My storytelling life seems to go in cycles of intensity and the last two weeks have been the intense kind. I feel completely ‘storied-out.’ Was at Festival at the Edge (FatE) the weekend before last, which was amazing but strangely exhausting. I never thought listening to stories could be tiring, but I understand now why people say listening is a skill. Two and a half days of non-stop stories is a lot to listen to. And of course conversations with storytellers at the festival all centred around stories too. It was unlike the storytelling environments I’m used to. Whilst nearly all of the tellers I heard were excellent, the delivery mechanism was quite different. The main marquee was large, and the stage was hooked up to a PA system. The sessions I found most memorable and engaging were the ones in the smaller tents, with informal telling styles and participative elements. But this is no doubt a personal preference. Nevertheless, it was incredible to see so many tellers I had only heard about before, and I hope to return to FatE next year.
Last weekend was the Big Tent Festival in Fife where Blether Tay-gither had our own storytelling yurt (courtesy of Owen) and ran a full programme of storytelling sessions and workshops for two days. This was surprisingly less draining than FatE, partly because there was a range of different type of events at the festival but mainly because there were eight of us involved with the storytelling yurt. I didn’t really do too much in the way of storytelling, but helped out with craft stuff at the workshops and handed out flyers to folk to encourage them to come along to the yurt.
I did do a little bit of storytelling though. Our closing session each day was dubbed ‘Fairtrade stories’ and involved all the Blether ‘rainbow’ tellers. (The Big Tent weekend was the first official launch of the Blether Tay-gither logo and was proudly emblazoned onto polo-shirts, each a different colour, so that between us we were a rainbow of tellers. I was yellow.)
On Saturday we had a guest teller, Judy, who told stories throughout the day. She hosted the final ‘Fairtrade’ slot and after an opening story opened the floor to other tellers. Well, I say that, but in actual fact she asked the audience to choose the next teller. We had been expecting a range of ages in the storytelling yurt, but ended up with an audience almost exclusively composed of children. So Judy asked the children which colour storyteller they’d like to hear from next (out of red, yellow, green, pale blue, navy blue and purple). And what did they say? The brightest colour they had to choose from. Yellow.
My mind went in panic-mode. This wasn’t supposed to happen yet! The story I’d prepared was for more of an adult audience and I didn’t think would work. I drew inspiration from Blether and FatE and off-the-cuff asked Sheila if she would mind if I told a story that I’d heard her tell a couple of times and had heard Jan Blake tell at FatE the previous weekend. Jan’s version had a few rhymes and actions in it and I thought that could work well if I blended the two versions. I hadn’t read the story anywhere, nor told it before, or practised it, but figured I knew it pretty well. (I had paid particular attention to Jan’s version as I knew Sheila’s and wanted to compare the two.)
So, I got up and sat on the wooden storyteller chest at the top of the yurt and began.
The story was the one about the old woman who goes to visit her daughter at the other side of the forest. On her way through the forest she meets three animals, one-by-one, who all want to eat her but she persuades them to eat her on her return journey when she will be more plump. On the way home she climbs inside a pumpkin and rolls through the forest, past the hungry animals, all the way home.
It started well enough. (I suppose I should add that this was the first time that I’d told a story to children.) Anyway, they seemed to be into it ok. I did the whole, ‘ricky-ticky-tick, ricky-ticky-tat, here I come with my walking stick’ thing which everyone joined in with. I asked them what kind of nice food the old woman ate at her daughter’s house and got lots of suggestions.
The problem began when the old woman climbed inside the pumpkin and left her daughter’s home, rolling along the forest path.
‘And as she rolled she sang–’ I said confidently before pausing. I knew there was a little song to go with the rolling. (‘Here I come, here I come, in my pumpkin here I come.’) I remembered the words but not the tune. My mind was blank. Completely, utterly empty. I looked around helplessly. Lindsey caught my eye and started singing ‘rolling, rolling, rolling’. Robbie joined in, making up the tune with Lindsey on the spot, and soon everyone else joined in too, the tune sounding suspiciously more and more like ‘Rawhide’ as it progressed. I can only imagine that the reference was too out of date for the children. The song occurs three times, as the woman meets the three forest animals one by one again. Each time, ‘rolling, rolling, rolling’ was dutifully sung. And so the story ground its way painfully to the end. I was, well, I was a bit mortified really. But once I’d resumed my seat at the edge of the yurt, I thought how it was actually an incredibly positive experience. If I’d been in a situation like that by myself, as the only teller, I would have panicked even more. It was great to have the support of the group there, especially for an inexperienced teller like myself.
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