Anecdote of a Story

by Paula Davidoff

All storytellers have a list of stories that we can rely on: stories that always elicit the proverbial “ha ha” or “aha,” stories that are good openers and closers, and stories that are just the right length for social occasions. We tell these stories several times a year to begin a workshop or assembly, or because they can be discussed in ways that fit most character development curriculum objectives, or because, after hearing them, people always have something to think and talk about.

I also bet that most storytellers have a few stories that they tell again and again because, for the teller, the story has never quite resolved itself. Because each telling opens new windows that shed different kinds of light on pieces of the tale. Because each time you tell it, you understand or remember something new about yourself and the world.

The Goose Girl at Gruchy, Jean-Francois Millet

I have a list of stories like that. Some of them have been in my repertoire for years; others are relatively new. Sometimes I’m surprised by a story that I thought I thoroughly understood and I add it to the list.

A couple of days ago, while reading through the notes I took during the past school year’s workshops and residencies, I came upon this sentence:

“How did The Goosegirl get to be the story of my life?”

I wrote it during an independent writing activity in a professional development workshop Julie Della Torre and I taught for sixth grade English LA teachers. (My thoughts about the answer to the question are also in the notebook, but they wouldn’t be interesting to anyone except, maybe, my imaginary therapist.) However, reading that entry made me think of some of the many times I’ve told the story, and gave me an idea for the first workshop of a summer program I’m co-teaching with my friend and fellow teaching artist, Carolyn Hunt.

For over ten years, Carolyn and I have co-taught Girls Surviving, a writing and theater program for teen girls that we created together. The program runs all year – one evening a week during the school year, and for an intensive four to six weeks in summer. In each of these ‘seasons,’ participants write, rehearse, and perform an original play about issues that affect their lives. We often open the first workshop of a season with storytelling. This summer, we opened with Grimms’ Goosegirl.

Because the program is community based and long term, many of the girls participate for five or six years. This summer, three of these ‘veteran’ troupe members, all going into their senior year of high school, are planning and directing workshop activities. Most of the other participants will be starting high school in September, so there is a big knowledge and maturity gap between the oldest and youngest members of the group. This was apparent on the first day when the older girls encouraged the younger ones to talk about themselves, their school experiences, and their thoughts about entering high school. The new girls were, understandably, shy, but they had also come in friend groups, clusters of two or three girls who sat together whispering and trying to sneak peeks at their phones during lulls in the workshop. Their focus and their conversation was all over the place. Until we placed The Goosegirl at the center of the discussion circle.

Almost immediately, the story began to organize both thought and activity. The thing that came together immediately, of course, was focus. This is something I’ve experienced, probably, thousands of times, but until I began reflecting on this workshop, I don’t think I have ever fully appreciated the power of having everyone in a group deeply centered in the same place, visualizing the (almost) same things.

After the story, conversation was more coherent. It became discussion. Which makes sense because everyone still had the story in mind and, although talk about story characters led to talk about personal experience, the story was still holding the group together.

What has surprised me, workshop by workshop, is how, although there have been few, if any, direct references to The Goosegirl after that first day, ideas from the story are reflected in the girls’ discussions and writing, and in the theme of the play they are constructing.  In an exercise in which we wrote dialogue between the inner and outer voices of a character, one writer had the inner voice say, “If my mother just saw the way I spoke to that kid, it would break her heart.” This nearly verbatim quote from the story was written days after I told it.

What happens when a heterogeneous group of people is given a story? Each individual enters the telling space with his or her own worries and joys, head filled with the events of the day behind or ahead, all very personal and specific to the self. Then, I think, the story speaks to each of those individuals in a way that connects some aspect of each personal experience to the characters and events in the story, and that, in turn, connects each person to the others in the group. In situations, like the Girls Surviving workshop, the talk that follows the story can make these connections obvious. But I think that even in situations where an audience hears the story and then gets up to go their separate ways, the connection still happens because the group had those moments of communal focus and, once the story enters the heart and mind, it stays there. Lying beneath the thoughts and events that push past it as people go through their day-to-day, the story helps give meaning and purpose to one’s inner and outer lives.

