Small But Bold

by Julie Della Torre

Feeling small and vulnerable? 

Not so the tiny virus that is changing the way we live.

Not so the tiny mosses of the world who hang on and adapt in diversity… and thrive.

Not so the tiny characters of our folk and fairy tales who can show us how to live in the world and who, though small, can change the course of a story.

I have been reading Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The book is a mix of science and personal reflection.  Kimmerer explains the biology of these tiniest of plants and at the same time considers what they might teach us. It is a beautifully written book and it has prompted me to carry my magnifying glass on daily walks around the neighborhood to explore tree trunks and rock walls.  Kimmerer examines mosses in our environment, how they grow, reproduce, adapt, compete, soak up water and the myriad of ways they help keep the climate healthy. As I learned the attributes and characteristics of these amazing plants I began to think about stories. I couldn’t find any stories of moss but started mulling over all the small characters in folk literature. What can we learn from them?  Paula has been thinking and writing about metaphor and as I began connecting stories to qualities of mosses, I realized that this is yet another example of metaphor.

There are many small characters found in stories throughout the world. Think of the Tom Thumb tales (Tale Type 700 and 327B), the elves, some fairies, pixies, narnucks, and dwarves. There are mice, ants, hummingbirds, frogs, toads and gnats. There are even youngest brothers and sisters.  Some are helpful, some mischievous, many need to be appeased in some way.

We all start out tiny and helpless, dependent on adults, and remain so for a long time.  As adults we may at times feel small and helpless in the larger world. We may feel small and afraid facing big obstacles, facing death.  Let’s look to small things and see how they survive and flourish and come out on top.

One characteristic of mosses is how cleverly they adapt and evolve. The one thing moss needs to survive is water. Another is a bit of light, but water is crucial. Besides helping to make food, water is central in reproduction. Mosses can’t move. They cling to rocks, cliffs, tree bark and sidewalks.  “Evolution favors specialization avoiding competition and thus increasing the survival of the species.” (p.34) Mosses are very low to the surface and are not mobile.  How can they keep water from evaporating? How can they keep water to live?  How can they keep water to help sperm move to the female? In some species the male is shorter, closer to the surface where there is less evaporation which means more water. Mosses always live in colonies, their stems and leaves twisting and growing together to keep water longer and to help it move from one to another. They form a tiny aqueduct.

Our little heroes also have a hard time moving about.  But they are clever. Many figure out ways to hitch a ride. Some ride in horse’s ears, or on tails.  Look at many versions of Tom Thumb as well as ‘How the Brazilian Beetle Got its Beautiful Colors’ (Brazil). Thumbelina (HCA) is carried on the back of a sparrow and on a net pulled by butterflies. Thumbling (Germany)travels in a cow and in a fox.  It’s good to be small and light and clever.

In some of the stories the small may look so much alike that they can trick bigger foes. The family (community) of toads tricks Horse in Horse and Toad. (Haiti) The same trick is played on Bear by Turtle and his clan. (Iroquois) The wicked prince is brought down by a swarm of gnats in Andersen’s The Wicked Prince. And, Thumbelina needs her friends to save her from the dark places and bring her into the light. Being small, it is good to live in a community or family where you can rely on help.

Mosses are patient and they persevere. “They have a covenant with change. When the dew dries, or the rain is infrequent mosses play the waiting game.” (p. 37) Mosses just stop growing. Dried moss can be kept for years and revived by soaking in water and start growing again. Many of our small heroes persevere and are patient, waiting until the right age to set forth on their adventures. Some are mocked and ridiculed for years.

Some are impudent and sassy such as The Valiant Little Tailor (Germany), Hop ‘O My Thumb (England), and Hasan, Heroic Little Mouse Child (Turkey).

And some just never give up. Thumbling, swallowed by a horse and then a cow, “never lost courage.” The Brave Little Parrot (India) puts out a fire drop by drop. 

