Kinetic Storytelling - How to tell a 45 minute Story to Little Kids

 

Kinetic Storytelling - Engaging The Whole Body In A Story 

This past week, I did a quick pic and comment about telling a 45 minute story to little kids. Several people asked about how I do this. It occurred to me that this is a subject I don't think I've ever covered on the blog. So, let's get into it...

My Favorite Ways to Group Audiences - 

I create story sets that are eduationally and socially emotionally appropriate for various age groups in school settings. 

Pre-K - 2

3 - 5

6th

7th

8th

9th - 12th alone or in any combination

College Presentations - I often talk about the craft as I tell the stories

Other venues/Family/Adults only

Composing Story Sets -

School sets tend to run about 45 minutes. I usually only tell two stories per set. The first story lasts about twenty-five to thirty minutes. The second story lasts twelve to fifteen minutes.

The rest of the time is filled with introductions, community building discussion, and Q&A with the audience.

I have several reasons why I use that structure.

1. Transitioning from story to story breaks an audiences out of one reality and into another. You should reset the audience every single time you tell them a new story. if you don't give them a palate cleansing between stories, they brains can get tired of listening. If you transition them too much, their brains get tired of listening. Think about it as a to do list. The longer the to-do list gets, the harder it is to remember all of the things on it. For stories to stick, keep the number low!

2. For story sets with the smallest kids, if I tell them two stories, I do a physical stretch break between the first and second story. The reason for this is to allow the most antsy ones to move a great deal, and the rest to stretch, march, do isolations, make noise, laugh, and/or wiggle. Once we've done deep breathing and moving about, the littles are ready to listen once more.

3. I don't typically stretch
the older elementary. The transitions are typically enough. However, if I get a really wiggly bunch, I might well do it.

Sometimes, the plan changes!

Every now and then, I shake it up and choose one of the 45 minute stories for a story set.

There are reasons why I do this, but mostly it is because when I have little bitties, it is easier to do one highly participatory story than try to transition them.

The point of a 45 minute story? training the Literacy Brain in young listeners. 

Emergent readers need to learn some basic higher level thinking skills that are essential to literacy 

- predictive behavior - 

Short term predictions help you figure out what is happening moment to moment in the story

Long term predictions are about synthesizing information from the story so you can guess how you think it might conclude.

If your brain isn't focusing on how events are put together and how they might unfold through predictive behavior, you are just listening to a random serious of unrelated things.

- recall so that your brain starts recognizing foreshadowing. That also helps with continuity.

- visualizing language - turning language into images

Crafting A 45 Minute Story

How do you craft a 45 minute story for little kids? Here are some tips.

1. The story should be highly participatory.

2. Lots of repetition

3. The repetition should happen in "chapters".  

-Some repetition happens in the first chapter and then falls away.

The next chapter has a different set of repetitions 

The repetition should be a signal that something is about to happen

A repetition that allows for predictive or recall behavior can/should carry through multiple chapters

4. Lots of physical movement attached to the verbal repetition.

5. The structure should allow for listeners to cement certain refrains so that you can go back to them when you need them.

Example  - Rumpelstiltskin

When we first meet this little man, he agrees to spin straw to gold. He has Three repetitive participatory actions.

- When he arrives, I make a sound - Ding, ding, ding, ding, - and move my hands around in a large circle. This is always his arriving sound from that moment until he shows up at the end of the story to try to take the baby.

- When he agrees to spin straw to gold, he asks, "What will you give me?" in a sing song voice and holds out his hand. He repeats this action the first 3 times he appears. By the second time, most kids say this with me, and the last time they all say it.

- When he spins the straw to gold, he "Rolled up his sleeves" I mime rolling up one sleeve. "And Rolled up his sleeves" I mime rolling up the other one. "Then he said, "Stand Back!" I say this in his little squeaky voice and make a motion with my left arm. "Stand Back!" I make the motion with my right arm. After that I break into his little spinning song and move my hands as if I am spinning a wheel.

The listeners join that little action usually from the second time, and they are all in on the third.

I go through that sequence when he spins the straw to gold.

Each of the gold spinning events is a chapter. Different things happen, but the repetitive events mark the beginning and end of that chapter. It helps the listener know what to expect.

As the storyteller, I transition out of that section of the story with information. I tell the listeners that time has passed, Anna married the king, and she had a child. The next chapter starts with the audience initiating a sound from the last three chapters.

 "Anna was sitting in the nursery rocking the baby when she heard a sound she hadn't heard in almost two years. What was it?

