The Storyteller's Toolkit: THE EYES

The Storyteller's Toolkit is a simple way to talk about the elements that storyteller's use to present a story.  These do not include puppets, props, costumes or anything extraneous.  You can certainly use all of those things as a storyteller, but they are not standard tools in the toolkit.  




The basics in the toolkit are as follows.

Voice:  If you missed this post, just click here.

Eyes:

Face:  If you missed this pos, just click here.

Hands:  If you missed the post, just click here.

Body:  If you missed the post, just click here


Easy enough.  In keeping with my new policy about blog entries.  We will deal with each of these one at a time.  Today's selection deals with the eyes.

Using the elements in the toolkit is what separates folks who just get up and tell a story, from a crafted tale performed for an audience.

I spent the last two hours jumping around the web reading articles about eye contact.  So, for starters, I will link over to some of the ones I found most useful.

This article was written by Debbie Dunn and it gives reasons why eye contact is important.

This post is from Wheresmyquarter.blogspot.com.  It has tips about effective use of eye contact.  The blog is written by Sean Buvala. 

Here are some useful tips from a site called Opencolleges.edu.au

Here is some parental training on using eye contact when telling or communicating with small children.

And, just because I thought it was interesting, here is a way to use eye contact on an interpersonal level.

Lastly, because everyone's got a point of view, here is an article that says that eye contact is not always a good thing.  Though, because of the way storytellers make eye contact, this doesn't really relate to us.  I still thought it was interesting.

The upshot is that there are lots and lots of articles about eye contact.  Everyone knows it is important.  You can use it to convince your audience of your point of view, psyche your audience into not realizing how nervous you are, show sincerity, connect with them, and on and on in an endless series of very good, solid advice.

The thing to understand about your eyes as a storyteller is that eye contact is just the very beginning of what you can do with them.  Unless you are working with an audience that has impaired vision, you can use your eyes to control your audience.  Some storytellers stumble on this mechanism without being conscious of what they are doing, but others figure it out and use it to its full potential.   

Here is a clip of the brilliant Diane Ferlatte making an audience jump through hoops.  Watch her eyes.

Your eyes have lots of power.  They are a perfect tool for keeping and guiding an audience.

Uses:

1.  Create character.  Your eyes give the audience cues as to who is speaking.  Notice how Diane's eyes change when she drops into Eve, The Lord, and Adam.

2.  Cue audience participation.  Your eyes can let an audience know that something is expected of them.  Diane does this right at the onset of the story.

3. Comment on the the story.  When you are commenting on the tale, your eyes can let the audience know you are speaking directly to them out of story.  Diane lets the audience know her feelings about the whole 'unlucky' Friday.  Asides are also accomplished this way.

4.  Create atmosphere.  When you want to make the story scary, intense, light, silly, or you wish to change the current feel, your eyes can do that.  Open them, close them, narrow them, look form side to side, all of these things are typical things all people do with their eyes.  Whenever you make a choice to change the wideness of your eyes, it will set off a kinesthetic response in your audience.  They will know what is happening with that character because they know how their eyes feel when they are doing certain things.

5.  Warn your audience.  This is especially true for little kids.  Your eyes can give them a head's up if there is going to be something scary.

6.  Humor.  Your eyes can lighten an otherwise intense situation.  When Adam looks around to point out they haven't got any neighbors, we get to laugh at at a situation that is clearly about to escalate.

7.  Filling in the pauses.  Just because you are silent doesn't mean nothing is happening.  Your eyes can let the audience see what is about to happen.  They can also give off false clues so that you can spring something that is either funny or scary.  You can also let a character in the tale comment on the situation at hand with your eyes.

8.  Be wary!  With young audiences, if you cement the world of the story in their minds, and then you look off at a distant point and announce you see something, most of them will turn around and look in the direction you are looking.  It is funny, but a bit annoying if it disrupts the flow of the story!

