Storytelling Workshop in Columbia

LeVerne and I attended the Panning for Gold Storytelling Workshop with Pat Feehan. Love that Pat! Pat always wonders what I'm doing there and I always say, "You can always learn something new!" Pat's take on storytelling, that is, telling a story without the book, without a net (as it were), is that anyone can do it. And she proceeds to prove it to us.
First we had to tell about ourselves and what we hoped to get out of the class. Next, we had to tell three facts but one of them had to be ... (shock! horror!) a fib! You have no idea how hard this is on me. I strive for accuracy as a matter of policy. How can I ... dare I use the "L" word? ... speak an untruth, worst of all, an untruth about myself? And then make it convincing? I nearly had a nervous breakdown. I am sooo bad at lying. (Eeek! I said the word!)
Next, we were to take a known story and tell it from a minor character's point of view. It was a story we already knew, but we were doing something different with it that required creativity on the spur of the moment. We were divided into teams for this and LeVerne and I picked the Henny Penny story. That's the one about the sky falling on the panicky chicken. We told it from the point of view of the acorn, whom I called Nutty Wutty and LeVerne called Wutty Nutty, which gives you an idea of how well we were going to collaborate on this. I told the first half and LeVerne finished it off, starting with Nutty Wutty (or whoever) crying out, "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" and finishing off, literally, by having a squirrel eat him. LeVerne is so cruel.
There were some really great stories that came out of these, and from individuals trying to wrestle a story to the ground by turns.
Next, Pat told a story and we had to retell it (Imitation, one of the ways of learning/telling stories), going around the room, each person contributing another part of the story. Thereby Pat proved that we could hear a story told once and tell it.
Last, we had lunchtime to learn a new (and preferably short) story to tell and be video'd, to watch and have critiqued later. Pat said this would be hard, not so much because of the video, but because we were performing in front of peers. As an example, she mentioned how stressed she was in the previous part of the class when she had to tell that story for us to learn ... and the Dean was sitting in on the class at that time. She kept hoping the Dean would leave and go do her work, but she stayed and stayed until finally she had to tell the story before we ran out of time and had to go to lunch.
This was quite the time-consuming class because it was rather large and each person was telling a story or a part of a story about 3 or 4 times. Despite this, the class went very, very fast. I suppose that's because we were wishing we had more time to learn before performing.
We each performed a story of our choosing that was video'd and then we watched it. Others were permitted to give their "appreciations" while Pat reserved the right to critique. She says you don't know what you are doing that's annoying or distracting until you see yourself on video. And what did I notice? I noticed that I need a facelift. It is really hard to look at yourself on video and not just cringe at how you look.
Coincidentally, I had been to Westview Middle School the day before to do a story for Teen Read week ... on video. I had read a portion of Richard Peck's A Long Way from Chicago last year and thought that would hold them, but they asked me to come back and this time maybe do something with puppets. Now they're getting pushy. sigh. So, I brought the puppets and shirt to do "Jack and the Three Sillies," a fairly long story that I have done before many times. I didn't even have to review it in my head. I don't get to see the videos, which is a mercy, I can tell you.
We learned the perils of live storytelling: upspeech (where your voice? keeps going up? like you're asking a question? but there's no question there?), saying "um" alot, flipping your hair. If you have any of these bad habits, you just need to be shown them and then when you are aware, you can start cutting down. "Oh! I've scratched my face again! I have to stop that. There! I did it again! I need to pay more attention. Don't do it ... don't do it ..." Eventually? you should be able? to stop it?
The room was filled with terrific storytellers. Their stories were really good and they were either already great tellers or Pat did a fantastic job in just five hours!
Pat said something about putting the videos in a podcast so we could be tortured all over again. If I can get the url for that, I'll post it here.