Orality Newsletter #5 – Janet Stahl – March 12, 2008
In the last newsletter, I hope I put forward some compelling arguments for the power of stories in all of our lives.Stories are reclaiming attention in many fields including education, health, psychology, counseling, business,marketing, politics and theology. Some groups explore the best stories. Others focus on the storytellingtechniques. And others research the process that the listener or audience undergoes. Doug Lipman, a wellrespected professional storyteller, describes the storytelling event as a triangle the points of which are; the story,the teller and the audience. He calls these three points, the components of every story event. The relationshipsbetween each component are the sides of the triangle. [See Doug Lipman below]
From the perspective of the teller, preparing for the story event is a process of shifting focus. A good teller willspend considerable time experiencing the story, walking through so to speak in his mind, exploring thecharacters, the setting and the action and interaction. It is crucial to have a thorough understanding of the storyto be able to tell it well. In order to internalize the story, rather than memorize the story to recite verbatim, theteller allows the story to shape his life. As I learn the creation story, I imagine the vast dark void and the blindingappearance of light. I hear God’s voice as sometimes thunderous and sometimes a whisper in the wind. Eventsunfold with a cataclysmic formation of the sky and separation of waters and the rising of the dry lands from theseas. The mood changes to something surreal as the plants grow sprouting and unfolding as I have seen in timelapse videos. Then in my mind the majestic canopy of stars appear with the moon dominating one quadrant.Next I view a fast pace panorama of birds in flight, every color fish darting on the reef, large fish chasing schoolsin the deep ocean and animals of every description in their habitat. The climax to the story is the introduction of the man and woman followed by a sense of completion or wholeness. Each mental run through the story, I focuson a different aspect and explore other possible depictions until I settle on one set of images such as the ones Idescribed above. At this point I begin telling the story over and over again to myself. I recommend reading theDictionary of Biblical Imagery, The Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible Vols. 1-13 and Kenneth Bailey’s worksas resources for informing your images.Interspersed with these experiences of the story, I am considering my audience or finding out more about myaudience. Ultimately I will need to convey the images from my mind to theirs. If they are Bible literate, I canchose to be subtle and allow the audience to recall what they already know. Maybe I will highlight one mainpoint such as God’s approval of his own work or the variety of heavenly bodies, vegetation or animals. If theyare not familiar with the Bible and are isolated geographically, I know that the audience will need overt help informing some of the images. All of this can be done with intonation, facial expression and gestures or it maytake some introductory stories or a few carefully crafted phrases within the story to help foster the images I wantto convey.At some point I am ready to practice in front of an audience and I begin to appreciate their reacts as feedback for my words, my gestures and my facial expressions, my intonation and my timing of the flow. I make adjustmentsand try again sometimes concentrating on the story and sometimes on the practice audience and sometimes onmyself as the performer.Each storyteller has their own style and techniques, but most will say that they avoid memorizing word for word.The pitfall of memorizing a story is when the teller draws a blank; he has to start all over again to get the flow of words going. Experiencing a story over and over again prior to the telling means that the actual storytellingevent is more like reliving the experience and one image leads to the next. The emotions come naturally and thebody responds immediately to the memory.What happens after the storytelling event depends on the purpose for telling the story. If the storytelling eventwas purely for entertainment, the interaction is finished at the end of the story. Otherwise time should bedevoted for further interaction among the components of the event; the teller, the story and the audience. Insome cases it may be appropriate to have the members of the audience comment on their experience and sharewhat personal stories were inspired by the experience. In some cases, a discussion about the specifics of thestory might help the audience fill in gaps in their understanding or help them process the story in light of their background and past experiences. In most cases it can be a valuable exercise to encourage the audience to tryretelling the story as a group relying on collective memory or as individuals, assuming there is a common trustand respect that the retelling is appreciated to be a trial run.I think it is worth recapping here. We tell stories for at least two reasons: “to remember that which we dare notforget and to resolve that which we cannot stop thinking about.” [See Richard Swanson below.] The first are our myths that explain why things are the way they are and anchor us to the ancient memory. The second set of
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Janet, this Newsletter is great stuff! I am working on storying in a Taiwanese urban context, and want to make it truly reproducible. Do you have any material, reading recommendations or sage advice that might help me? Colleagues have done first-generation storying and led folk to faith, but not found the new believers using the stories themselves. My hypothesis is that using more Multiple Intelligences (drama, art, song, whatever) would indigenize the transmission process better, so they'd tell the stories themselves their way. Advice? Anne