I am certain you can think of many more ways to use your eyes for specific purposes during a tale, but these are what I consider the basics.

I would like to point out that I did not say that this was easy, but it can enhance your stories if you are willing to give it a try!



Happy Telling!

The Storyteller's Tool Kit: THE VOICE

The Storyteller's Toolkit is a simple way to talk about the elements that storyteller's use to present a story.  These do not include puppets, props, costumes or anything extraneous.  You can certainly use all of those things as a storyteller, but they are not standard tools in the toolkit.




The basics in the toolkit are as follows.

Voice:

Eyes:  If you missed the post, click here.

Face:  If you missed this pos, just click here.

Hands:  If you missed the post, click here.

Body:  If you missed the post, just click here


Easy enough.  In keeping with my new policy about blog entries.  We will deal with each of these one at a time.  Today's selection deals with voice.

Whether you are signing, speaking, singing, or using sound effects, your voice is an important part of the tale.  Not just the speaking element, but how you use your voice, and how you maintain vocal health.

Earlier this year I did a blog about the care and feeding of the voice.
Here are some other links about taking care of your voice.
Diane Bradon
Doug Lipman
Beth Lawrence


As a storyteller, I use lots of sound effects, character voices, and non-pedestrian sounds to convey my stories.  This is not necessary.  You can use lots of sound effects or none at all.  The choice must be yours.  Do not let someone pressure you to do something that makes you uncomfortable.  If you are uncomfortable, the audience will be uncomfortable.  Here is a clip of me telling 'The Monkey's Heart', a very vocal heavy story.







That clip is obviously an extreme example of putting sounds and voices into your stories, but there is no need to go that far to create a fun piece of storytelling.

Whether you use sound effects or not, there are some things you can definitely do to help your voice work with your stories.

1.  Pace

The flow at which your stories land on your audience can sweep them along, or hold them spell bound on the edge of their seats.    Play with the rate of speech to control the story and take the audience on a wild ride.

2.  Rhythm.

Find places to give your stories a rhythm.  The rhythm will set off a signal for your audience, and give them something to listen for.  It also allows you to build in some laughs or relief for the listeners.

3.  Volume.

Look for places to control how loud or soft your stories fall.  Draw your audience in with softer tones, hit them with power when you want them holding onto their seats.  Use your volume to  take your audience into the heart of your tale.

4.  Sounds.

Sounds help fill in background and build images that fill out your tales and give them textures.  Sounds don't have to be exotic.  It can be as simple as whistling into the mic, making the sound of the wind, sighing.  Do what you can.

5.  Pitch.

You can easily create character choices by simply changing the pitch of your voice.  Play with your voice and see what sorts of pitches you can easily make.

6.  The Pause.

Pinter knew what he was doing when he wrote those fantastic pauses.  Pausing allows an audience to catch on, consider what just happened, predict what is going to happen next, or laugh, scream, wiggle, or whatever they need to do.  They can also be used for comic relief, or to enhance suspense.

Remember:  DON'T EVER DO SOMETHING THAT HURTS YOUR VOICE!

There are lots of articles about the best way to find out who you are and what to do with your voice.  Here are a few if you really want to get into it.

Rachel Hedman
Anne Glover
Effective storytelling:  A Manual for Beginners

There are plenty of resources if you want to get ideas about using your storytelling voice.  Have fun, play with your voice, make sure you maintain its health, and figure out ways to challenge yourself.  Playing with stories can be lots of fun.  Discovering new ways to make your point of view and voice shine is exciting.

Empower yourself....Empower your listeners.

Happy Telling!

Effective Audience Husbandry in Storytelling.

   

One of the best literary examples I have ever seen about how a speaker effects an audience was written by Isaac Asimov in Robots and Empire.  The scene involves a gorgeous, reclusive one hundred and fifty year old woman from space, a mind reading robot, and settlers on one of the earliest human colonized planets in the universe.  It's a good read.  Now, on to the subject at hand!