The effect that The Goosegirl is having on the work of my summer students brings to mind the Wallace Stevens poem, Anecdote of the Jar.*

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Placing the story in the workshop lent order to the ideas and experiences of the participants by offering a reference point for one’s own words and providing context for the words and actions of the others. It doesn’t change things in any obvious way. The big girls are still conscientiously teaching and the little ones, although they are getting better, still feel bereft without their phones. But the group is coalescing and all of the girls have begun to make art.

*This poem, from Stevens’s Harmonium, is in the public domain.

The Storytelling Incident

 by Julie Pasqual

         

Julie with some Littles

In a recent three day residency at a middle school, where I, and four other tellers, where asked to introduce the concept of folktales, and how students could relate them to their own lives, I played one of my favorite games.  I call it ‘Who has ever…”  It is a simple game where I read a list of questions, and if the question applies to you, you cross the room (or change seats, or raise a leg or an arm, depending on where I am playing it).  I played this game before telling a story that, on the surface, would seem to have nothing to do with the student’s lives, but after the story, when we looked back on the questions, we saw that quite a few of the questions applied no just to their own 2016 day to day living, but to the characters in the story as well.  Some of the questions I knew would be rife to get to the kids to talk about, and then write about their personal experiences, but I never expected the question, “Has anyone ever fainted?”  to  provide a PREFECT look at how folktales evolve and grow! 

       It all began in the first of the three classes, when someone mentioned that, like a character in the story, they had seen someone faint.  It was  during a choir concert in a nursing home.  IMMEDIATELY, hands flew up in the air.

“Oh yeah, “several kids said.  “I was there, too!”  Soon, details began to flush out and escalate the tale.  The story grew from it being just someone fainting, to other students seeing it and fainting as well, still others got nauseous and threw up, and the whole time the choral director told them just to keep singing!!  In each of the three classes more details emerged and grew – and I actually got to meet the young man who was the first to faint, who, of course doesn’t remember anything!!  The classroom teacher was stunned she had never heard anything about this before, and said, “And you all tell me you have nothing to write about!!”

           Besides all of us laughing A LOT about what we called “The Nursing Home Incident”, it was the classroom teacher who said, “Remember what JP (my nickname) was telling us about how folktales change and grow over time – this is IT!!!!”  I had to agree.  No amount of explaining, reading, or dissecting could have made the journey of a folktale over time, more tangible and relatable than what the kids had done in real time that day.  And, it all began with a really simple question!!!!  

           

         

The Power of Silence

Heather Forest was the first professional storyteller I ever heard. It was in the late 1980s, close to 30 years ago now. At the time I was the Cultural Arts Rep for our PTA and was attending a showcase of various performing/teaching artists. My mission was to find some programs to bring to the school. I had a very small budget to work with and could not afford to hire Heather.

I don't remember whom I did hire, but I will never forget Heather's storytelling.

She told "The Stonecutter."  She was alone on a big stage. No costumes. No masks. No musicians. No puppets. No props. She told the simple and elegant teaching tale from Japan using three basic tools.

Language.
Movement.
Silence.

Her language was sparse and exact. Her movements were strong and precise. But it was her use of silence that revealed the power of the story and the storyteller.

What is it about silence that makes it so compelling? Silence is not nothingness. Quite the contrary. It is a welcome mat and a gauntlet. It welcomes the listener to enter the story. To inhabit its landscapes and become its characters. It also challenges the listener to imagine what might happen, what should happen, what will happen. It gives our audiences time and space to be in the story.

