Each day in my email Inbox there arrives a posting from Wordsmith. This is an excellent web-site for anyone with a relish for words. Each week Wordsmith takes a different theme for the daily words that are chosen. This week’s were all related to creatures. One of the creatures was flea and the associated word was ‘puce’. (more…)
Have you ever visited Laugharne? Is so, you’ve surely walked along the shore of the estuary at the foot of the high walls of Laugharne castle and looked along towards the Boathouse where Dylan Thomas used to live.
Dylan Thomas is a wonderful poet and, rightly, the subject of lots of talk this year, the hundredth since his birth. The other night, I was reminded of the children who attended The Boathouse Project a few years ago. It was a week of workshops for all the top Juniors and Year 7s in the area with me and artist Catrin Webster.
The children showed great interest in Dylan Thomas’s work and also in Laugharne. Good stories and good art resulted. The other evening, talking about Dylan Thomas with friends, I was reminded of one of the stories. It was inspired by indignation at the amount of litter and dog-mess – dog-poo in children’s lingo – the children had noticed along the foreshore when we were collect impressions on what I call a Memory Walk.
Here’s the story. I can’t remember what its creators called it. I’m entitling it A Warning to All Litter-Droppers. (more…)
Last Thursday evening, I went to see the English National Ballet in a performance of Romeo and Juliet. The Royal Albert Hall was the venue and the fact that the performance was in the round, not on the normal proscenium-arch stage, made a fascinating difference. Lost were the usual sight-lines and symmetries but with such a large, free area for movement and wonderful enactment of the roles, there was huge intensity of emotion.
Here was storytelling without words. It brought out strongly the enmity between the two families, the Capulets and Montagues. It emphasised the desperate plight of the two young lovers.
The Romeo and the Juliet were unbelievably good. They showed all the freshness and joy of young love, its amazement at its own good fortune, its passion and ultimately heartbreak. At various points, diaphanous cloaks were used. As they swirled about, they looked a bit like the cloud in my photo.
Storytelling without words? It reminds me vividly of how much can be gained from a special workshop technique. With adults or children, after you’ve told a story, get them into groups of four or five and invite them to retell either the whole story or a part of it but without using words. OK – single words can be allowed if you like, but only as exclamations or as part of a rhythm. For of course there’s also what Karen Tovell and I used to call Voice Jazz where the emphasis is on retelling only using sounds.
Doing without words doesn’t half bring out the underlying currents, shapes and emotions of a story – the enmities, journeying, embracing, excluding, finding, losing … All find new strength of expression when there’s only movement or sound. It is as if wordlessness reveals a lot about the underlying meaning of words. (more…)
“The world is very beautiful and it’s very sad I will have to die.” So said the grandmother of José Saramago whose house on Lanzarote we recently went to see. The grandmother was very old when she said that to him and he was still a child. I feel I know what she meant for this week, down in Wales, the hedgerows, the sky, the bird-song, the bluebells – all have been so beautiful, I can’t bear the thought of ever leaving them.
Tears are close to laughter and they’ve both been present several times in recent days. Tears were there after the Memorial Service to our friend Simon Hoggart in which the whole gathered throng were kept constantly laughing by the many tributes to him, all in some way or other recalling his sense of humour.
Tears have been there too on hearing about the illness of a number of friends. Yet, as I said, tears and laughter often come close together. Two people have remarked on this to me in the last few days. One was speaking in general about storytelling when he said, “If you can get them laughing at the beginning, you can get them crying at the end.” Then a member of the Welsh class in St David’s which had invited me to go and talk to them about storytelling this last Wednesday made a similar point with a vivid personal recollection. In Botswana back in the mid-60s, he said, people in the place where he was living would gather every Friday evening beneath a very big tree (same tree each week) and they’d listen to the storyteller (same storyteller each week, a man who wore a jacket with many medals on it). At first, they’d be uproariously laughing. By the end, they’d often be weeping. (more…)
I once worked with a woman who’d been unable to find three minutes in one whole week to do the course homework I’d suggested. She was a busy mother. I understood.
Unexpectedly this week I’ve been taking time out. It’s been time to think, sleep, breathe, do not very much. In an odd kind of way, it leaves me (temporarily!) with nothing to say. I hope you understand.
See you next week. (more…)
“All tommorrow’s flowers are in the seeds of today.” Spelling mistake included, this was the thought on a hand-written sign in a florist’s shop I passed on Friday.
The thought kept jangling in my mind. Where had I come across a similar idea? Surely it was only a few days ago? Surely I could remember? Then, this morning just before sitting down to write this blog posting, I did.
“Life is funny sometimes – how small acorns of an idea grow into something so much more and take on a life of their own.”
The comment was in an email earlier this week from a teacher I’d worked with a few years ago. At that time, she took up storytelling with her class in a big way. It’s great to hear that evidently she has stuck with it. Obviously, it’s grown into something important for her.
