Storyteller as Alchemist

Mosaic of Hermes Trismagestrus from the Duomo di Siena

by Gerald Fierst

When I tell stories, my audiences inevitably give me new stories in response. I read folk lore and myth from around the world.  I listen to personal stories.  I create stories from my own life.  This artistic profession has given me a profound respect for the powerful effect a story has on the individual and collective psyche. 

Over decades of telling stories, I have come to understand the connection between the storyteller and the hermetic tradition of alchemy.  Popular culture imagines alchemy as a Harry Potteresque turning lead into gold, but in the tradition of Hermes Trimagestrus, (you can see the portrait of Hermes in the mosaic floor of the cathedral in Siena)  alchemy is the art of summoning energy to transform both the physical and spiritual plan so that (as we say at a good performance) time stands still, and we are transported to a new and more powerful reality.

Storytelling cannot exist in isolation, but needs the collaboration of the viewer as well as the artist.  Storytelling ( I will now use the term storytelling/storyteller instead of alchemy/alchemist ) transforms a personal vision into a universal statement. We open ourselves up to the experience which the artist offers, and we are transformed by new ways of perceiving ourselves and our world.   The craft of the artist is to know the formulae  developed over millennia and to reinvent the structures that have become conventional in order to enable the psyche to expand and understand the new facts being presented. 

Working with StorytellingArts, I have seen this process happening in audiences ranging from preschool to adult,  most powerfully,  at the Morris County Youth Detention Center where a group of storytellers has worked over years.  The residents are 15, 16, 17 year olds.  They wear prison uniforms.  They are small groups supervised by a guard. Whatever their old life was, it is stripped away, and they are neutralized. It is at once prison, and, as the superintendent once told me, “the last best hope to start again.”  It is a bleak, heart breaking place- AND YET.

The Jews say if you can save one soul you save the world.  This year the storytellers chose our theme as super powers and magic.  Jack McKeon and I began the year with a series of stories based on the concept of elemental powers.  Jack told a version of The Stonecutter in which a man cutting blocks from the mountain wishes himself to become the sun, a cloud, the wind, the mountain and, finally, once again the man, for a man with tools can transform the world and  is the most powerful.  The session that day was unremarkable, but the next day, when I returned alone, one of the boys entered the room bubbling with excitement.  He had been telling Jack’s simple story over and over again.  The other boys laughed and shared his delight, and the guard rolled his eyes and nodded in acknowledgement.  The boy had discovered a voice that could enlighten and entertain; and if the stories we tell ourselves lead us on our life’s path, this simple story could be the beginning of this child’s positive sense of himself.

Do I know this? - no.  Do I hope this?- yes.  Over and over, I meet people who remember a story I told years ago.  Grown ups who remember a story they heard me tell when they were children in school.  Stories are powerful magic, and, perhaps, on that day last fall, Jack and I made one boy’s life transform from the impossible to possiblities, for one man can level mountains.

Such visions are what the Hermetic tradition is all about.

Fitting the Story to the Audience

  by Julie Pasqual     

   Here’s a riddle: What do stories, warm muscles, taffy, and rubber bands have in common?  Answer: They stretch!

Julie Pasqual during her recent China storytelling tour.

          While that has always been my experience with the marvelous things known as folktales, never have I found that more true than on my recent storytelling tour in China, where I found myself telling tales to children as young as 3 and as old as 17, with various degrees of English language skills.

          Being as this is my third tour of a foreign country, I have come to know, a little bit at least, what to expect.  At the international and bilingual schools I visit, the academic standards are SKY HIGH, the teachers EXTREMEMLY committed, and the kids sweet, excited, and very receptive.  For the most part the language level is almost always like the same as a native speaker – what I tell to a six year old here, I can tell to a six year old there.  But, from time to time there are groups, or parts of groups, where the language level is not so high, when, for instance, a group of 12 year olds have English skills that are more like a 7 year olds (which, I have to say is better than ANY skills I have in any language – including, on MANY days, my own mother tongue!!).  It’s times like these where the elasticity of stories comes into play.

          In a situation like that, the challenge is: how does one tell, in simple language, a story that wouldn’t talk down to a 12 year old – and age when it is all about proving you are no longer a “little kid”?  That’s where the elasticity of the folktale comes into play.   Because stories don’t belong to ANYONE, they belong to EVERYONE, so characters that might have a sweet innocent personality when telling for a 7 year old, can become sassy and “over it” for a tween ager.  Instead of describing, say a princess as being “lovely and fair”, I might say, “She looked like a movie star!”, and strut about a bit, so they could see, rather than just hear what I meant.  Working in moments to give them a chance to choose something in the story is a great tool as well, because it puts them in the driver’s seat a little bit – like in the story I tell of Juan Bobo.  I take a few moments for them to help me decide what color dress Juan should put on the pig – it’s silly, fun, they understand the question, and have the vocabulary to answer the question, all the while it’s something kids that age all around the world are into – FASHION!!

          Working in things I see on their tee shirts, or backpacks into the story always elicits smiles and engagement, as they begin to see, whether they understand every word out of my mouth or not, that storytelling is about us both – teller and listener together – we’re both in this together, stretching this story to include the actual plot, who they are, and their level of comprehension. 

          Really “taking it to the audience”, so to speak, is ALWAYS one of my favorite techniques with younger audiences, and when they don’t understand many words, what they do understand are facial expression and tone.  “Reading” what my emotions are, and what my body gestures “say” – is learning to read as well, and as these youngest children make a connection between the sounds coming out of my mouth, and the way my body is moving, they are learning language.  Maybe the story didn’t have the prefect beginning, middle, and end – but it was a “telling”, a narrative of the smallest kind.

          Stories stretch – better than a yogi in a heated room – they can expand to take in what is actually happening in that moment, in that place.  That is what allows storytellers to be able to reach audiences of all ages, in all countries, and can make each telling a custom made fit for the listeners at hand!

"Storytelling is about us both -- teller and listener together"