As previously noted, mosses live on the boundary area. They live in cracks of the sidewalk. They fill in the areas between big plants. They thrive on surfaces often overlooked. 

Some of our characters live in the boundary areas as well. Think of all the Rumplestiltskins. (Tale Type 500) And the mouse brides (Tale Type 402) even the small dolls such as in Vasalisa (Russia) and The Doll in the Grass. (Norway)

Being small makes it easy to hide, easy to overhear things. Hop ‘o My Thumb hides under the stool and overhears his parents plan to get rid of the children. Thumbling is so small he can hide in a mousehole or in a snail shell to escape danger.

Mosses are so important to our climate and habitats. They help keep the air clean and help cool the earth. When the land is destroyed mosses are the first plants to reappear. Many of our smallest characters show this helpfulness. Here I think of Mouse Woman (Haida) and all the times she comes to the aid of young women by using her wily cleverness. I think of The Elves and the Shoemaker (Germany) and all the ‘mouse brides.’ I think of the many Lille Thumbs who save their siblings and/or bring back treasures to the family.

Cheers to all our clever, persistent, brave and helpful small ones around the world.  

For more exploration look at the SurLaLune website (http://www.surlalunefairytales.com) and The Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series, Tom Thumb by Margaret Read MacDonald.

Riddle Stories With Mom

by Julie Pasqual

     

Julie Pasqual

As a daughter – I have A LOT to make up for!  While I was not a kid who did drugs, or landed up in jail, or any of that kind of thing – I was, and guess still am, the family rebel.  While my five siblings chose the road my parents laid out for them – Catholic High School; College; Grad School; steady, reliable jobs.  I went the opposite way  - public arts high school, no college, left the nest and started performing (with all the uncertainty that entails) at seventeen.  To say that my parents – my Mom in particular, were not concerned about my wellbeing at best, and furious at my choices at worst would be a HUGE understatement.  There were many battles, and times of tension between us, and many immature words to them, that I wish I could take back.                              

        But time, and maturity, has a way of bringing back together what would appear to be torn apart, and so I find myself so much in love with my Mom, that it fills my eyes with tears even to write this.  During this time of Covid-19 – my focus has been quite singular – keep my husband and my mother safe – it is behind every wash of my hands, and every squirt of Purell.  Perhaps it is because I lost time being a brat, that now I do not want this invisible poison to take the mother I have once again found.

        Mom is obviously elderly, so the lock down for her, really is DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOME!!  And this is hard – Mom has a schedule most twenty year olds could not keep up with – there is church, bible study, her beloved craft club – and she can’t do any of it.  Her back isn’t great, and her eyes are weak, but my Mom’s mind is as sharp as the proverbial tack – something she prides herself on, and something – although she never outright says this – she fears losing.  Every time she speaks of a friend who isn’t quite remembering as well as they used to – I can hear the nervousness in her voice.

       So, I began to think – what can I do?  My elder siblings have the getting of food to Mom, and the paying of bills, and delivery of medicines well in hand – what could I offer.  Stories!!  The first night of what I call the “Great Hunker Down” – I picked up the phone, and announced, “Mom, every night, I am going to read you a riddle story – and we’ll try to get the answer together.”  Mom gave a little “Hmph!” – a thing I have heard many times in my life – it says, “This is my crazy kid – but she means well!”

        “While Standing on One Foot” – is a wonderful book of Jewish riddle tales – and I took that as my source.  And here is the thing about my Mom – she is COMPETITIVE!!!  She was not one to let us kids win at a game!  I remember distinctly the first time one of us  - it was my brother Michael, actually beat Mom in Scrabble – we sat, withheld breath, until the last letter was down and erupted in joy!!!  He did it!  Mom smiled, too, she was glad he had won fair and square – but you can believe she beat him the next time!  So, having something to figure out, was right up her alley.  