  The Audience is yours to command as a storyteller.  Storytelling gives us the power to mold it, shape it, play with it, use it, or consider it part of the furniture, however, if you think of the audience as part of the furniture...you are neglecting one of the most important parts of your work.  Storytelling, as I like to tell adults in intergenerational audiences, is not a spectator sport.


Many of us deal with young audiences and their antics.  They talk to you, yell at the characters, tell you that you are doing things wrong, demand answers to their questions, and inevitably, if you are at this long enough, some kid will want to know if your stories are 'real' or 'true'.

We also deal with intergenerational audiences.  Grandparents, parents, progeny and random folks from every age and any walk of life can all be in the same audience getting the same stories.  We have to figure out how to talk to all of them.  Mary Morgan Smith has a wonderful rundown on building an intergenerational audience.

There are many ways to approach an audience, and if you jump around on the web, you discover that there are lots and lots of people using storytelling to 'win' an audience.  I tend to believe that you can lose an audience, and you can gain it back, but I'm not certain that as a storyteller you win an audience.  I feel like most of them were won when they showed up, because, let's be honest, folks who come to storytelling typically want to hear stories.  They are already yours.  The few folks who have been dragged there have no idea what they are about to see, and tend to be pleasantly surprised as their expectations were extremely low or nonexistent!  So, I don't think about 'winning' an audience so much as keeping one.  I seem to be in the minority about this, but who knows, maybe us 'keepers' are just not as vocal as the 'winners'.  That doesn't mean you never have to win an audience, its just that for the most part I don't think about it that way.

Winning the war of the audience is something that lots and lots of folks talk about when discussing an audience.  There are methods chronicled all over the web on the best way to win them.  There are also lots of articles about the power of an audience which is, presumably, why it is important to win them.  I've also seen great pieces on how we, as the center of an audience's power can be changed.


Then, we come to the places in our society where people use the word 'storyteller' to mean all sorts of things except person or persons in front of a live audience.  In these scenarios, folks who don't do live performance, but use other mediums besides themselves to tell stories, share the secrets of using social media, print, and video to expand the way people consume their products.  This sort of 'winning the audience' is completely monetary...and there isn't a thing wrong with that!  People who do this kind of 'storytelling' are much more likely to connect with Orson Welles in the below clip.


 

In the world of marketing and media, storytelling is used as a strategy for holding an audience long enough so that you can sell them something.  Lots and lots of corporate entities employ storytelling as a practice, and they want their sales force, managers, and employees to learn how to tell a good tale.

What makes the live performing storyteller different?

What is it we do with an audience that is different from a comedian, theatre troupe, author, television personality, marketing analyst, or public speaker?  The answer is simple.  The stories we tell are not about distracting an audience.  We are not trying to get them to do anything except sit and listen to the tale.  We are trying to engage and live in whatever truth the audience is living in at that moment.  We meet the audience where they are, and between us, we decide where we are going.

One of my favorite tales to tell to K - 2 and intergenerational audiences is Why Mosquitos Buzz in People's Ears.  My lion has two problems.  He has a bad memory, and he is rude.  I warn the audience about the lion's rudeness because they need to help the lion, but he is going to be less than gracious about the whole thing.  As the lion attempts to sort out the mess that has caused Mother Owl to refuse to call the sun, he gets the order of the problem and the animals who were responsible completely confused.  At some point in the tale, he asks the audience to clarify the order.  He demands to know if the 'crocodile frightened the antelope'.  The audience yells no.  He continues, asking if several other types of animals frightened the antelope.  The audience continues to yell no.  He demands to know who frightened the antelope.  The audience informs him that the antelope isn't even in the story, nobody frightened it, and he is completely wrong.  At which point, the lion demands to know why the audience keeps bringing up the antelope if there isn't one in the story.

