Storytelling & Authenticity IV - Joseph Sobol

Joseph Sobol - The Razor's Edge: The American Storytelling Movement in 2008
(reading from article published in Storytelling, Self, Society journal.)

Joseph's reference to the razor in the title was multi-layered, talking about the edge as that between amateur and professional, and storytelling both as an artform and as a social agent - in a utilitarian form.

It always seems a bit strange to me that (from what I've heard) traditional tales aren't really told by storytellers but have been sidelined in favour of autobiographical stories. Everything that Joseph said seemed to corroborate this, ie personal tales have superseded traditional folktales in USA. One of the issues upholding this is the idea of ownership - who owns the traditional tale? Can anyone tell it? I don't think that we have this kind of problem in Scotland, at least not on anything like that scale. All the storytellers I've met are keen to share stories and are all linked by their common love of stories.

From what Joseph was saying it seemed like the audience drove this trend from traditional to anecdotal, and he cited Donald Davis as an example, moving from traditional Appalachian folk tales, began telling autobiographical instead. I think my question here is - how important is the audience's request? Is it still storytelling or does it cross the line into stand-up? And, how important are the stories themselves? I think that one of the key roles of storytellers' is the ability to maintain and preserve a culture and heritage, whether that be Celtic myths or folk tales from around the world. I think that folk tales embody nuggets of culture, and even if they are taken out of context they provide a means for opening minds about alternative life values.