Press Play to hear Ruth Stotter speak on working with props in storytelling performances on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
(Link was broken NOW fixed - sorry about that.)

Ruth Stotter Writes....
I love the idea that as a storyteller, you travel light. A "bag" of stories takes up no room and is easy to carry around. But I also love interspersing stories with props - both as a folklorist carrying on old traditions and as a way of adding a visual component. Puppets, masks, and origami are among my favorites. You asked why I am currently so intrigued with string stories and I will try to answer. It never ceases to amaze me that with a simple loop of string you can make hundreds of figures, and that these string designs can be used to tell stories.I think they were the first picture books. Tellers in traditional cultures twisted and turned the string to make illustrations to accompany their oral texts.

When I went to Easter Island, where they still hold an annual string story competition, I found that they were using a rough hewn string from a plant and told stories in the old Rapa Nui language, not the modern Rapa Nui, nor Spanish, which is the official language. In Fiji I met a man who easily copied my string figures. I found it difficult to learn his, as I am used to book illustrations. Besides stories, of course, the loop of string is used for stunts and magic tricks.

Organizing the String Gathering in San Francisco in 2004 I was happy to meet other members of the International String Figure Association. This organization sends members a monthly string figure-design as well as various newsletters and books. Several of the people who attended the Gathering brought power point presentations of their experiences collecting string figures from Yupik Eskimoes, Navajos, and various Oceanic Rim countries.

I was pleased to be invited to write the section "String Figures" for Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Storytelling and Folklore, edited by Josepha Sherman. That led to my writing A Loop of String.

So, you see, my friends, all of my interests - origami, puppets, magic, folklore and storytelling - coalesce in this seemingly simple folk craft! I guess the bottom line (literally in this letter ) is that as a storyteller I find it challenging and irresistible to adapt and adopt string figures as part of my storytelling performance.

Bio: Ruth Stotter's kaleidoscope activities in storytelling include telling stories at a local Rennaisance Faire for six summers, producing and hosting "The Oral Tradition" radio program on KUSF-SF for six years, directing the Dominican University storytelling program for 14 years*, teaching and performing in Portugal, France, England, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, India and Africa. She is the author of About Story, More About Story, The Golden Axe, Smiles: 101 Stunts and You're On!. She has chaired and presented papers at meetings of the American Folklore Society and for several years served on the ASF Aesop Committee, which selects the best children's books based on folklore. Her honors include the Reading the World Award from the University of San Francisco, a regional award from NAAPS, and most recently an Oracle Lifetime Achievement Award from NSN. She is listed in Who's Who in American Education, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in the World.

M.A. Stanford University - Speech Pathology
M.A. Sonoma State University - Storytelling
University of California, Berkeley - Teaching Credentials

Left out:
Conducted workshops at National Conferences of NAPPS and NSN: Tandem Storytelling, Story Adaptation, Storytelling with Props, and at the 2010 conference July 2010, Storytelling with String. Performed at Storytelling Festivals in Canada, MA and California. Monthly performances for two years at College of Marin bookstore.

*Dominican University
Classes taught: Beginning Storytelling, Intermediate Storytelling, Advanced Storytelling (putting as program together), Pre-School Storytelling, Analyzing Stories, Storytelling with Props, Critique Clinic.
Workshops taught: Tandem Storytelling, Creating Original Stories

Non-storytelling:
author of Little Acorns: A Guide to Marin County Plants
Kayaker - from island to island in Fiji, in Baja, Florida Keys and San Francisco Bay.
Hiker: walked from Zurich to Geneva over 5 mountain passes. Annapurna trek. Peru trek, John Muir trail form Yosemite to Mammoth
Married over fifty years with three children
Competitive Croquet player (and has won several trophies). Current handicap is 13.

about string stories:
Ruth finds it amazing that with a simple square of paper or a loop of string hundred of figures can be created and stories can be told and notes that both of these are traditional art forms in other cultures. In 2004, Ruth hosted the first String Gathering for String Enthusiasts in San Francisco, and stringers attended from 13 states.

Press Play to hear Catherine Burns who is Artistic Director of The Moth speaking on diamonds in the rough, coaching new storytellers on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

The Moth is America's #1 storytelling podcast with over 600,000 downloads a month and at least 100,000 listeners. Catherine Burns is one of the minds behind the curtain at The Moth storytelling main stage in NYC and LA.

The Moth storytelling website.

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #066 Michael D. McCarty
	for $2.23 Storytelling and literacy in the 21st century.