The listeners immediately make the ding sound and move their hands in a circle with no further prompting. We are now in the next chapter of our story.

Rumpel doesn't spin anything in this new chapter. The refrain he gets is that when he shows up to the queen, he asks in a loud, somewhat mocking voice, "What's my name?!" and there is an accompanying body, face, and arm gesture that goes with it.

Understand that this is just one of the characters in the story. 

The Miller has his own refrain that we learn at the beginning of the story. It ends before we ever even meet his daughter. The purpose of his initial refrain is to get the audience used to make a loud, silly, refrain without my prompting them. They learn that they will be doing this in the story, and they don't typically need me to tell them to participate after the start. They just decide on their own when they want to do it. I only give them prompts if I am asking them to initiate a new chapter or movement in the story.

Anna has her own refrains during the spinning straw to gold thing.

The king has his own refrains when he is taking her to spin straw into gold.

The travel between the various rooms full of gold or straw have their own refrains.

As you can probably imagine, it is an exhausting story to tell!

Since you don't transition the kids between stories, they are highly invested in the tale as they take part in the action. 

If you connect the physical, verbal, and visual images to the story, you can get kids to sit for
an hour without realizing that's what they've done. 

At some point, if people want to know the specific detais, I will break down that entire 45 minute story and explain how each chapter/movement works;

Until then - 

Happy Long Form Telling!

We Are Recovering: One Story At A Time

 

The work has come back with a vengeance, and I am telling all over the country in lots of venues. I am loving live audiences. I am in front of lots of children of all ages! 

When I first enter a school, I ask a few key questions so I can get a feel for what I am in for with the students.

"Tell me about the kids."

"Does your school have any major concerns?"

"What are you most proud of?"

"How is your literacy rate?"

"What kind of arts programs do you have?"

It is a basic set of questions designed to get me to a set of stories that is going to be best for whatever group I'm about to see.

Since returning to touring, I have added a new set of questions:

"Have you noticed any difference in your students since returning full time?"

"How are students adjusting to being back in school?"

"What sorts of behaviors are you noticing?"

Some of the things I've been told are expected. Students were home on technology for a while. They could lay down, eat, walk around, and do any number of things while online. They have been with family 24/7 and they couldn't get away from them for over a year or more. 

They couldn't be in physical spaces with their friends. They didn't have to learn how to meet new people, lget along with people they didn't like,  be frustrated, angry, or grumpy in public. 

Studentes were with parents or grandparents. Their needs could be met pretty quickly, and some households have neither structure nor discipline. Some homes have too much discipline. Some are running free!

Taking students out of those situations as they are developing and dropping them back in school has caused some interesting issues to appear - 

Administrators Say:

- Students are much less mature

- Students have more issues with anger

- Students don't know how to keep their hands to themselves

- Students are not great with personal boundaries

- Students don't know how to socialize

- Students don't listen well 

- Students aren't sitting well

- Students are having far more problems focusing

- Students are less patient

The above list is for all schools no matter the socioeconomic status of their population. 

It should surprise no one that schools which typically have less funding or service populations that are not as affluent were suffering through extra layers of problems.

The main problem rural schools seem to be facing is attendance. Apparently, if school is online for a couple of years, there isn't much reason to attend. Parents have been taking the kids out of school or just not bothering to send them.

They have gotten out of the culture of schooling. This is affecting everyone from Kinders all the way through highschool. In fact, it was a highschool administrator that first brought it to my attention.

Apparently, having children in school cramps the parent's style if they have something else they want to do. So, they just take them out of school whenever or don't send them at all.

These kids are falling further behind.

Today, I had a long discussion with a child psychologist who told me that she had been in charge of technology when she first got a job here in NC. This was right before the pandemic.

They had the following issues - 

1. Most of the students did not have Chromebooks. In Wake County (our capitol county) every student has one provided by the district. this was not true in some of the poorer districts.

2. The state moved swiftly to try to rectify what has been a huge problem that nobody was really dealing with until everyone had to go virutal.

3. When everyone got a Chrome Book - and the process for making that happen in these rural and poor counties was a nightmare - the next problem arose.

4. Many of the households had no internet access. 

I assumed wrongly that most people had some kind of access. The world is full of smartphones, right? I have heard so many people say "every three year old can work an iPad". That has certainly been true of my neices and nephews. What I failed to realize is that internet access is still privileged, and lots of people don't have the option or the money to connect. In some places, there isn't any infrastructure so you can't connect even if you want to. There are swaths of our population who do not have access to the digital world.