Both comments made me remember a story.
Once there were two water pots. One was whole. One was slightly cracked. Each day, their owner, a farmer, would sling them over his donkey, one each side, to go and fetch water from the well.
On the way to the well every morning, the uncracked pot would mercilessly boast to the other. ‘I’ve got no cracks but you’re rubbish. I don’t know why our farmer doesn’t chuck you away.’
And so on…and on … Every day it was the same (and I think there are some people who are just as destructive in the way they put others down.)
In the end, the pot with the crack burst out to the farmer: ‘I can’t stand it any longer. I’m no use at all. You should throw me away. Who would want a pot that is cracked?’ (more…)
Happy Easter – and here’s my Easter gift to you: a Russian rhyming story about an egg. I put it into this blog for Easter 2012 but I think it’s worth repeating (with a repeating photograph too).
In grandmother’s shed
Lived a speckled hen.
On the day of my story, it laid an egg.
The egg rolled down
From shelf to shelf
Until in the end it found itself
In a little keg made of aspen wood
In a dusty corner where the donkey stood.
A mouse ran by too near the keg,
Wiggled his tail, and broke the egg!
At this great catastrophe
The farmyard donkey began to cry,
The fat old pig let out a sigh,
A startled chicken rose to fly;
The gateposts shrieked,All doors creaked,
The milk-churn leaked;
And the priest’s daughter,
The little girl in my story,
Carrying water
Broke her bucket.
All in a dither
She came to her mother
And said:
Mother, mother, have you heard the news?
In grandmother’s yard
Lives a speckled hen.
Today, she laid an egg;
The egg rolled downFrom shelf to shelf
Until in the end it found itself
In a little keg made of aspen wood
In the dusty corner where the donkey stood.
A mouse ran by too near the keg,
Wiggled his tail, and broke the egg!
At this great catastrophe
The little donkey began to cry,
The fat old pig let out a sigh,
A startled chicken rose to fly;
The gateposts shrieked,
All doors creaked,
The milk-churn leaked;
And I, the priest’s daughter,
The little girl in this story,Carrying water,
Broke my bucket.
When she heard this story,
The wife of the priest
Dropped her yeast
And seeing her dough fall to the floor
She headed straight
Through the churchyard gate
And said:
Husband, husband, have you heard the news?
In grandmother’s shed
Lives a speckled hen.
Today, she laid an egg;
The egg rolled downFrom shelf to shelf
Until in the end it found itself
In a little keg made of aspen wood
In the dusty corner where the donkey stood.
A mouse ran by too near the keg,
Wiggled his tail, and broke the egg!
At this great catastrophe
The little donkey
Began to cry,
The fat old pig let out a sigh,
A startled chicken rose to fly
The gateposts shrieked,
All doors creaked,
The milk-churn leaked;
And our dear daughter,The little girl in this story,
Carrying water,
Broke her bucket.
And I, your wife,
Dropped my dough to the floor!
When he heard all this,
The holy priest with a terrible look
Tore the pages out of his book
And scattered them on the floor.
And do you know what happened then?
The wind came and blew the pages across the farmyard into the river
And the river-waters carried them off
And that’s why I can’t tell you any more of the story.
Hooray!!! Now you can subscribe to my Blog. See below for what to do. What a pleasure this facility has now been sorted – all thanks to the ever-helpful Tim Howe. Comment, Warwick, Poems, Subscription – it’s been a week of good things.
A comment from a reader always feels good to get. Jo had been enjoying my recent series on Getting Participation. She loves creating stories with children. She describes sitting with a piece of material and allowing the children to choose any object around the room. ‘We decide where we are, the material for example could be blue and shiny, maybe we are at the bottom of the deep dark blue sea. Each child takes a turn describing what their object may be: a cotton reel becomes a pirate ship, the pencil is the mast, the ship has sunk, the button becomes the treasure …’ And so, as Jo points out, they end up with their own story.
On Wednesday evening, a hearteningly warm and engaged response came from the students on Hilary Minns’ excellent Storytelling Module at Warwick University. I’ve been going as guest storyteller to Hilary’s course for about ten years now. The students are all studying child development for a Foundation Degree. One of the stories I did with them was Little Bear on the Long Road. (The prop I always use for this story is on the right in a painting I made of him when I was in hospital four years ago.) On this visit, it was brilliant to meet the person responsible for setting up a similar course at Telford who had come along for the session. I believe, and have always said so, that such courses should be available nation-wide. (more…)
Once again, it’s the time of year to tell the Star Apple story. It’s one of those stories that can be infinitely adapted to suit your audience. I love it. I also love hearing (as I did on the recent occasion when I got that Lifetime Achievement Award) that one storyteller who’d come across the story on this Blog then told it with great effect to an audience and absolutely loved the response. My great thanks to Sal Tonge who first told it to me.
