What is a Storyteller?
A Storyteller is someone who tells a story.
They don`t read from a book or recite a script they`ve learned.
They know each story they tell like the back of their hand and can tell it in several different ways.
With each telling they can emphasise particular aspects, draw out particular themes, highlight topicalities, and as they do so they draw in every member of their audience as if the show was just for them. It`s a rare skill, and until you witness it for yourself you simply don`t know what you`re missing.
A storytelling performance is one of the most immediate and vital live performances you`ll ever witness.
Where does storytelling come from?
Storytelling is probably the original performing art.
The earliest human beings evolved about 70000 years ago and lived in huge, complex networks of underground caves that provided warmth, shelter and protection. Apart from eating, sleeping and reproducing what did they do down there?
We know they drew and painted. What`s striking about what they did is not just the quality of the drawing but also the use of materials to provide shade and colour. These were imaginative, resourceful people who developed technologies from the things they found around them in ways that we probably wouldn`t be able to now.
It`s a fair assumption that they developed games to keep themselves and their children amused, and they certainly developed language. And once you`ve developed language past the neccessary elements of communication - expressions of physical need, warning, emotions - what else do you use language for? To contemplate, to speculate, to relate and recreate experiences..... to entertain. From accounts of experiences (on the last hunting trip, for example) the story developed, and those who did it particularly well developed the art of the story and became the first storytellers.
Why do we need storytellers?
We need Storytellers now more than ever. Especially for children.
In an age where children are bombarded with visual imagery right from birth we are losing the ability to actually listen. Research has shown that when children watch a video, for example, they are watching but not listening: information contained in the soundtrack but not reinforced visually is not picked up. Children are increasingly only able to learn from what they see.
Leaving aside the problems this causes for educators with children who have next to no listening skills, this has disastrous implications for the human race and we need to do something about it quickly!
Getting children to listen to stories is the best way to start.