Silence can be harnessed even before you utter "Once upon a time.." or  "Back in the days when animals could talk.." or "Once and maybe still.." Give it a try! Stand in front of your listeners. Don't speak. Don't move. Be silent. Be Silence. Listen to how the others quiet down and turn their attention on you. Don't panic. Don't rush in to fill up the air. No one is in a hurry. No one thinks you forgot the story. Everyone is relishing the joy of anticipation. They are taking their seats on the roller coaster before the bars lock into place. Before you say anything, enter the story. See the tracks before you. Then begin. Your audience will gladly follow.

Another great place to exploit/employ silence is right before a "jump" (the moment when everyone is caught off guard in some stories). As you are about to deliver the surprise, speak more quietly more slowly, allow some silence into the space like the roller coaster clicking up those laassttt feeeeww innnnchhhhesss before.. AAHHHHH!! It's great fun. Everyone knows danger is lurking. Even so the audience will jump if the storyteller has not rushed and filled the moment for them. It is their moment to fill.

Examine the story you are working on now. Is there a moment or two or three where you can rein in the words and let silence do the work?

What are your thoughts on The Power of Silence? Let us know in comments.

Revisiting The Way of the Storyteller

by Paula Davidoff and Maria LoBiondo

There are many books on the how and why of storytelling, but few match Ruth Sawyer’s book, The Way of the Storyteller, published in 1942 and still a classic. When we realized the strong influence Sawyer’s work had on both of us, we decided to collaborate on this post. —Maria and Paula

Ruth Sawyer, storyteller and author

Maria: As a beginning storyteller, this book gave me a sense of the deeper meaning storytelling could have—for me and for those with whom I looked forward to sharing tales.

Calling Ruth Sawyer’s Way of the Storyteller a bible may sound like an exaggeration, yet Sawyer clearly sees storytelling as a spiritual calling, “something for which the soul cries out.” Like a biblical prophet, she sets out to inspire tellers beyond memorization, beyond flat interpretation. Her commandments exhort tellers to enrich their art, to go deeper into the stories themselves, and to create connections with listeners as they make the tales come alive.

These big statements were like manna to me as a beginning storyteller and in re-reading them, they still inspire. It’s as if a key clicked open a secret box inside me when I first read them; stories are able to go to a place our rational selves hold in check and our emotional selves may find overwhelming.

Paula: I fell under the spell of Ms. Sawyer’s language when I was a child. The Folk and Fairy Tales volume of my orange-bound Childcraft books included The Flea, a Spanish folktale from her Picture Tales of Spain. My mother read to us from Childcraft at bedtime and I used to ask for The Flea again and again. There was something about the voice in which the story was told that made me comfortable. I felt included in the narrative, as if the writer were winking at me or giving me a conspiratorial nod throughout the telling.

Much later in life, when I first read The Way of the Storyteller, a book, perhaps the book, that started me on the way I have traveled for the past thirty years, I recognized the voice. I remember reading chapter by chapter, feeling the déjà vu that is usually reserved for memories of dreams, until I came to the stories at the end of the volume. The Flea is not among those stories, but the voice was the same.

Maria: And Sawyer, herself, wrote about the importance of voice: “I beseech all storytellers to cultivate the listening ear, to learn to hear their own voices, to be alert to the voices around them, to compare.”

Developing your voice as a storyteller takes time, practice, and patience. I recently had the pleasure of listening to two tellers over two days tell a favorite from the American South, Wiley and the Hairy Man. Laura Kaighn told at a gathering of the Garden State Storytellers League, and Storytelling Arts’ Jack McKeon at the recent celebration of SAI’s 20 years.

Neither teller used microphones. Each employed a different voice for the main characters, giving Wiley, Wiley’s mama, and the Hairy Man distinct personalities without straining vocal chords or credibility. Each emphasized different plot points and elaborated with different gestures so that the story came alive in a way unique to each teller. Their storytelling voices were as individual as they are—which Sawyer would applaud.