A little child (make it a boy or a girl) is always saying, ‘I’m bored’. The child’s mother has plenty of answers – ‘tidy your bedroom’, ‘do your homework’ or ‘go and play with your toys’ – but the child keeps coming back with the same complaint. Then one day (probably sometime about now!) the mother says, ‘Well, why not go and find a little green house with a chimney on top and a star inside.’
The child is suitably mystified. He or she goes and searches the toy box. There’s nothing that fits the description.
Then the child goes out to the street. Up and down the street he or she goes, peering at all the houses one by one in case one has turned green, gained a chimney and developed a star inside. No luck.
At that point, the child goes to call on Granny who lives next door. ‘Gran,’ says the child. ‘You know Mum?’ ‘Yes,’ says Gran in that strange way that adults do. ‘Well,’ says the child. ‘Mum’s gone made. She said I’ve got to find a little green house with a chimney on top and a star inside. And there isn’t one.’
‘Well,’ said Granny. ‘Have you looked really hard?’ ‘Yes,’ says the child. ‘And there isn’t one.’
Then Granny says, ‘Well, Let’s go in the kitchen and we’ll have a look there.’
In the kitchen, Granny takes a green apple out of the fruit bowl and says, ‘See, here’s a little green house. And look,’ she says, wiggling the stem, ‘it has a chimney on top.’
‘But it’s supposed to have a star inside,’ says the child. ‘Well, let’s have a look,’ says Granny.
So Gran picks up her knife (be careful, don’t leave the knife hanging around).
And when she cuts the apple in half (and when you do it, don’t cut downwards but across the middle), she reveals the star inside.
Try it and see. Any children you know will be amazed and delighted. In my experience, so will the adults. And that’s the end of the story except, of course, you could now cut up the apple and share it around.
Happy Christmas! Enjoy the magic. Enjoy the stars. And enjoy the prospect of a whole new year ahead.
P.S. I’ll be taking a holiday from my Blog over the next couple of weeks except perhaps for putting up a picture or two. (more…)
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat and it’s time to tell some good winter stories, the sort that give us the kinds of symbols we need at this time of the year. Light in the darkness. Kindness to others. The beauty of giving presents. Getting together and making good cheer.
So between now and Christmas, I’ll be doing what I usually do – reminding myself of some of the stories I’ve found it good to tell in the lead up to Christmas.
My story today is really about the power and comfort of light. It has no specific link to Christmas. Yet it feels as if it fits. For as my South African god-daughter noticed when she came here the first time – it was what made her feel the British winter was special – lights in the darkness are magical things. Candle-light, firelight, the sparkle and dazzle of Christmas lights in the trees – even the Oxford Street lights this year, lights within giant white snowballs, are enough to bring a sense of wonder and cheer.
So here it is, a Chinese story about a young man who gets lost in the darkness on his way home after finishing work late one very cold winter night. The young man is called Kuan Lo and my name for the story is The Path of Light.
It was very cold and very dark and very late when Kuan Lo started walking home. Worse still, when Kuan Lo was crossing the moor that he had to cross in order to get home, he suddenly realised he didn’t have a clue where he was. Somehow or other, he’d lost his way. Then, just as he was wondering what he could possibly do, he saw the flames of a fire ahead and from the same direction came the sound of laughing voices.
When Kuan Lo reached the fire, he saw a most surprising sight. Sitting very comfortably on the ground round the fire were a whole lot of big men. They looked just like wrestlers usually looked and Kuan Lo felt a little bit worried. What if they started to fight him?
Instead when the men saw him, they called out in the friendliest way. ‘Come and have a drink with us!’ So Kuan Lo sat down and at once they were all chatting and laughing. The men were extremely sympathetic when Kuan Lo said he was lost and then after a while, they said they’d like to show him a trick that they had. Kuan Lo wondered what they were going to do.
Well, each one of the wrestlers stood up – they were very big men with big, fat stomachs – and in an instant they were climbing on each other’s shoulders, one after the other, until they’d made a high tower of people. It seemed to reach up to the stars. Kuan Lo looked up at it in amazement. Then, oh dear, it started to wobble and suddenly the tower of people was falling. And it fell, but very slowly and gently, until it was lying flat on the ground.
But when Kuan Lo looked where the tower had fallen, he saw no people, just a long path of white light. At once, the path of white light began moving slowly, gradually, over the moor. Kuan Lo was amazed and started to follow. And do you know what? That path of white light took him all the way home. It didn’t seem to take long to get there and when Kuan Lo saw his own little house, he felt very glad and grateful. ‘Those wrestlers made a path of light and it’s brought me safely home,’ he said to himself as he opened his front door and stepped inside. ‘I’ll never forget them’. And he never did. (more…)