Michael D. McCarty writes…
That which does not evolve dies. The ability to change, grow and adapt is essential to the survival of any species, society or ideal. Storytelling has been around since the dawn of man, which says a lot for the viability of this essential art form. Throughout human history stories have been used to inform, inspire, educate and more. Storytelling is part of our DNA.
So what is the role of literacy and storytelling in the 21st century? How is it evolving? The National Storytelling Network’s Storytelling Interest Groups (SIGs) give an indication. Storytelling has entered the business world and the Storytelling in Organizations SIG, Annette Simmons’ books, “The Story Factor” and “Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins” and a host of other books and individuals are taking it there in a big way.

The Storytelling in Higher Education (SHE) and Healing Story Alliance (HSA) SIGs promote storytelling in colleges and the healing arts respectively, while the Youth, Educators and Storytellers Alliance (YES) champion the value of storytelling in the classroom. The Producers and Organizers (the only SIG without an acronym) SIG brings together those who produce storytelling events. These folks are constantly working to make storytelling enticing to new audiences.

On another front, since 1997 The Moth, which is headquartered in New York, New York, has been conducting Story Slams, i.e. story competitions, which have brought in a whole new group of people to storytelling. The most prominent group is the twenty & thirty something’s that come in small numbers to traditional storytelling events, but come in droves to The MOTH.

A critical task for Storytelling is combating illiteracy. One of the most shocking bits of data is the alarming rise of illiteracy in America. People are reading fewer books and the ability to spell is going out the window. I’have worked with middle and high school kids who couldn’t read a simple children’s book or pronounce a word over two syllables without difficulty.
The positive impact of storytelling in fostering literacy has been well documented (check out www.storynews.org). The challenge for storytellers is to be proactive in making sure the education community is made aware of and utilizes storytelling and storytellers to this end.

The Los Angeles Reading Project (LARP) places storytellers in pre-schools telling stories to the children AND the parents and teaching the parents to read and to tell stories to their kids. A director at one of the pre-school sites noted that parents told her that their kids wanted to hear stories rather than play with their high tech toys and games! This is a great example of how literacy and storytelling in the 21st century are tied closely together.

The art of storytelling is alive and kicking. It’s up to those of us who love it to continue to spread the word.

“The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them and learn to give them away. Sometimes a person needs a story more than they need food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. That is how people care for themselves.”
Barry Lopez

A short bio for Michael D. McCarty
Awards and Grants
Public Corporation of the Arts Grant (Long Beach, CA) 1994 -1999
Candlelight Award for Sharing Hope 1998 (South Africa)
National Storytelling Network’s 2003 Leadership & Service Award (Pacific Region)

Performance Highlights
Armand Hammer Museum California Afro-American Museum
The House of Blues, Los Angeles African Market Place, Los Angeles
Knott’s Berry Farm
Fowler Museum-U.C.L.A.
John Anson Ford Theater Plaza de la Raza, Los Angeles
African Festival of the Arts,Chicago Whole Life Expo, Los Angeles
Bay Area Storytelling Festival Santa Monica Museum of Art
Autry Museum of Western Heritage National Storytelling Conference
Summer Solstice Folk, Dance, Music & Storytelling Festival
Co-Director Los Angeles World Storytelling Festival (2002, 2003)
National Storytelling Festival (Exchange Place)
Museum of Contemporary Art

Check out Michael D. McCarty’s Website….

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Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #036 Margaret Read Macdonald for $2.23 Telling across language barriers.
Purchase a CD of this Telephone Interview
	CD Telephone Quality Audio Interview #036 Margaret Read Macdonald – Telling across language barriers for $9.95.

Margaret Read MacDonald writes…
In 1994 one day the phone on my desk at the Bothell Library rang. A professor from Drew University was on the line. “Dr. Wajuppa Tossa would like you to call her in Thailand right away,” he said. “She wants you to come over there as a Fulbright Scholar.” I hung up and sat stunned. A Fulbright Scholar. To Thailand? Could I do that? I had a fulltime job as a children’s librarian. But maybe; I dialed the Thailand number right away to find out more. A very drowsy Dr. Wajuppa roused herself from her 3 am sleep to answer. First problem with communicating across language barriers? Get your time zones right!

It was in fact possible for me to go off to Thailand. The Fulbright program did accept me and the King County Library System gave me a sabbatical. So I arrived at the University of Mahasarakham ready to teach storytelling. I entered my first class eagerly. First shock;I had to leave me little high heels at the door;no shoes allowed in the classroom. Second shock;no one understood much of my English. Dr. Wajuppa and I soon developed a telling technique however. I learned to pause after each phrase and let her supply the phrase in Lao. We moved smoothly through each story and the students got both my inflections and tone while the meanings seamlessly flowed right behind.