Sawyer gives helpful hints from her musical training, but as a writer as well as a storyteller, I find a stronger parallel in advice for writers. At first we imitate the masters we admire. Eventually we step out and play with metaphors and phrasing that come easily to us. With time and dedication, the stories become our own, with descriptions rising from our own experiences and feelings.

Paula: That is so true. Sometimes, when I’m telling a favorite story, I feel like I’m relating a personal experience, and I think that comes through in our tellings.

Maria: Sawyer had great respect for the folk wisdom that storytellers impart in the tales told. She urged tellers to approach their stories with heart and mind and spirit, as she did. Her description of a storytelling artist marries imagination and creativity with discipline and technique. This is what distinguishes telling from a book, telling from memorization or rote, telling a casual experience of what happened to us on a given day. Artist storytellers are not actors but there is more than craft at work. The artist teller creates a world for all to share for the space of the story—and helps us see the world anew.

Paula: And Sawyer reminds us that storytelling is a folk-art, a “living art” and adds, “it lives only while the story is being told.” In The Celtic Twilight, Yeats says folk-art is “the oldest of the aristocracies of thought, and because it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has gathered into itself the simplest and most unforgettable thoughts of the generations, it is the soil where all great art is rooted.” Ruth Sawyer definitely agreed with Yeats on the importance and immutability of folk-art.

Maria: I was especially heartened in re-reading by Sawyer’s accounts of perfecting her art, the slog of learning what worked both for herself and the myriad audiences she visited. She learns to become a medium for the story, to serve the story and her listeners, rather than dazzle audiences with performing skill. And continuing her prophetic role, she implores tellers to feed the imagination.

Paula: When I re-read The Way of the Storyteller after we decided to write about it, I was struck hard by Ruth Sawyer’s insistence that storytelling is an art and that tellers, those who follow the path because of their desire to give life to the stories that have touched them most deeply and which they are equipped to tell, are artists.

As a teaching artists, it’s easy to get caught up in the jargon we use, and to get tangled in the hoops we jump through to convince funders and educators that our art belongs in the classroom. We write lesson plans, identify objectives, and connect to curriculum -- all legitimate, indeed, essential steps toward making the most of the time we spend with our students. But sometimes during this process I lose sight of the fact that the most important thing I do for students is to embody stories, to bring folktales and myths to life right before their eyes.

Maria: This, of course, is where Storytelling Arts fits right in. As tellers we want to entertain but also to reach that place in our listeners that may refresh and nourish them, as stories do for us. All of us naturally tell stories, that’s part of being human. But to learn to imagine new possibilities, deeper layers of meaning, and empathy for others through the medium of a well-told tale elevates storytelling to art. Sawyer calls tellers to reach for this, and her book remains a touchstone for me.

The Queen Bee

 by Jack McKeon 

On November 22 of last year I was invited by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Palisades to present the “sermon” at their weekly meeting.  This might provoke a few grins from those who know me, but, as we know, fairy tales reside in that rich area that speaks both to the secular and the spiritual.  Attached is my “sermon”, as I wrote it, which followed, of course, a telling of the story.  I believe the presentation was not quite as stuffy as this reads.  There were grins and chuckles and agreeing noddings of heads.  Anyway, here is what I said.  I’m assuming that you all know the story, so I won’t repeat it.  If you need refreshing it’s Grimms #62.

THE QUEEN BEE

The Queen Bee is a simple three brothers fairy tale; the first two are clever and confident, the third viewed as a Simpleton and held in contempt. The third’s simplicity serves him well. He befriends animals and through their assistance he triumphs and marries the princess.

This is standard fairy tale stuff and in this case in a tale that lacks tension and conflict.  There’s no obvious evil – no witch or ogre, no murderous siblings, no clear moral conflict.  The story moves rapidly through events without elaboration or commentary.  It is simple, rather flat and lacking in drama.

Still it is one of the Grimms’ most famous and most often anthologized tales – up there with Rumplestiltskin, Rapunzel and Snow White.

So what’s going on here?