      The first few nights, I would just call, and she would almost forget about the riddle de jour – but then after catching up with the craziness of this new world, Mom would say, “Okay – what’s my riddle?”  I love laying down the question, and then listening for her pause – thinking, and then her response – she is almost always right, or if not, she comes up with something better.  I laugh hard, and smile, and thank God that I have this time with her.

         There is no telling how long this “Hunker Down” will last, and I can only pray that my Mom remains untouched by this killer of virus, but no matter what happens these riddle story times will be moments I will treasure for the rest of my life.        

Channeling Our Inner Fool

by Paula Davidoff

Since we began our separate quarantines, my grandchildren and I have spent some hours telling and listening to stories in a virtual setting. Last week, I told them The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, a Russian folktale that begins like a three brothers tale, but gets rid of the two older, cleverer brothers very near the beginning of the story. After that, the tale follows the eponymous Fool as he acquires his flying ship and collects a series of helpers on his way toward his goal of winning the Tsar’s daughter to wife. 

When the story ended, Emma, who recently celebrated her tenth birthday, said, “I don’t get it. The fool doesn’t really seem foolish.” 

Children are brilliant. You tell them a long, complicated story and they hit at the crux as soon as it ends. My response to Emma’s remark wasn’t great. Socratic-aspiring grandmother that I am, I didn’t want to fill her up with my thoughts about her idea, so I just told her that her question was very insightful and that she should think about it some more. Not to be outdone by her older cousin, five-year-old Magnolia chimed in, “Next time you should tell us the story about Dummling.” 

Are everyone’s grandchildren as smart as mine?

Emma and Magnolia got me thinking about the archetype of The Fool, and I hope the thoughts that follow will open a conversation about the character. 

Before I told my grandkids The Fool of the World, I showed them The Fool in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck which portrays the character as a young traveler who seems about to step blithely off the edge of a cliff. In the picture, the Fool is looking skyward, and he seems either unaware or unconcerned that his next step will send him hurtling into a dangerous-looking unknown. The card (as long as it turns up right-side-up)  is usually interpreted in a reading as lucky and, I think, it’s a good representation of the Fool in folktales. 

As his story unfolds, we come to see that the Fool of the World is not, as Emma wisely noted, foolish. He’s different and he approaches life with a kind of innocence. He doesn’t complain when his mother sends him on his quest dressed in rags with a meal of dry bread for his journey. Instead, he sings “because the trees were green and there was a blue sky overhead.” He might represent the poet misunderstood by his community or the Grasshopper to society’s Ants. People don’t understand him, so they think he’s useless. But he has some skill or inner strength that enables him to obtain his goal. 

The character can’t, however, simply represent the poet because, as students of folktales know, the archetypes have universal appeal. And everyone, politicians as well as poets, Ants as well as Grasshoppers, should be able to identify with Fool. In reality, we are all at the edge of a precipice and have little power to control where life’s next step will land us. So, what can Fool teach us?

The Dummling story Magnolia referred to is Grimms’ The Three Feathers. In this story, a king sets tasks for his three sons in order to determine which of them deserves to inherit the kingdom. To set them on their way, the king steps outside the castle door and blows three feathers into the air. Two of the feathers fly off in different directions, but the third simply blows straight up and floats back down to the ground. The two clever brothers run off after the feathers that are going somewhere, leaving Dummling standing right where he started, staring down at the feather which landed at his feet. 

Then, looking down, he discovers a door. The door has always been there. He and his brothers must have trod countless times upon it as they came and went from the castle, but only now, as he is forced to look down, does Dummling see it. The door leads to an underground chamber, so Dummling must not only closely examine the surface of the familiar, he must enter it, go down deep to find the aspects of his nature that will make him a worthy king.

