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Connecting Quickly (and Managing Behavior) through Physicality.
When telling for young audiences, even the most brilliant story is vulnerable to young audiences if the situation is compromised, or your delivery is not ideal for the setting. In this discussion, Alex reveals how his wild and mesmerizing style is methodically built, brick by brick. Small details can reap huge Read the rest of this entry »
Press Play to hear this interview that was recorded as a conference call on 10/10/2007 storyteller Brother Blue appeared on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf to talk about street storytelling and storytelling from the heart.
Brother Blue is one of three storytellers in the country whose work and style have directly influenced my own storytelling style and flavor. I am very proud to bring you this conversation about street storytelling and everything else related to storytelling with storyteller Brother Blue.
Eric Wolf
—–storytellers Brother Blue and Ruth Hill
Hugh Morgan Hill
(Brother Blue, Storyteller/Street Poet)
He is Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill, but everyone knows him as Brother Blue. He is called by many “the world’s greatest storyteller.” He says he wants his stories to be “bread for the mind, the imagination, the heart, the soul.” He says, “I speak my stories from the middle of the middle of me to the middle of the middle of you” [the people].
Brother Blue received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College (with honors) and a master’s degree from the Yale School of Drama. For his Ph.D. degree from the Union Institute, his final presentation or Project Demonstrating Excellence (PDE) was “Soul Shout,” a storytelling concert in a prison, accompanied by a musical band of over twenty inmates.
Storytelling festivals include the Corn island Storytelling Festival, in Louisville, Kentucky; Day for Sam, in Wrentham, Massachusetts, a festival commemorating the life and death of a five-year-old boy; Sharing the Fire, sponsored by the League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling; Toronto Festival of Storytelling; Vancouver (B.C.) Storytelling Festival; and the Yukon Storytelling Festival. He has also appeared several times at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee; and at “In the Tradition…”, the festival/conference of the National Association of Black Storytellers, held in a different city each year.
He has taught storytelling in prisons, and in schools and colleges throughout the Read the rest of this entry »
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Judith Black writes…
Adult sensibilities and child needs infrequently travel the same orbit.
Adult: “Now sweetie, why don’t I tell you that nice story about the little girl who loves visiting the dentist?”
Child: “No mommy! I want the one about the little girl who goes into the wrong house in the forest and the wolf eats her up.”
Adult: “How about the lovely fairy tale where the princess frees the imprisoned prince and opens a shelter for the kingdom’s peasants?”
Child: “How about the one where the beautiful princess marries the prince and lives happily ever after in a big rich castle.”
Adult: “Let’s tell the one about the kind dragon, who helps the villagers find water.”
Child: “Na, I want the one about the slimy green dragon who rips up all the people into itty bitty bits and gobbles them up.”
The chasm is so deep and wide that they opt for a video tape, a shander* in storytelling circles! (Shander: A Yiddish expression meaning an act of debased dishonor)
Adults edit and censor the stories they share with children. In so much as we are the adults these are our choices to make. Making them solely out of our wants and objectives instead of based in our children’s needs, might Read the rest of this entry »
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Selections from the book RETURN TO CREATION, by Manitonquat (Medicine Story):
(Reprinted with permission.)
What we need to investigate and learn together is healing. In a time of great sickness nothing else should concern us. Healing the earth, healing society, healing our communities, healing ourselves. To paraphrase a saying, if we are not part of the medicine, we are part of the disease.
You have come to the circle which this book represents to hear me speak. Perhaps you wish to learn something about Native American healing from a medicine man. Maybe you wish to experience a healing yourself. Well, I hope you do learn something, and I hope you get in touch with the spirit of healing. I must tell you, however, that the healing power for you is only within you. A medicine person’s real job, whether it be with a ritual, with herbs, with steam or water, with song or dance or with story – whatever the medicine, the real work is to convince you of your own healing power. That is the healing power of Creation which is within each of us.
Sickness of any kind is a dissonance in the harmony of nature, a noisy intrusion into the Song of Creation. A certain amount of dissonance and conflict is expected and desirable. They are a spur to consciousness. Our most essential teachers are Read the rest of this entry »
