Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #006 Judith Black
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Child Based Stories.
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 more »
Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #005 Doug Lipman
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Selling Ourselves Outside the Storytelling Community.
Why is marketing hard for storytellers?
For one thing, we’re up against a hard situation. Like all artists, we do important work: imagining and communicating what human beings are like and can become. Yet, as invaluable as we are to society, we are not rewarded well or supported well. We are even expected to be both artists and marketers. Few people master two such careers!
Also, like many in our society, we misunderstand the nature of marketing. Because many of us think that marketing is “selling things to people who don’t want them,” we are often reluctant to take the steps that would let society benefit from our work.
Once we understand what true marketing is and does, we can Read more »
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Breaking into Storytelling.
Lyn Ford Writes…
“Breaking” into storytelling isn’t quite the description that fits the beginnings of my career. It was more like leaping off the edge of a cliff, with all the materials to build a strong glider that would carry me wherever I should go, but no blueprint or directions on how to build the thing. I had to trust that I would create both the blueprint and the directions, and be able to make the glider, as I headed toward solid ground. Scary, exciting, and very educational!
My mind and heart were filled with stories from my family’s oral tradition, but storytelling as a career hadn’t occurred to me. Our kids, now grown, volunteered my stories in their classrooms (bless their little hearts!); the experience Read more »
Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #003 Medicine Story
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The power of Mythology with Children.
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 more »
Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #002 Jonatha Wright
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Cross Cultural Storytelling.
Jonatha Wright writes…
Probably we are all aware of the cultural confusions and misconceptions that become evident daily in this world of instant updates. It has become the stuff of novels, movies and the nightly news. These errors in sensitivity can hurt feelings, and cause outright insults and rage in the offended.
*How can we avoid some of these mistakes?
As storytellers, we often aim high at bridging these cultural gaps with an appropriate and well-told story. This is a worthy goal and an attainable one. However, we must do Read more »
We will be offering a workshop for youth ages 10 to 17 in storytelling.
Youth who participate will have the opportunity to tell stories
in the pre-show on the YSKP stage before Sense and Sensibility.
$25 fee. Space is limited.
Register through Brother Wolf’s website: www.ericwolf.org/register
Eric Wolf (A.K.A. Brother Wolf) is a world
traveled storyteller who has performed in
hundreds of schools across the country.
A gifted storyteller, he is also skilled at working
with children and allowing them to perform their
own stories. His work has been featured in the
American Museum of Natural History in NYC, Mercantile
Library, Columbia University, Kings island
Amusement Park.
May 15, 2007 12:06 pm | 