In the story of The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, God only knows how the Fool acquires the ship which is the Tsar’s bride price for his daughter, but once he is on board, he goes about collecting travelers who end up helping him attain his goal. Because one method of story analysis involves seeing every character as an aspect of the main character, I think these travelers offer some insight into the kinds of strengths we fools may find if we, like Dummling, stop and look deeply inside. The Fool’s traveling companions are: a man who can hear every sound in the world by putting his ear to the ground, a man who can traverse the earth in split seconds, a man who can shoot things that are hundreds of miles away, a man who can eat huge amounts of food, another who can drink huge amounts, and two more men, each with magical objects. The first of these has a bundle of wood that, when scattered, will spring up into armies of soldiers; the second has a bundle of straw that, when spread around, makes hot things cold. 

My first thought about these travelers is that, except for the last two, their skills are just exaggerations of things most people can do naturally: hear, walk, see, eat, and drink. The fact that they are magnified may mean that, to use them to our best advantage, we need to consider them more carefully, that is, not take them for granted. Intransigent fools look without seeing, hear without listening, and walk, eat, and drink with no intention. 

The objects carried by the sixth and seventh travelers – wood and straw, respectively – are also natural objects, but they’ve been arranged, tied into bundles, through artifice. Bundling makes weak objects stronger; it’s harder to break a bundle than a single stick. Fool needs to collect his strengths and use them together if he is to succeed. 

According to Steven Olderr’s dictionary of symbolic meanings, a bundle of wood symbolizes strength and authority. To reveal his true nature and establish that he is not as dim he seems to the general public, Fool has to assert some authority. In Three Feathers, Dummling accomplishes this through the superiority of the objects he brings his father. The Fool of the World conjures armies to the same purpose.

The bundle of straw is more mysterious to me. One straw is a symbol of weakness, but a bundle can be a sign of danger. The bundle of straw, picked up before the flying ship enters the Tsar’s compound, may serve as a warning of things to come. At one point in the story, when the Tsar attempts to kill Fool, his life is saved by the magical straw.  Also, straw, though useful for many things, is the inferior part of the stalk, the chaff without the grain. So, the straw could be a warning about the fate of a Fool who doesn’t seek to understand himself. That Fool will remain a fool, a husk devoid of human spirit. 

The Fool of the Tarot is poised to fall. I think his attitude reflects neither unawareness nor lack of concern about the future. Like the Fool of the World, he is enjoying the world around him, looking up toward the trees and the sky. In his right hand, he carries his worldly belongings vagabond-style, a bundle wrapped in a cloth hung loosely from a stick. In his left hand, he holds a rose (completeness, beauty, heart). He holds both items carelessly. He may lose them at any moment, but he understands that grasping them won’t change his fate. Fool knows he can’t control where his next step will land, so he looks to the sky and, perhaps, controls the only thing he can – his thoughts.

Stories From a Stone

by Maria LoBiondo

“In the beginning, there were no stories.”

That’s how I begin the “Storytelling Stone,” the Native American origin tale of how people began to tell stories. An orphan named Gah-ka, ridiculed by his tribe, goes off on his own and makes camp by a huge stone that looks like a human face. Leaning against the stone, he is startled by the question, “Do you want to hear a story?”

Of course he does, even though he doesn’t know what a story is. But he listens well and becomes the first storyteller, revered by a new tribe he comes to know and with whom he shares this new thing called “story” that he has heard from the Storytelling Stone.

The Stone speaks only in the winter, when there are no crops to care for and the nights are long. We are in a psychological winter during this coronavirus crisis, even if there are daffodils blooming outside the door. 

If there are positives to be found in this new normal, one may be slowing us down from our normally hectic paces. Stories slow us down, too, take us to a time out of time, absorb us in a different reality for the space of the telling.

Within that time we accept the impossible – that stones can speak, for example. And when we slow down we may find that in fact stones can speak, if we listen.

Stones were the theme of the February evening Luray and I spent with about 20 students from kindergarten through high school with Joys, Hopes, and Dreams at the Arts Council of Princeton, a program associated with HomeFront. The inspiration that night came from “Stone,” a Charles Simic poem Luray recites as a story.