The reactions I get as the lion are handled by the lion, and I, the storyteller, don't show up again except to segue between the lion's bouts of ill temper and the narration that sets up the other bits of audience participation.  Like a comedian, I have to be prepared to deal with whatever the audience throws at me. Like an improv group, I need to be able to go with the audience's ideas and incorporate them into the tale.  Like a theatre group, I have to be able to keep track of the tale and produce the prearranged verbiage to move the story forward.  Like a sales person, I have to gauge what is going on with the audience and see if they are 'buying' into the tale, and if they are not, I have to employ the storyteller's toolkit to get them to come along with me.  What is the storyteller's toolkit?  Well, I just jumped around on the web and couldn't find what I am talking about, so apparently that's what I'll be blogging about next week.  (sigh).

As a live performer, the audience juices you.  They make you feel powerful, important, strong, and in control.  Because they give you so much, you, as the storyteller, have responsibilities to the audience.  You have to take them on a journey, and you have to deposit them in a place that allows them to leave you having been on that journey.  You owe them the satisfaction of that trip.

I have written a number of entries about The sorts of material that tends to be successful for me for various audiences.  I've dealt with the K - 2 pre reading skills of visualization, prediction, and scope and sequence.  I've discussed telling to 3 - 5 graders and sixth grade, and the three levels of language employed during storytelling.  All of this information is the place I begin when preparing for a show. Once I stand in front of an audience it is my job to find them wherever they are, and take them wherever they will let me.

Storytellers lead an audience and are led by them.  Whether they buy something from me or not when they leave the show, I hope they are satisfied, and their brains are full to bursting!

Happy Telling!

A New Day Dawns

I just went to school.  Karen Langford Chace just put me through my paces.  I think it is time to say out loud, unequivocally that I am now officially sort of schooled on this blogging business!

From learning about hyperlinking, to relating back to other posts on my blog, to using the 'Labels' section on my gadget box (which I knew existed but had no idea what it was for), to how to embed videos from Youtube on my page.




Here I am performing at Charleston Tells!

I also learned that my posts are way, way too long and I need to add more pictures.  Well, that just means I'll write long blog posts, break them up into series, and go at it like that....I think.  Who knows?

Not only that, apparently, it is time I actually made a point of sharing these blog posts with people other than the folks who drop in from Facebook.  Okay.

So, terrified that I am not up to it, but determined to join the 21st Century, I am jumping in with both feet!

I think, it is just possible I am ready to become a grown up storytelling blogger!

Happy Telling Blogging!

The Story We Tell About Our Past - Slavery In America

I am not allowed to read politics at various points in the year because I get so steamed under the collar that I become slightly depressed.  Sure, there are some wonderful things happening, but lots of times I stand in absolute shock and fury at what is passing for governance.

Sometimes, however, even when I stay away from politics, I run across things that just blow my mind.

Take this morning.  I was looking at reviews of movies and reading some opinion pieces when I came across this piece in the Washington Post.  It was written by a fellow who is an older gentleman.  He was talking about the movie, 12 Days a Slave.  He said he had no idea that slavery in America was such a bad thing.  He'd always been taught that, yes, it was evil, and yes, it was bad, but most slaves rather enjoyed being taken care of and white folks were rather benign and gentle with their charges.

I read the article in shock.  How is it possible to go through this world, live in this country, and go through elementary or high school and not know the plight of African Americans?  I really thought everyone knew, but people just didn't want to talk about it.

That's when I thought about all of the things I know to be true about the stories we tell ourselves.  We live in a country where our stories have a cascading effect on how we view things.

Example:  We live in a country blessed by God.  We live in a free country.  We live in a prosperous country.

If you take these statements and don't dissect them, but make them the basis of your story of this country, there are some things that will not make sense in your story.

For example, right now, there is a huge push to disenfranchise the poor.  Well, we live in a free country that is prosperous.  If you are poor, clearly it is your fault.  Get out there and stop being so poor and you will be good Americans.  End of story.

