Storytelling Starters ~ Without Words
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.
Without words – the workshop technique
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.
Try them:
Try out these techniques if you can. When Karen and I met up this week, we talked about what a sense of discovery they used to bring to the adults who came to our Drill Hall workshops.
But is there time for them in schools these days? Now there’s a question. Michael Gove would probably have apoplexy at the thought that they could make a difference to children’s thinking and writing. Come to think of it, he might also have problems about children studying Romeo and Juliet if he knew where it came from. Based on a French translation of an Italian tale, can it be regarded as a ‘British’ story? It just goes to show that you can’t stop a good story from spreading. Nor can you stop it from having an impact, words or no words, when it’s well told.
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Tags: ballet, Drill Hall, Romeo and Juliet, Voice Jazz