We told several stone stories, a Nasruddin story of pushing a great stone; Skunny Wundy outsmarting the Stone Giant in a skipping stone contest, and the Storytelling Stone, in which Gah-ka has a pouch with objects to represent the different stories he has learned from the Stone.

These led up to the Simic poem. As Luray spoke it, we all listened intently, and then she repeated the beginning of the lines and – with only one hearing and no copy of the words to refer to – individuals, unprompted, called out the remaining words, just as Gah-ka listened so deeply to the Storytelling Stone that he was able to repeat all he heard.

Then Luray laid out stones she had collected and asked each participant to choose one and listen to what the stone said to him or her, just as Gah-ka had objects from his pouch to remind him of stories. From these stones, and “pouches” drawn on paper, new stories were formed.

One youngster drew a memory of rolling down a hill with a friend. Another drew the dog she wished someday to own. 

At the conclusion of the Native American tale, the Stone tells Gah-ka that the stories will no longer be kept in the stones but will live in the people. And the stories do, and will, as long as we share them. They can be triggered by an heirloom piece of jewelry, a photograph or letter, a favorite recipe, a remembrance of a special event. The humblest of materials — even a stone — can inspire a story .

Primary resource for the Storytelling Stone: a Seneca tale retold by Joseph Bruchac in Return of the Sun: Native American Tales from the Northeast Woodlands.

Stone, by Charles Simic: https://t54poets.weebly.com/blog/stone-by-charles-simic

Why Tell Stories? Oasis Teen Girls Respond

by Julie Della Torre and Paula Davidoff

After eight weeks of telling stories to the teen girls at Oasis (though for some this was a second year of story listening), we were interested in their thoughts about storytelling. 

As a group, we read the poem, "Why We Tell Stories" by Liesel Mueller https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/lisel-mueller/why-we-tell-stories/. 

Then we asked the girls to respond to the poem and to their own experiences with storytelling to answer the question, why do we tell stories?

Here are their responses:

Guadalupe's prose poem

Yadary: I think storytelling helps me escape reality. Reality can be so stressing and tiring. But when I hear stories, it makes me forget about it all. Hearing stories of women with powers or who are smarter gives me inspiration. It makes me think: if they can fool someone and escape before they get killed, then I can escape a test before it starts. I was just joking (my mom would kill me), but their intelligence inspires me and makes me believe that I could be like them. The men’s courage to climb up a glass castle while knowing their fate, it’s like riding your bike for the first time. You want to ride it – like wanting to reach the top of the glass mountain – to feel that feeling of accomplishment, but you know you’re going to scrape your knee once, twice, maybe even three times. But it’s all about taking a risk to get what you want. 

Claudia: Why do people tell stories? They listen to stories to imagine a world unlike their own. To escape a reality they will eventually have to return to. So that they can experience their dreams even if it’s only for a little while. Or maybe to go through drama that will make them feel a part of something bigger than themselves. People of all ages have all kinds of reasons to listen to stories, whether they know it or not. 

Yokary: I like to listen to stories or poems because when I listen to it, instead of reading it, it kind of makes me feel like relaxed or calmed, even though sometimes I get sleepy. When someone tells a story, they put like tone and show actions. I think it is more interesting because you actually put more attention to it, or even memorize it and like keep telling it. Also, so you can develop your imagination.

Erica: Why do people tell stories? Most people tell stories to get kids to sleep or to entertain children, but in my opinion, I think some people tell stories so that children, when they get older, will have a big imagination and that would possibly allow them to be more positive and they won’t grow up being negative a lot. 

Ajeyne: I think people like listening to stories because, while they’re listening, they feel like they’re in the story and enjoy the feeling. 