Since then I have used the techniques which Wajuppa and I developed while telling in Brazil with Livia de Almeida, in Japan with Masako Sueyoshi, in México with Victor Arjona, in Cuba with Elvía Pérez, in Argentina with Paula Martín, and through translators in Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya, Taiwan, China, and The Republic of Georgia. The most tricky telling was one in Kota Kinabalu (on Borneo) in which I was translated into THREE languages. Tellers surrounded me;the first repeated my phrase in Bahasa Melayu, the second in Mandarin, and the third in Kadazandusun! Now THAT was a bit too much. I don’t recommend more than one translator at a time.

For several years I was able to help plan the King County Library System International Storytelling Festival. We were able to bring two tellers from abroad each year, in addition to US tellers, and I was so pleased to be able to present tellers performing in French, Portuguese, Thai, Japanese, Spanish, and Arabic.

In our podcast we can talked about ways to make translation work and discuss various techniques for telling stories via translation. I also want to stress the importance of exposing your own festival audiences to tellers who are telling in other languages. Just today I opened a package with my latest book in it: Tell the World: Storytelling Across Language Barriers (Libraries Unlimited, 2007). 39 tellers contributed articles about their own experiences in telling across the language barrier. So I may be sharing some of their stories too.

Bibliography for the MRM podcast. These tales, books, websites were mentioned.

“Strength” A Limba folktale. From Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About by Margaret Read MacDonald, August House Publishers, 2005.

“Lifting the Sky” An Upper Skagit folktale. From Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About by Margaret Read MacDonald, August House Publishers, 2005.

“Not Our Problem” A Burmese/Thai folktale. From Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About by Margaret Read MacDonald, August House Publishers, 2005.

Tell the World: Storytelling Across Language Barriers by Margaret Read MacDonald.
Libraries Unlimited, 2007. Techniques for storytelling through translation. Articles by tellers who have told in other languages or through translation.

From the Winds of Manguito: Desde los vientos de Manguito. Cuban Folktales in English and Spanish by Elívia Pérez. Trans. by Paula Martín. Ed. by Margaret Read MacDonald. Libraries Unlimited, 2004.

Speak Bird, Speak Again by Sharif Kanaana and Ibrahim Muhawi. University of California Press, 1989. Palestinian Arab folktales.

Tunjur! Tunjur! Tunjur! A Palestinian Folktale by Margaret Read MacDonald. Illus. by Alik Azoumanian. Marshall Cavendish, 2006.

Three Minute Tales by Margaret Read MacDonald. August House, 2004.

Five Minute Tales by Margaret Read MacDonald. August House, 2007.

The Storyteller’s Start-up Book by Margaret Read MacDonald. August House, 1993.

Website for Israeli storytelling mentioned by Eric:
Limor’s Storytelling Agora – http://lisb.wordpress.com/

For August House website see: http:// www.augusthouse.com

Special offer books for podcast audience: Send check to Margaret Read MacDonald, 11507 NE 104th St., Kirkland, WA 98033.

Booksharing: 101 Programs to Use with Preschoolers by Margaret Read MacDonald. Library Professional Publications, 1988. paperback $20 op OFFER PRICE $5.

Bookplay: 101 Creative Themes to Share with Young Children by Margaret Read MacDonald. Library Professional Publications, 1994. Hardback $32. op. OFFER PRICE $5.

Both are collections of pre-school storytime ideas, include simple craft ideas, songs, games, suggested picture books to form thematic programs for pre-school/primary.

Cuentos que van y vienen by Margaret Read MacDonald. Trans. Paula Martín. Buenos Aires: Aique, 2001. paperback. OFFER PRICE $15.
This is a Spanish translation of A Parent’s Guide to Storytelling (August House, 2001).

Biography of Margaret Read MacDonald

Margaret began telling stories as a children’s librarian in 1965. She retired from the King County Library System in 2002 and has been traveling incessantly ever since. Her daughter and son-in-law, Jen and Nat Whitman (The Whitman Story Sampler), taught in Hong Kong for the past six years, so many trips were based out of Hong Kong. Now they are in Bonn, Germany, so Margaret’s near future travels may lean more in that direction.

Margaret received her Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University in 1979 and published her dissertation as The Storyteller’s Sourcebook: A Title, Subject, and Motif-Index to Folktale Collections for Children (Gale Research, 1982). While teaching a course in storytelling for the University of Washington, she realized she needed a collection of sure-fire tales for her students to cut their teeth on. So she wrote Twenty Tellable Tales.