Spectrum stepped in and tried to get some kind of boxes to each home that didn't have access to pick up connectivity and give these kids a fighting chance, but it was hit and miss at best. Most families with Kindergartners gave up.

There are holes in our systems that were glaring, and we as a country were caught with our privilege blinders on. 

There are still glaring holes, and we as a society don't seem to be all that keen to deal with them. Well, that discussion is for another post.

Needless to say, the kids who struggled with connectivity have a whole other set of problems to deal with.

The COVID kids are going to have many hurdles in their future. I wonder how we are going to deal with this as they matriculate.

As for me?

Well, my performance has changed a bit. I am leaning in and letting the kids tell me what they need. How much interaction? How much discussion? What stories do they need?

I learn with every show.

There are some things that haven't changed. 

At the end of the story set I hear these comments 

Kid - You're not a storyteller, you are a comedian!

Kid - You are the best storyteller in the whole world

Kid - You're going to be my new background

Kid - I've also been to  - Whatever state, country, or place I mentioned in the storytelling

And there is the hugging. 

I am getting them from kids of all ages...even fifth graders, middle school kids, and high school students. They all want physical contact. Even some of the adults are hugging me. That's new.

Qutoes from adults -

Adult - Wow. I have never seen them that focused

Adult - You really held their attention

Adult - i think I enjoyed that more than the kids!

Adult - I never expected them to sit that long

Adult - They were participating and everything

Adult - You're really good at this!

Adult - Thank you! We needed this.

Adult - I can't believe the Pre-K stayed the entire time

I am enjoying the work. I know that the stories are needed as kids and adults try to figure out how to go forward into our next normal. All of us have been changed by the last few years. 

My stories have a different rhythm. I am looking for different kinds of participation. I am letting the audience resculpt the tales so that they can get what they need.

We are all recovering. One story at a time.

Happy Telling!

Point of Focus or POF: What Is It? How Do You Use It in Storytelling?

Antonio Rocha

One of the most fascinating things about talking shop with storytellers is learning how they do what they do and why they do it. A couple of years ago, Antonio Rocha and I were talking about Focal Points or Points of Focus if you are so inclined.

Focal Points refer to creating objects, characters, and places in space during a performance by giving an audience visual or vocal cues as to where objects or characters are located in the story.

For instance, if you have a mother and son, the son character might turn his head and upper torso to the right and lift his chin to look up at his mother when he speaks to her. The mother turns left and lowers her head when she speaks to her son. 

Another example would be if all of the characters are referring to a particular object like the moon, or a mountain and whenever they refer to that thing, they point to it.  

I have learned over the years not to make that point of focus somewhere behind the audience because audiences of all ages who completely understand that they are not in a palace, jungle, or your living room will automatically turn around and look behind them if you point to something out of their view. 

Anyway, the storyteller establishes the physical presence and autonomy of each character or thing. Audiences track this movement or plaement, and whenever they see the storyteller move their head to engage someone in the story, or point to a specific thing they know what is being referred to, who is speaking, and to whom they are speaking.

This is a great way to help audiences visualize what is happening. 

This is also a skill you learn when you are participating in forensics...no, I am not talking about dissecting bodies or finding biological clues at crime scenes, but the performative speaking competitions I loved so much in high school.

I participated in Original Interpretation and Humorous Interpretation. I was also on the debate team. (I know, shocking!) 

In Humorous Interpretation, you choose a scene out of a play that has multiple characters, and you have to do all of the parts. One of the skills necessary to pull this off is to choose focal points for each character so that you maintain the character's voice and physicality as you move from one person to another over the course of the scene.

 Antonio definitely uses focal points in his story when he has two characters discussing something. If you get a chance to see him, be on the lookout for this very effective technique.

After that discussion, it made me think about how I use POF in my stories. When I first started storytelling, I know that I did a great deal of POF work, and I even taught it in workshops. It has been years since I focused on it in my own work.

There is a reason for this.

After a technique becomes second nature and it is just part of what you do, you don't necessarily think about it. This is why it is hard for some people to articulate how they do what they do. it is just second nature. It doesn't have a vocabulary or a process they identify. It is just what they do!

My discussion with Antonio brought the whole idea of POF raging back at me and caused me to reexamine my current work. I had a feeling that there was some Point of Focus stuff happening, but I had no idea what it looked like. 

Had I gotten exceedingly lazy and just wasn't doing it? 

Was I practicing it without thought. 

There was also the chance I was doing it unconsciously!

So, into performance evaluation mode I went!

