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 What is it about STORY that has the power to enchant, disarm, engage, delight, touch and transform? What gives a simple tale, passed from one generation to the next, or a legend, passed down for centuries the power to endure? Why is it that from the time we are little, listening to stories told by parents at bedtime, to the time we are grown, recounting stories of our own, the art of storytelling carries a wave of continuity and meaning that we instinctively return to? The term STORY derives from the Middle English storie, the Old French estorie, and the Latin historia. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives it seven definitions which span the wide range of activities covered by the simple term: story.
Stories come in all sizes and shapes, in various forms and genres, each with its unique blend of power and special strength. There are creation stories, myths, legends, tall tales, epics, folktales, fairy tales, fables, oral history and family tales. Stories can be spoken, sung, painted, sculpted, danced and dramatized. They can be true or fictionalized. They can convey ideas, beliefs, traditions, customs, knowledge and cultural standards. "Storytellers must also be story listeners. Finding a story is the first step. Then the story should be studied and connected to its roots, whether an author, a culture or a folk tradition. Proper storytelling etiquette requires giving credit to sources and respecting copyrights. Gradually the story takes on a personal meaning within. Then the storyteller begins to tell it as his or her own." -Eldrbarry, The Storytelling Ring. Sometimes a story selects its teller. Olive Hackett-Shaughnessey, speaking in a class on Storytelling, recounts the case of coming upon a story that absolutely transfixed her, as if the story chose her. Drawn by some sort of fascination, she researched it, learned it, began to recite and perform it. Yet it wasn't until she had told the story several times, that the full power and energy of the story began to reveal itself to her. This is the mystery inherent in certain stories. The colorful Aboriginal paintings of the Dreamtime are used as storytelling aids in ceremonies. Hasidic storytelling is a sacred activity akin to prayer. In the modern world, new forms of digital storytelling are emerging. All of these infuse our lives with energy, purpose, definition, and yes, magic. Stories allow us to enter the world between everyday, physical reality and the larger, mythic realm that our souls and spirits inhabit and animate. You might say stories are conductors which allow worlds beyond our immediate and present reality to be transported in the containers of language, sound, and image and stir wonder and meaning as necessary to life as air and water. The storyteller acts as both alchemist and messenger and has the power to gift us with vitalizing forces. A story has to have two equal partners, tale teller and tale listener. - Jane Yolen, Touch Magic Storytelling's antiquity and apparent simplicity are a tricky matter. On the one hand, the power of storytelling is very accessible to anyone who takes a few seconds to reflect on their experience in order to recount it to a listener. On the other, the apparent simplicity of storytelling belies the many levels of skill that are achievable in this ancient form of communication. Storytellers, by the very act of telling, communicate a radical learning that changes lives and the world: telling stories is a universally accessible means through which people make meaning. Whether it be a child returning home from school to tell a parent what happened that day, a reporter broadcasting a breaking news story, a scared and lonely wanderer looking for a warm hearth or a professional who recites six hours of Homer's Odyssey. - Chris Cavanaugh, Telling Stories for our Lives, from Pippin, The Newsletter of the Storytellers School of Toronto To be a storyteller, you must first of all be gloriously alive - alive to yourself - and all that is going on around you - alive in your seeing, hearing, touching. The sure sign you are becoming the storyteller you want to be will be found in the pure fact of the happiness of being alive. - Paul Clement Czaja, In Mountain & Meadow, Nature Stories There is a famous story about a hunchback who, because he was a great rabbinic scholar in a Hasidic family, was hooked up to be married to a beautiful woman. But when she took one look at him, she was so shocked by his deformity that she refused to marry him. When he heard the news, he told the families, I'll be happy to cancel the marriage even though we've arranged it, but I just want 5 minutes to talk to her. So they gave the couple 5 minutes alone. When the two of them came out of the room, the families were astonished: suddenly she's happy to marry him, delighted. So a student said to him, "Rebbe, what did you say in 5 minutes that turned her around?" He said, "Very simple, I made her see the moment at which, forty days before we were both conceived, there was a heavenly announcement that said, 'This man is to marry that woman.' And at the same time there was an equally powerful announcement that said, 'but one of them is to be a hunchback.' And she saw my soul say, 'Oh, my God, if one of us is to be a hunchback, I can't let it be her. Let it be me.' So I was the hunchback. But when she saw the way it happened, she said she would marry me." - Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, The Healing Power of Jewish Stories The importance of aboriginal art has always been in the act of creating it, employing storytelling power as a portal into the dreamtime. Contemporary Aboriginal paintings are rich in abstract markings which were traditionally used as storytelling aids in ceremonies. Much of the abstract representation you see in (contemporary) paintings: the circles, the dashes, the tracks, etc. are precursors to what evolved into the written languages of other cultures. Visually, they are a form of communication symbols that stand for commonly held beliefs. - David Betz (Storytelling - Storytellers - Lesley Pepper ARTS 100) We are the first generation bombarded with so many stories from so many "authorities," none of which are our own. The parable of the postmodern mind is the person surrounded by a media center: three television screens in front of them giving three sets of stories; fax machines bringing in other stories; newspapers providing still more stories. In a sense, we are saturated with stories; we're saturated with points of view. But the effect of being bombarded with all of these points of view is that we don't have a point of view and we don't have a story. We lose the continuity of our experiences; we become people who are written on from the outside. - Sam Keen (Story Lore) Storytelling Information & Sites National Storytelling Membership Association 116-1/2 West Main Street Jonesborough, Tennessee 37659 1-800-525-4514 E-mail: hsma@naxs.net Glistening Waters Storytelling Festival New Zealand Guild of Storytellers Organizer: Joy Tutty P.O. Box 444 Masterton, New Zealand Phone (+646)378-9666 Fax (+646)377-1195 Prince Edward Island Storytelling Festival Suite 321 393 University Avenue Charlottetown, P.E.I., Canada C1A 4N4 Voice: (902)892-5057 Fax: (902)892-9383 E-mail: mailto:carver@isn.net Annual virtual storytelling festival in Crested Butte, Colorado The Storytelling Diary Storyteller.net Talespinners' Tavern Story Lore Mythmaker |