Many more tale collections followed and now she delights in discovering tales most tellers have not heard yet and putting those into books for others to share. Her stories are all written with the next teller in mind. They are shaped for ease of telling. And she hopes that they will be taken up and passed on.

In the last few years Margaret has been delighted to see several of her books translated. Into Spanish, Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, Korean, French, and Japanese. She was especially pleased at the chance to work directly with Paula Martín (Argentina), Jocelyn Chuang (Taiwan), and Masako Sueyoshi (Japan) in order to get translations which were ‘tellable’;not just literal translations. We worked with the texts until they sounded perfect in the translated language.

You can read much more about Margaret, see photos, and find a list of the 50 plus books she has written at: http://www.margaretreadmacdonald.com

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #023 Mary Margaret O’Connor Owner of Itales.com
	for $2.23 Digital Storytelling using emerging technologies with your storytelling.

Mary Margaret O’Connor, has an amazing concept hear that is on the cutting edge of digital storytelling. Are conversation on how to use the online and digital experience to support storytelling is eye opening for any storyteller to see the potential for the storytelling art form in the 21st centaury.

——–Mary writes…
iTales.com started as a simple enough idea; create a website to house bedtime stories I tell to my children. But what started as a simple project based on a love of storytelling, evolved into a much better and more complex idea, still based on a love of storytelling! That idea became iTales, a website that allows storytellers to upload and sell individual stories. Over time, iTales will be home to thousands of fantastic mp3 audio stories from around the world and will be a method of preserving the traditions and messages of stories that have been passed down, and sometime lost forever, through the generations.

I guess I did not come upon the world of storytelling purposefully, but the world of storytelling came to me. Plodding along in my role as a pharmaceutical marketing consultant, after years working in pharmaceutical companies, my colleagues often are bewildered by this “other side of me!” But as a person new to the world of storytelling, and just touching the tip of what is available, I have to say that professional storytellers are some of the most fascinating, intelligent and fun-loving people I’ve come across. (That is not to say, of course, that pharmaceutical marketers are not!) Through iTales, my hope is that many, who like me had not previously been exposed to many of the professional storytelling audience, will explore and embrace what historically has been one of the most constant and meaningful and important experiences of human nature – listening to stories.

iTales offers the power of the internet to reach millions of people around the world. Without the limitations of traditional storytelling venues, including how far one can drive for a show to sell their CD’s, iTales provides storytellers with another option for distributing their material to a targeted audience interested in audio stories.

And, just who is this audience? People of all ages and interests are potential story seekers. For children, listening to stories is fun, it increases their vocabulary and it allows them to actually connect with another human being. For young and older adults, iTales short stories offer an alternative to music or audiobooks for mp3 players and iPods. And, importantly, iTales offers entertainment that many will not have previously experienced.

To get great content for our site – high caliber stories – we are currently focusing marketing efforts on the professional storytelling community. Our hope is that you will join this podcast to learn more about how iTales works, our plans for the future and how the storytelling community can work together to help build something that is truly unique.

Post written by Mary Margaret O’Connor more info at www.itales.com

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #017 Eth-Noh-Tec
	for $2.23 Your highest vision and the niti gritty of your storytelling practice.

What does Vision and Purpose have to do with being a storyteller? How does one find a vision and why is it important? What would a storytelling career look like if the artist in in alignment with ones purpose? On a practical side, once the storyteller has clarified their mission in life, identified a community to serve and method of storytelling to serve them, how does one approach the nitty gritty of running a business as a storyteller?

Eth-Noh-Tec with Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo and Nancy Wang explored these issues of the professional touring storyteller during this interview. Whether you are semi professional, a novice or seasoned storyteller, come listen to the challenges of the world of storytelling. Eth-Noh-Tec, now in it’s 25th year of storytelling talks about their humble beginnings from their first performance at a conference when they were asked “can you tell a story”; to their wide and varied storytelling projects that take them across the globe.

Eth-Noh-Tec tours nationally serving schools, storytelling festivals, libraries, correctional facilities, and universities. They teach a weekly course in what they deem “kinetic story theater” classes as well as an annual three day intensive “The Summer Story Institute”. Combining storytelling with cultural and social-political activism they have created several projects: the Forgiveness Project, Green Grows the Story, The Nu Wa Storytelling Exchange project and the India project; all of which are examples of using the power of storytelling to build compassionate communities in a world that hungers for listening.

You can learn more about Eth-Noh-Tec by visiting their website:
Eth-Noh-Tec

Listen to Robert and Nancy as guests of Eric Wolf’s podcast, the Art of Storytelling as they discuss their Highest Vision and the Nitty Gritty of their storytelling business.