Guadalupe: Whey we listen to stories. We listen to stories to wish upon a star. To dream of the happy endings and to believe in the never-ending love. We listen to stories to get lost in our imaginations. To fantasize the unexpected. We listen to stories to make our own stories. When our lives are boring and black and white, we listen to stories. The best thing about listening to stories is that nobody can stop our minds from wandering abroad. 

Ava: We tell stories to pass down previous experiences we had, whether they were chaotic or mind-blowing. Also, stories are entertaining, and they are shared so our peers can share the same experience with us and live in the moment. I listen to stories because I want to hear what people go though in their daily lives, how they lived and ate. I listen to stories so I can be aware of what happened in that time frame and how they overcame it, whether it was funny or serous. Stories teach us life lessons and encourage us to be great and try new things / invent new things like they did. 

Laney (director of the Oasis teen girls group): 

Why I feel good listening to stories

 (you = stories from my childhood)

Because when I’m feeling blue, you act like a color wheel and allow me to feel shade on a hot summer’s day.

Because you remind me of a simpler time, when I “never” felt sick and didn’t feel alone. 

Because sometimes I need an escape, whether I’m leaving work to fight a fire-breathing dragon, or dress pretty for the ball.

Because when I hear your voice, I feel soothed. Because you are told by my mother. 

Learning through Metaphor

by Paula Davidoff

Fitcher's Bird illustration by A. Rackham

I have been realizing that one of the most important things the storytellers of SAI do for our student audiences is to teach them the importance of thinking and speaking metaphorically. We visit classrooms, from pre-school to high school, in daycare centers and youth detention centers, where, week after week, we offer metaphors for the real-life events our students witness and experience. Metaphor is critical to understanding abstract concepts. It helps people build conceptual bridges between schemata and it aids understanding by creating an image that helps explicate an unfamiliar concept or idea. Mastery of metaphor is essential to both linguistic and conceptual development. The metaphors in folk and fairy tales give students a way to view their personal experiences in terms of the broader human condition. 

Since the beginning of the year, Julie Della Torre and I have continued to work with teen girls at Oasis. We’ve been telling traditional tales and encouraging the girls to write original poems and stories suggested by characters and themes in the ones we tell. Because the girls expressed frustration at the heroine’s lack of autonomy in two of the Red Riding Hood stories we told on our first day with them, we have been choosing to tell stories with strong heroines. In one workshop, I told the Grimm Brothers’ Fitcher’s Bird. 

The story is a Bluebeard-type tale in which the villain, a sorcerer who enchants and abducts young women, takes three sisters, one at a time, to his home “deep in a dark forest.” After some time during which he treats his captive kindly, the sorcerer goes away, leaving the girl alone with the keys to the house, and telling her that she may have access to every room except one. He also gives her an egg to watch over. The first two girls enter the forbidden chamber out of curiosity. In the process, each drops her egg into a basin of blood that is just inside the door. When the sorcerer returns, he discovers the girl’s trespass because her egg is stained with blood, and he kills her, chopping her body into pieces. When the third sister is left alone with the keys and the egg, she puts her egg in a safe place and enters the forbidden room purposefully, looking for clues to the disappearance of her sisters. She finds their body parts and reassembles them, miraculously bringing the sisters back to life. Then, because her egg remains spotless, the sorcerer loses his power over her and she is able to save herself and her sisters. 

In the post-story discussion, some of the girls indicated that they were familiar with the character of Bluebeard, the villain of the eponymous Perrault tale, although they were vague about the plot of the story, itself. One difference between Perrault’s maiden-killer story and the Grimms’ Fitcher’s Bird is that, in the Grimm tale, the maiden saves herself and her sisters. (This difference is recognized in the Aarne-Thompson classification system. The tale of Bluebeard is type 312; Fitcher’s Bird is type 311.) 