Most obviously we see differing attitudes towards the world of nature and the relationship we humans have with it, as shown by the three brothers.  Early, myth-based societies saw the world as a living entity with which we had a personal, interactive connection.  We had a mutual interdependence with the nature around us.  The world was alive – the sun, the rain, the mountains and rivers, the animals – all had lives and wills of their own.  Our well being depended on the respect we showed it. As we progressed, and as earth-based mythology evolved into belief systems with deities residing elsewhere, and we finally became a world of science, we began to view the world as something separate, a thing to be explored and analyzed, dissected and investigated, full of inanimate objects whose value depended on their benefit to mankind. While there have obviously been positive results from this more scientific approach, our superior, controlling attitude has had the negative consequence of detaching and alienating us from nature.  (The day before, the WQXR opera had been Bernstein’s Candide.  In one part Candide returns to Europe from South America with a magic sheep with red wool.  He presents the sheep to the scientific community, who can’t explain it, so they cut it in half and put it on public display. I cited this as an example.)

So we have the two older brothers, who are proud of their cleverness and confident in it.  In the very beginning of the story we see that it does not serve them well, though they don’t seem to learn much from their failure to thrive.   Because of their arrogance, their confrontations with nature are self-serving and destructive.  Their desire to disturb the anthill is a childish impulse, a sort of infantile scientific curiosity to “see what happens.”  Their approach to the ducks and the bees is less random and more purposeful but still a manifestation of a self-orientation that reduces all else to what it can provide for us.

Simpleton, on the other hand, while his protection of the animals has no obvious motivation, seems to respect their independent existence as valuable in itself.  He is not clever; his actions derive from the heart and an acceptance of life as precious without evaluating its usefulness.  He is an emissary from the world of myth to his brothers’ utilitarian life view.

One of the puzzling things in the story for me has been that his brothers obey him.  No reason is given and this runs against their initial contempt for him. It does appear, though, that the heart has an authority that the mind must bow to.

There are three brother tales from all cultures and almost always the elder two fail because of their belief in their cleverness and the arrogance that results from it.  There is an understanding in fairy tales that real power lies elsewhere, in levels of understanding or feeling that underlie our rationality.

For Jung, logic and rationality are male psychic attributes.  And this brings us to the problem that starts the story.  Fairy tales begin with an issue that brings about a crisis, one that can be seen as a crisis of the psyche.  Here, as in many stories, it is very simple: we have a king who has three sons.  That’s the problem.  Where’s the queen?  Are there no sisters?  The feminine, the emotive, relating, compassionate element in the psyche is missing.  Where is it?  It is under enchantment, sleeping and locked away in a room without a key in a lifeless castle. A scholar named Donald Karlsbad wrote in 2002:

                        Experiences in early childhood that can cause unbearable psychic

                        pain or anxiety can leave the personality and the human spirit

                        threatened with destruction.  To avoid this, a defensive splitting

                        of the self occurs in which a “progressed” part of the self

                        casts a spell over the “repressed” part and locks it up in an inner

                        sanctum for safe keeping.

The enchantment in fairy tales is most often connected to the nature of the crisis.  While it is not clear what trauma may have affected the brothers, it is usually the case in stories with male protagonists that the crisis situation results in the repression of the feminine at the expense of the health of the whole.  We see the result in the behavior of the elder brothers.  Simpleton, however, has retained it, indicating that the problem is not beyond hope.  His connectedness is what gives him his power.  In general, however, things are out of balance.  It is the purpose of the tale, of the quest of the hero, to restore that balance.

For Jung, the feminine in the male psyche, the anima, is the call to life, the vital, invigorating, potentially chaotic force that draws us into involvement with the world.  In this case it has been locked away, repressed, though the elder brothers can’t really escape its power.  Their impulse to leave home and seek adventure shows it is here, and their descent into a disorderly life shows its negative power when not integrated in a healthy manner. One consequence of this is typically the exaggerated self-assurance and independence of the male; a deeper consequence is a stasis, a condition in which healthy growth and development have become impossible. 