We live in a country blessed by God.  The reason why we are having problems in this country is not because our economic policies are out of whack, it is because God is mad our social policies are out of whack, so ban all things that have to do with women's health, and stop couples of the same gender.  Then, God will bless us and we will be fine.  End of story.

We live in a free country.  Big business should be able to do whatever it likes, free enterprise should not be regulated, gun ownership should not be regulated, energy companies should not be regulated.  If we got rid of all of these onerous regulations, everything would work better because things would be free to work.  End of story.

America is land of the brave home of the free.  We are blessed by god and we are prosperous.  Clearly slavery must have been a kind of relationship that was not nearly as bad as some of those black people claim.  I've heard accounts that black folks rather liked slavery and that it made their lives easier.  Most slave owners couldn't have been that bad, I mean, they were Americans, after all, and Americans are the best people in the world.  End of story.

One of the things that becomes true when we simplify our stories for the sake of our simple plot lines, is that we lose track of why we actually think the things we think.  For instance, where on earth did the stories of happy slaves originate?  I know this is going to be hard to believe, but lots white people wrote those stories after the Civil War.

Why would such information become part of our country?  Well, after the Civil War, there was some need to put the country back together.  How could we build anew if part of our country felt as if it had been defeated?  How could we go back to being one nation if we had just gone through bloody years with neighbors killing neighbors and brother killing brother?  Well, the answer was simple at the time.

The southern states got to define the Civil War.

The first attempts at this were to claim that slavery wasn't such a terrible thing and that now that blacks were free, they weren't up to the task mentally.  They were still a lesser race, despite having freedom they didn't know what to do with.

This attempt to make slavery look benign didn't go well at the time.  Some white folks were content that this was so, but there were too many black people who'd just gotten out of slavery, and they knew better.  Not only that, they were starting to get their own voice.  The stories they told completely undermined the idea that their lives had been sweet and jolly.  Nobody much bought the idea of happy slaves right after the Civil War, but here, in 2013, there are people who choose to believe this because it is easier than facing the horror of what actually happened.

The next, and ultimately successful push was to define the Civil War as a war of State's Rights.  Slavery, according to this new view, was not even a part of this.  Slavery just happened to be going on at the time, but the secession had nothing to do with it.  It was just about states asserting their right not to bow to a tyrannical government.  This campaign was successful, and to this day, in the south, you still get  people teaching this much more bland, less horrific version of the main reason for the civil war.

If you read the Constitution of the Confederate States, what you will notice is that it is almost word for word an exact copy of the Constitution of the United States of America.  They do not quibble with anything in the North except for when it comes to slaves.  The only things they changed of any note, were articles about the right to forever keep all folks of African ancestry enslaved.  They make a point of not only saying slaves can't ever be free under any circumstances, but that there is no place a slave could go and be free.  Once human property, always human property.  So, it seems the only tyrannical thing the North was doing was allowing for slaves to be free.

When I come across articles like the one from the Post where someone is expressing shock that African Americans suffered generational systemic abuse at the hands of slaveholders, I am always a bit outraged that this should be so.

"Have we learned nothing from history?"  I demand of the universe.

The answer, of course, is not really.  We only learn from the stories we hear and the stories we believe. That's why we have holocaust deniers.  That's why people refuse to believe poverty and hunger are as big a problem in our country as they are.  That's why people don't want to fund public education.  That's why people think we are a Christian Nation.  That's why people don't understand our current state of race relations in this country.

The history we often teach and hold dear has nothing to do with what happened.  Because we don't know what happened, we don't understand the world we see around us.  Because we don't understand the world we see around us, we make up reasons for what we see that have nothing to do with the basis of the problem.  We attempt to solve the problems based on our impressions of what we think is happening instead of what actually happened.  We fail  Then, we blame the failure on something that has nothing to do with the problem at hand.