When they began talking about the story, some girls condemned the youngest sister for allowing herself to be seduced by the sorcerer because, they said, she should have been suspicious of strange men after the loss of her two sisters. At this point, I became more pedantic than either Julie or I like to be in our discussions of story and suggested to the girls a way of analyzing the tale in which the three sisters represented three experiences of the same girl. In this explanation, the reassembly of the first sisters becomes a metaphor for surviving and learning from mistakes, for “getting yourself (or your life) back together.” 

To expand the story metaphor, one can see the egg as a symbol for the girl’s potential. An egg contains the potential for new life and, in this case, her handling of the egg could represent the girl’s failure or success in realizing her potential as a mature woman. Blood symbolizes life, but when it is spilled, life is lost; the blood-stained eggs of the first two sisters indicated that their potential won’t be realized. The third sister has, in fact, learned from the experiences of the first two. She safeguards the egg before searching for the knowledge that will free her from the sorcerer’s spell. At the end of the story, the third sister escapes from the sorcerer’s home disguised as a great white bird, the Fitcher’s Bird of the story’s title, as if she has hatched her new self from the egg she so wisely guarded. 

The Oasis girls were impressed by our analysis of the story symbols. I think it reinforced for them the idea that the stories we tell have deep meaning. I hope that it will serve as a reminder that mistakes can be learning experiences, not failures. 

Every human experience is a composite of sensory perception, movement, situation, and emotion. We don’t experience things in discreet pieces. Instead, we flow from one state to another so smoothly that we are often not aware of the transition. Because the edges of distinct experiences tend to be fuzzy, words do not have distinct, sharply delineated meanings. Instead, they are subject to connotation and open to interpretation. The continuity of our experience and the variability in the meaning of the words we use to describe it makes metaphor a necessity of linguistic communication. Metaphor allows people to communicate without having to verbalize the minutiae of experience. By giving our students access to the metaphors in folk and fairy tales, we give them an essential tool for understanding the world and communicating their ideas about it to others. 

Remembering Helen Wise

by Julie Pasqual

Helen with students

One of the reasons I love storytelling is that there is such a respect for the past – for the stories that our forefathers told around fires to explain, entertain, and build community.  And also for the tellers of these tales.  Storytelling is one profession where elders are not pushed aside – there is a respect for those who have come before us, a knowledge that we are, as they say, standing on the shoulders of those who have come before us. 

         When I first came to Storytelling Arts, I was a new teller.  I had been a professional performer from the age of 17, so I knew how to stand before an audience and tell a tale, but what I didn’t know was how to make a story less about my “performance”, and more about the shared experience that storytelling is.  And I certainly had no idea how to tell stories to children as young as 3 or 4.  But luckily I had some wonderful shoulders to stand upon. One of those people that helped me find my way passed away today – her name was Helen Wise.

         I remember the first time I saw Helen tell – I will be honest here, as someone coming from musical theatre and clown – I was all about big, loud – and as the song says, “Give them the old razzle dazzle!”  So, Helen’s slow, gentle, intimate style left me skeptical.  “The kids are not going to like this!”, my inside voice my screamed.  But soon, I saw the wisdom in her work.  Instead of my instinct to “go after the children’s attention” – I watched as they came to her – they pulled closer – feeling safe in her presence, filling in the words that she masterfully left space for.  There was no separation between performer and audience – it was a joint effort, a communion, if you will.

      While I don’t tell anything like Helen, really, what I learned from her was that storytelling, especially for the littlest listeners was not about trying to control them, but to ride their wave. Throw the bait out to them, see what they take, encourage them, empower them to be participants in the story, and make it about them, as opposed to me.

          I am forever grateful to Helen, and to all the wonderful tellers upon whose shoulders I place my size 7 wides on every time I tell a tale,  and peak into the magic that storytelling can be.   

