www.talkstoryradio.com and listen to podcasts- subscribe and make comments.) I met with NSN (National Storytelling Network)’s Director Bobbie Morgan for a very productive, on-task meeting filled with laughter. Connie took me to do a TV appearance, and that afternoon I met ISC’s Jimmy Neal Smith and Susan O’Connor for a delightful talk (we’re new to one another.) All are curious and interested in the radio show. Good will come of this. I’m motivated and committed, and these talks helped.

The next afternoon about 12 adults gathered in a Jonesborough Church community hall for a few hours of workshopping. I talked through my ‘Yakkity Yak’ and then we just talked. I really enjoyed the opportunity to commune in storytelling with these folks, especially the give-and-take session. Larry Kelley , a drawlin’ Jonesborough teller (and very funny CD) said, ” I lieeked whut you saaid, but whut I’ll take away with me is your passion saying it. You Lluuuv storytellin”… See me melt. What a gift! He made my trip.

That night I did a 90 minute tell at the Jonesborough Rep Theater, earning $500 for NSN. A busload of teenagers were the principal audience. I started with personal funnies, added a surfer tale, did a touching tale and a Pele. After a break I did 2 moving tales. One teenager annoyed adults texting, but teens told the teacher “when’s the next one? It was surprisingly good!”

Then I drove to Charlotte (stopping briefly in Ashland, home of David Novak, to see it) to join my daughter Mecca. We walked around downtown and went to a two blocks long ‘art night’. We caught up. In SAVANNAH, an atmospheric city on a river, we took every history (revolution, Civil & Indian wars) and ghost tour we could fit into two days (but found no rockin’ gospel-singin’ church service for Easter.) Life intervened to prevent a ghost tour with Savannah teller Bess Chapas. In my opinion, these tour guides need lessons in telling spooky tales! It was factual, only ‘spooky’ once, despite the guide/teller. Working stiffs just doing a job. One Haunted tour seated 8 people in a Hearse with the top elevated.

Then we returned to Mecca’s house (new to me) in Jacksonville. I told tales to her co-workers at the University (nice folks), and I drove around downtown (art museum, etc.- it was deserted.) I felt lucky to ‘hang’ with her seeing her world. We visited St. Augustine, seeing what wealth built there (Flagler College) and its historic center. I drank a good bit one night with a good Hawaii friend’s brother learning lots of arcane family and regional history. FUN!

Then to the Florida Storytelling Camp, with an auspicious beginning- a ride with Kaye Byrnes. I soon met a WORLD of new friends (and some old)… featured tellers Michael Parent (Maine pal), Michael McCarty (LA pal), Molly Catron (from Jonesborough- twist that drawl with humor into some challenging ideas), Kuniko Yamamoto (mime/prop tells, who may come to Hawaii), and a REAL SURPRISE- Sandy Walker, a Miami ghost tour teller (she never told a ghost tale at Camp)- MAN, what a weird circular compositions: 1/2 way through, you wonder ‘where are we going?’ When she ties it off to end- BAM.. so satisfying. Quirky, halting, reticent speaking style, but POWERFUL! And LOTS of REALLY GOOD local tellers and story enthusiasts and some real ‘doers’ in storytelling. A small core made it happen who love this Camp (Kim Rivers, Mary Lee Sweet, Carrie Sue Ayvar, Mylinda Butterworth, Kay, many others). I’ve never BEEN somewhere with SO MANY GUILDS! It was a revelation to meet so many people doing great things- It was totally engaging. I was MOVED! THESE are my PEOPLE! STORY People! I did the swaps and a 10 minute evening story, which went over well. I hope to return, see my daughter, visit new Florida pals, and have MORE FUN… it really felt great. I was challenged and affirmed, accepted and adopted. That’s A LOT from a camp! I just wrote on MEDIA for their next newsletter.

I stopped for a few days in Los Angeles to see my folks and lunched with itales.com founder Mary Margaret O’Connor (the story download site- get on it.) I came home way tired on one of the LAST ATA flights. I’m finally cleaning up a glut of papers and am listening to some of the box of CDs I brought home (traded for many, sold some cheap). I’m back into my life (which was waiting with its own needs) and plotting MORE trips!

To my new friends met on this trip, thank you thank you and thanks AGAIN for your kind attention to this traveler from so far away. Thanks for gathering your tellers around my passing presence and for sharing your warmth and insights. My world is a bigger, friendlier place.