If only we actually knew our own stories.  If only we were willing to face our own truths, dark as they may be.  If only the past didn't inform the future.

The cultures at breaking point know the truth of all of this.  If we lose our stories, we lose our way.  It is past time for us to begin to tell the truth about what happened here; even if it makes a whole section of our country look bad.  Until we face our truths, nothing can get better.

Biking Through Memories

I just got back from my morning ride.  I use this time for thought, rethinking prose, working off frustration, communing with nature, and planning my writing for the afternoon.

My brain was busily composing one of the chapters for the book, Gifted and Cursed: what we learned from parenting extreme learners, when I turned by the tennis courts in our local park.

There was an Asian lady getting a drink from the water fountain out front.  She stopped me and in very broken English asked me where I'd gotten my bike.  Much of what she wanted to convey she did through simple sign language.

I, in turn, told her I got it from the Bicycle Chain and gave her bare minimum instructions, using lots of mime.

She explained the bike was for her since her kids were old and gone, and once again, she used mostly sign language.  She asked how much the bike cost.

I told her and she wrote out the digits in her hand.  That was the last straw.

I asked, "Are you from South Korea?"

Her eyes went wide and she nodded vigorously.  "Yes!  Yes!  No Chinese!  Korean."

I told her I had grown up in South Korea.  I lived in Yongsan in Seoul near E-Tae-Won.

We commenced a spirited conversation that was eighty percent mime, and we understood each other very well.  She kept touching my arm and smiling.  I could have been eight years old in that moment.  Every time she spoke to her husband in Korean to explain what we were saying he'd grin ear to ear.  She told me their names, and was tickled pink that not only did I understand them the first time, but was able to say them back to her.

We stood there, talking with our whole bodies for five minutes.  She asked if I knew any Korean and I said hello and addressed them the way a Korean child would address an older lady and gentleman because that's all I know.  They didn't care, they seemed to love it.  They were grinning fit to beat the band and I felt like a proud child showing off a finger painting.

Before I rode away, I bowed respectfully to her husband, who returned the gesture, and I did the same for his wife.  They were still grinning as I rode home.

I loved growing up in Korea and that small brush with my childhood had me humming, smiling and just downright loving life even more than I had when I was crunching through the leaves earlier on my way to the shed.

On a nippy, bright fall morning a middle aged African American woman got a chance to travel backwards to her childhood, and bring a little bit of Seoul, Korea to two people on a long life journey.

The only thing that truly separates us is our false insistence that we are not connected.

Info about 2 Summer Reading Showcases

I've noticed that showcasing blogs don't seem to get much traffic.  Nevertheless, they are an important part of the business of being a storyteller.  Here are the two most recent I attended.

The first was for the the state of Delaware.  Delaware has 35 libraries in the entire state.  They have a nifty system.  The invite all the librarians to a showcase, and they have any performer who might want to present in a library in Delaware come to that one location and perform for all the librarians.  They have a chance to see everyone.  The librarians rate the performers and the state picks two people to send to each and every one of the libraries for the summer.  Individual libraries can hire performers the liked, but if you get to be one of the two picked, you have a guaranteed 35 gigs for summer reading.  not bad.

This was my first year.  It was a great showcase.  It was well run.  The librarians were great.  I was chosen as one of the two performers for the entire summer.  Well worth the trip.

I will post the info for 2014 when it is released.

The second showcase I attended was in Washington DC.  It was another library showcase.  They also have a rating system, but I have no idea if they book en masse with the city or if individual libraries have to book separately.  When I find out, I will post it here.

Look for showcases in your area, find out what the particulars of each showcase might be, and get into them.  It increases your exposure.

The Delaware showcase allotted 25 minutes.  That's a big hunk of time.

the Washington DC showcase allotted 15 minutes.  That's also a big hunk of time.

There was no need for tables with displays at either of these showcases.  They just wanted to see the performers.


Well worth it!

Happy Telling!