Hey There, Little Red Riding Hood!

by Paula Davidoff

Julie Della Torre and I resumed our work with teen girls at Oasis this month. We worked there with a teen girl group for six weeks last winter and it was a blast. This year we have funding for an eight-week program. In the group are some girls who participated last year, others whom we met when we worked with them as sixth graders two or three years ago, and still others who are completely new to storytelling. We meet on Friday afternoons for two hours after school. The girls, between 14 and 18 years old, are open-minded, enthusiastic learners. They listen to us and to each other. They engage in deep discussion about issues raised by our stories, issues which they can often relate to their own life experiences. They also write in every workshop and share their writing with the group. 

Because Julie and I want the content of our workshops to be as relevant as possible to the girls, we let them choose the direction of post-story discussions. We open talk with a question and allow the girls to take it where they will. Then, we make story choices for the next week based on the topics the girls were most interested in discussing and writing about. This year we began our program by telling three variants of Little Red Riding Hood: a 17^th Century French folktale, and the Perrault and Grimm versions of the story. Before telling any of these variants, we asked the girls to tell us the story of Little Red as they knew it. There were sixteen girls in the group that afternoon and most of them had heard some version of the story. They enjoyed starting, stopping, and contradicting each other. 

“Wait, what happened to the grandmother?”

“The wolf ate her.”

“No, I think the grandmother hid in the closet!”

“The way I heard it, she gets eaten.”

“And Little Red Riding Hood got eaten, too.” 

“I thought she was rescued by a hunter or something.”

And so it went. 

Then the girls listened to our stories. We gave them the opportunity to talk in between each tale. We also gave them some social and historical context for each variant. At first, conversation focused on the “lessons” they found in the stories: Don’t talk to strangers, Don’t let your daughters go walking alone in the woods… But as the discussion continued, the girls began to question some of the story motifs.

“He (Perrault) makes it seem like it’s the girl’s fault that she got killed.”

“Why does Little Red Cap have to be rescued by a man? Girls always need a man to rescue them in fairy tales.” 

“But in the first story, the girl got herself away from the wolf.” 

“And in the second part of the last (Grimm) story, she learned from experience that wolves can be dangerous.”

In the end, their conversation focused on two main themes: Little Red’s naivety and consequent helplessness in the face of danger, and the wolf’s indifference to the girl’s suffering in the face of his own desire.

As, Tiffany wrote: 

All I wanna know is, in what world are those wolves raised in where they’re just out her trynna eat up little girls? Like what had to happen in this wolf’s life where he’s at the point where he could see a li’l girl minding her business and automatically think, “ Damnnn, y’all, wha that? That look like lunch to me.”

To further explore the wolf’s motivation, Jayceleen, Ashley, and Catherine rewrote the story from his point of view. Here is part of Catherine’s story:

So, I was in the woods with my homies and all of a sudden a girl dressed all in red with thick curves, curly hair, pale pink skin I don’t know why, but I felt the need to hook up with this girl. 

So I go up to her and I’m like, “Ayy yo, Shortface. You looking real fine and nice. Where you think you going.”

She responds to me, “I’m headed to my Grandma’s house… why?”

I said to her, “Cause I wanna get to know you.”  

I’m guessing that made her sort of like me cause the next thing you know she out here communicating telling all about her Grandma and where she live.

And in Yadary’s version, Little Red’s mother recognizes her daughter’s inability to survive alone in the woods and rushes out to protect her. 

“Mom, what are you doin here?”

“I forgot to give you the soup for your granny.”

“So you make me walk through all that… just for you to end up going, too?”

“Don’t whine!”

We finally made it to grandma’s house. But the door was open. Oh Heck hah! This is a sign from God telling me to get out of here.  “Mom, let’s get out of here. Let’s call dad to check this out. I don’t think it’s safe.”

“No. We ain’t need no man.”

Mom literally went in and I trailed behind her.

Oasis teen girls creating a story tableaux

Every girl wrote something inspired by the stories or their discussion of the stories. Afterwards, they all shared their writing with the group. As Julie and I packed up to leave at the end of the session, the girls were still talking about Little Red. I think it’s going to be another good year at Oasis.