Is it just me? When I’m going on walks, I’m always childishly delighted when I spot a face or an animal shape in a rock or a tree. It’s like playing The Transformation Game, only in the landscape.

The Transformation Game

This storytelling game arose from my fondness for objects – plus the fact that, on a visit to Bruges, I’d acquired a double-lidded basket in a Sunday market. It became enormous fun to ply this basket with unusual objects, then play The Transformation Game with different suitable groups.

The Basic Plan:

As the facilitator, you first point out that you’ve got a double-lidded basket and that, inside, there are some interesting items.

Then you ask for a volunteer to come forward and choose which lid of the basket to open. Of course, both lids open onto the same inside but it’s a bit of fun to pretend that the choice is real.

Now you ask your volunteer to feel around in the basket and, not looking at what’s inside, to pull out an object of his or her choice. And of course, if it’s children you’re working with, they’re going to enjoy tittering about the possible things they might feel – a living snake or a real eye. Read the rest of this entry »

Got any storytelling games of your own to share? Please write in with your favourite. It would be great to hear about it. To me, storytelling games are invaluable – a vital part of the whole activity of storytelling and a fabulous way to get everyone relaxed. In my thirty years of storytelling, such examples as last week’s Desert Island became one of the strongest building blocks of my Storyworks approach. Here’s some reasons why:

• Storytelling games can be just the thing in a very wide variety of circumstances – with children in schools or community groups (parents learning about storytelling, adult with learning disabilities, elderly people in day centres, people getting together for a good time).
• They can be created (or recreated) to suit the themes of the stories to follow.
• They can allow everyone to participate at their own level.
• They give opportunity for individuals to express their own personalities, sharing their wit, humour and creativity in a totally unthreatening way.

In my Storyworks approach, (and I’m not talking here about the occasions when, as the storyteller, you’re being a performer in front of a sizeable audience), the storyteller is definitely NOT the be-all and the end-all and in NO WAY to be regarded as the only and most creative person in the room. The storyteller is the FACILITATOR, enabling the story or stories to become the centrepiece of the occasion and everyone present to share in the experience to the extent that they can and wish to do so.

Last week when I wrote about Desert Island, I said I’d talk this week about some of the variants it has spawned. Read the rest of this entry »

Desert Island is a marvellous and deceptively simple game that was developed by myself and storytelling colleague, Karen Tovell. Karen and I made it up for one of our famous Drill Hall workshops. These were monthly day-long workshops which began in 1986 and went on for 10 whole years, moving in latter years to the Holborn Centre for the Performing Arts.

We covered a great deal of ground in those workshops. An enormous number of stories got told both by ourselves and participants too. We also developed a huge number of exercises and activities that enabled people to explore these stories, discovering their hidden depths and using them as take-off points for creating new tales. (By the way, one person who used regularly to come to the workshops sent me a great email this week saying he still uses some of the ideas and routines we did there. Any more of you out there?) Read the rest of this entry »

Storytelling games help develop useful qualities in the storyteller. Quickness of mind; the power of a single word to change a story’s mood and direction; the fun of the unexpected – all these are exercised when you get going.

Some games are great for groups. More on that next week. Some can be like solitaire – good for playing on your own or maybe with one other. Hence this week’s item, The Insert Game.

I’ve only ever shared The Insert Game with friends before. The example I’ve created for this week’s blog involves a cat. (Not surprising since I love cats!) So my illustrations today are also of cats – one I spotted on a Pembrokeshire roof, the neighbours’ slinky gray, our own lovely black cat Minky and an exotic Brixton stray cat which we refer to as Big Balls (because that’s what he has).

The Insert Game: Background

I quite literally developed this game in a dream. Read the rest of this entry »

Games – what for?

Two nights ago, down here in Pembrokeshire, I went to a most powerful play. The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning has been written by young Welsh playwright, Tim Price, now starting to make a considerable name for his work. The play deals with the case of the US soldier currently in confinement and awaiting court martial for bringing a vast mass of military secrets to public knowledge via Wikileaks. Should Bradley Manning be punished or freed? Was he mentally dysfunctional and to be despised for his actions? Or was his whistleblowing – for instance on US army killings of Iraqi civilians – morally defensible and to be applauded in the cause of right thinking and right action?

What made Tim Price’s play so particularly powerful for me when I saw it is that it took place in the main school hall of Tasker Milward School in Haverfordwest. This is a place which Bradley Manning must have known well in his teenage years. After he was brought back from America by his Welsh mother following her split from his father, he was a pupil at Tasker Milward for several years before returning to the US and becoming a soldier. Tasker Milward is significant for me. My mother went to the original Taskers High School. I’ve done several big storytelling projects there. And  watching the play, I was in the company of a friend who actually taught Bradley Manning.

The production of The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning was by National Theatre Wales. The six young actors were brilliant. In every conceivable way – and it was a highly innovative, loud, inventive, multi-media production – they and the play were deeply engaging, obliging you to think on the spot about your views of people and of what is right and wrong.

War Games! They may seem a long way from Storytelling Games – except that they both make you THINK! I can only think that that’s a good thing.

Games: the benefits Read the rest of this entry »

I was scratching my head about this week’s blog. A piece of synchronicity gave me the answer.

An Easter Find

Layers of story

On one side of the synchronicity – synchronicities always have at least two sides! – is my native Pembrokeshire where I’m spending Easter. Once again, I’m reminded how the place is layered with stories like the geological strata of the land itself. One layer is the magical legends of the saints. There are memories of them everywhere especially in the names of places and the many little old churches. The stories of the saints themselves are an extraordinary combination of fact, medieval myth and spiritual inspiration.