I paid attention to what was happening in my stories and how or if I was using POF. I learned some really interesting things!

1. I am definitely using Point of Focus, but it has morphed into a very particular kind of participation technique. 

2. The audience has their own bias about who they want to be in the story and how they want to respond.

3. The audience uses their power of Point of Focus to help them navigate through the story

4. I have way more observation to do as I move through my repertoire!

I love story crafting!

It turns out that the thing that I like to say, that the audience is part of the performance, they affect the performance, and they transform the teller and the stories was the key to helping me look at Point of Focus and understand why I use it the way I do in lots of my stories.

Over time, audiences respond to some things and not others. The more you tell a story, the more it settles into a rhythm. What works stays, what doesn't falls by the wayside, and when you get reactions, you continue to do that thing. It changes the pace, language, and apparently, the Focal Points!

So, here is how these observations play out in a story.

1. Participatory Point of Focus - Instead of having the characters speak directly to each other - apparently, the audience has become one of the characters in some of my stories. This is particularly true of highly participatory stories. The "audience as character" technique works like this. 

When I am any other character, the Point of Focus is the audience. I point at them, look at them, and sweep the audience. When the character the audience inhabits speaks, my focus is much more general and not direct. I look slightly over their heads or am somehow unfocused. (It was pretty amazing to realize I was doing this)

This does not mean the audience only participates with that character, but I certainly treat them as if they are that character.

Example:

I am telling Epaminondus. The character that the audience embodies is the title character. At one point, he puts 2 pounds of butter on his head under his hat. His mother has told him to do this if he is bringing something home he might squish. As he walks home, the butter melts all over him.

Me - He got butter in his hair. I make a face and pretend to flick butter out of my hair.

Audience - (what typically happens is that even though I don't say anything, the audience says "EWWW!"

source

Me - He got butter down his face.

Audience - vocalizes his disgust

Me - He got butter down his neck.

Audience - vocalizes his disgust

In other words, there are parts of the tale where I say nothing and the audience speaks for the character without me even cueing them to do so. I was amused to discover that I have several stories like this. I hadn't considered why this happens.

When you have given the character over to the audience, they have the space to jump in and play.

This was not my idea. This is what audiences have done for so long, that I make space in the story for them to do it.

2. The Audience Bias - I have learned that based on the way I craft my stories -audiences have picked which characters they want to become! 

I thought I had been the one choosing who they become and how they move through my stories, but I can now see that they have wrenched the focus out of my hands and decided for themselves who they want to be!

In Epaminondus, I start the story by teaching them the thing his momma says which is, "Epamiinondus, you ain't got the sense you was born with." There is an appropriate black woman neck maneuver that goes with this. It is always fun to watch kids and adults try to move their heads back and forth and then side to side. Some people discover a new skill, and some have never in their lives tried such a thing and they cannot do it for love or money.

The storyteller might have seeded them with mom's physicality and cadences, but they much prefer to be Epmainondus!

3. Emotional Point of Focus - Giving the audience their own character means they have skin in the game when it comes to the outcome of the tale. It also means that they have the power to decide how they are going to navigate the story. 

In the case of Rumplestiltskin, the kids love the funny little guy who shows up and spins the straw to gold. He is funny, sounds silly, and has an odd look to him. He is also helping the miller's Daughter. It is only when he asks for the baby that they begin to question whether or not he is a good guy. 

He has his own sound and way of speaking. I can hear them repeating what he says to themselves as we go through the scenes with the miller's daughter. 

source

I understand why they like him. The miller is a liar who got his daughter into the mess. The king is selfish, and he adds to Anna's distress without any concern for her. Anna is miserable and trying to fix the damage that is being inflicted on her by the king and her father...who wouldn't want to hang out inside the only character who comes in with mirth and a peppy attitude?

Just the same, on the last day of the contest to guess his name, when the queen is finally told who he is, they are so excited to watch that grinning little man get in trouble that they use his sound to usher him back into the story with great gusto. 

An audience will turn on a character on a dime if he betrays them. Rumplestiltskin has to face the music in the last scene of that story, and the listeners are calling for his blood!

4. Working the Technique - This way of thinking about an audience is not new, but I have only been focusing on it for a couple of years - most of which have been Covid virtual years, so I haven't had an opportunity to do much fine-tuning. 

I am still discovering how I am using it, and now that I know what I'm seeing, I can make choices about how to shape it effectively. This work is always fascinating to me, and extremely interesting.

I can't wait to find out what I will learn next!

Happy Telling!