The London Welsh Chorale

On the other side of the synchronicity is the London Welsh Chorale which is the choir I sing with in London. We’re currently learning an oratorio by the great Welsh composer, William Mathias. It’s an infrequently sung piece called St Teilo which we’ll be singing in our summer concert in St Giles, Cripplegate, in the Barbican, on Saturday 10 July.

Its subject, Teilo, was reputedly one of the two holy monks who accompanied David (subsequently Patron Saint of Wales) on the journey he is described as having made to the Holy Land to Jerusalem.

Well, a couple of days ago, I was looking through a beautiful booklet about Pembrokeshire churches, published in 1989, in which the paintings were made by my friend, John Knapp-Fisher.

As I perused this booklet, I suddenly made the connection. Of course! There’s a little church in this northern part of the county that is actually dedicated to St Teilo.

It’s in a notoriously hard-to-find village by the name of Llandeloy.

The church

So I went to look for the church again. Read the rest of this entry »

My Easter gift is an engaging Russian story-rhyme that I’m calling The Easter Egg. I hope you’ll like it and, between now and Easter, maybe share it with someone else. For me, it brings back some favourite memories.

For several years after it re-opened to the public, I was a kind of storyteller-in-residence at Somerset House on the Strand in London. At holiday-times, I’d do storytelling sessions on all kinds of themes. One theme was Somerset House itself: it abounds in historical tales. Another theme was gold and silver: Somerset House became the home of the Gilbert Collection of gold and silver treasures before this was moved to the V & A. Other themes were provided by the special big art exhibitions that were mounted at Somerset House. One I particularly remember was of Treasures from Russia. It gave me the reason and prompt for researching a repertoire of Russian tales that could relate to some of the marvellous objects that were on show.

Rare and beautiful egg-shaped boxes came up in several of these connections. So I was delighted when I succeeded in finding a Russian egg story to put in my rattle-bag of tales for telling at Somerset House.

Here it is. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly where I originally found it. No doubt in some old volume of Russian traditional tales. Which one exactly I don’t remember. (Note to self: ALWAYS keep a note of where you find a story. Years later, you’ll kick yourself if you don’t because by then you’ll have forgotten.)

The Easter Egg

This is a story about a little Russian girl who lived with her father and mother right next to her grandmother’s farm.

This little girl would often help her granny by feeding the animals or collecting the new-laid eggs.

One day just before Easter, her mother was making bread in the kitchen.

Her father, who was the local priest, was in church preparing his Easter service.

Then something terrible happened. Read the rest of this entry »

Reflecting on sound:

After attending two wonderful concerts over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reflecting on the power of sound. (Reflections again!) One of the concerts was Claudia Aurora, a Portuguese fado singer. The other was Tord Gustavsen, the Norwegian jazz pianist, with his amazing ensemble of saxophonist, drummer and double-bass player. Both concerts had great intensity of feeling and a powerful and associated sense of the musicians listening deeply to the sounds they were making.

Music has led me to thinking this week about the power – or should I say powers – of language.

Reflecting on language:

The varying powers of language come very much to the fore when you’re thinking about telling and writing. In last week’s blog I suggested that telling is often much more informal. It’s perfectly possible to recount a story to audiences of adults or children just in the same way you’d tell it to friends over supper.

Yet at its best, telling a story also means paying attention to the kind of language you’re choosing. So you want it to be informal? That’s fine. Formal or casual, using the present tense or the past tense, there are always choices to be made. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s frog time. During the week, I saw several in the garden – one in a bucket of water and one in an empty pot right next to the kitchen door. (I hope you like my portraits of them below.)

More frogs!

One evening during the week, another frog was spotted sitting on its haunches in our study, looking for all the world as if it wanted to talk. When and how it got into the study we had no idea. It was me who was deputed to be the one to remove it. So I performed the usual trick of fetching a plastic bowl, popping it suddenly over the frog, then sliding a piece of card underneath, thus temporarily trapping the frog inside. Out in the garden, it hopped quickly away.

Next day my email inbox included a message from the artist who runs the Drawing Club in my local park. This week’s session, she announced, would be at the pond where we could have fun drawing the frogs: ‘Always the best session of the year!’

So frogs became the theme of my week. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking a lot of late about the differences between telling and writing. Specifically I’ve been thinking about them in connection with personal tales. Here are some of my reflections – with a photo of some reflections to suit!

Personal tales

In storytelling, personal tales can play various different parts. They can be told in storytelling workshops where all kinds of ‘exercises’ can be based on them. They can be told in performance, perhaps as a kind of preamble to a bigger fictional tale. In Chinese storytelling traditions, I’ve read, this is a common technique.

But personal tales can also be told for their own sake and, in my recent thoughts about them, I’ve been considering some of the features that make them work in the telling. One way I decided to explore this was by consciously writing down some of the personal tales that I commonly tell either in my work or in personal life. I know this may seem very odd. Why bother to write down tales I normally tell, perhaps in conversation, sometimes in the course of a storytelling session? Well, doing so has made me newly aware of some of the distinguishing qualities of the spoken tale and how these have to change when you’re writing things down. Conversely, it has also made me understand from the opposite perspective what the storyteller has to learn to do when unpicking a written tale to make it work for a telling. Read the rest of this entry »