One of the effects of Simpleton’s protection of animal life is that each episode brings us closer and closer to the heart of the problem.  Finally we arrive at a castle with a stable of stone horses.  Horses typically in fairy tales are beings of great energy and power.  Here they have been turned to stone.  The castle itself is empty except for a voiceless little gray old man behind a triple-locked door.  It takes three knocks to rouse him to unlock the three locks, one it seems for each brother.  This little man is a last vestige of the animate in an otherwise dead or comatose environment.  His presence is also an indication that not all is lost.  One of the common figures in fairy tales is what Jung calls the archetype of the spirit, sometimes an animal, a dwarf, or often an unprepossessing old man or old woman.  This figure is the force that can lead us through the chaos if we pay attention. In three-brother tales, the two elder brothers dismiss or insult such figures and are therefore blocked in their quest.  The third brother often shares food with the figure and then listens to the good advice.  In this case the spirit figure is small in stature and power, but is still able to grant access to the inner problem.  He can provide nourishment and rest and he knows the process by which health can be restored, though he cannot perform the task himself.  He is the gatekeeper, unlocking access to the hidden world.

So we come to the center of the problem.  The sleeping princess, the one that counts, is missing her pearls, the key to her bed chamber and, in a sense, her identity.  The two elder brothers, to their credit, work hard to perform the first task but they are foiled by their reliance on their own abilities.  They actually try too hard.  Their cleverness fails them again and they are blocked, turned to stone, unable to move, grow, develop or live. Still, they do succeed to a limited extent.  Trying hard is a good first step.

Simpleton tries hard too, but he succeeds only when he stops relying on his own ability and gives up, opening the way for powers to work that are usually obscured by conscious endeavor.  Sometimes we have to shut down the ego, give up the conscious drive to find the answer.  Then we open ourselves up to the possibility of help, wisdom emerging from elsewhere, from deeper in our mental powers, from our unconscious.  Respect for instinct, intuition, and the inner workings of the spirit gives us the insight we need to restore what has been lost.

What has been lost here with the repression of the feminine is generative power. When the two elder brothers wish to disturb the ants’ nest, they want to watch the ants rushing around carrying their eggs.  It’s an interesting detail and our first introduction to the thread of fertility that runs through the story. It continues with the ducks, though perhaps more obscurely.  Ducks pair off, marry in a sense, and lay their own eggs.   They have obscure erotic associations in Europe. They are sacred to Sequanah the European goddess of the Seine whose strength is healing.  In East Asia, maybe not relevant here, figures of ducks adorn wedding bed blankets and curtains.  The beehive is overflowing with sweetness and nourishment, and, one imagines, humming with vitality and activity.  More on the bees in a minute.

The service these creatures offer Simpleton is equally potent.  The thousand pearls of the princess are scattered in the forest hidden by the moss that has apparently overgrown them as they lie unused.  They must be retrieved before the princess can wake up.   Now this may be a stretch, but picture for a moment ants carrying pearls.  The image is an echo of the earlier vision of ants carrying their eggs.  Pearls have symbolic lunar and feminine associations and in this context, creepy as it may seem, they suggest not just the value of the gem, but the precious reproductive capacity of the princess.

Following that train of thought, the ducks fetch the key to the bedchamber of the princess.

The bees have numerous associations. A beehive will collapse without a queen.  We’ve seen what happens to the king’s family because of the lack of a queen.  The queen bee is he only fertile female in the hive.  She lays thousands of eggs.  The bee was one manifestation of the ancient fertility goddess.  Honey has been seen as both an aphrodisiac and a healing substance.  The three sleeping princesses differ in only one way.  They each tasted a different sweet before going to sleep.  Of the three - sugar, syrup, honey – honey is the only one that is not processed by man but is a purely natural substance.  When the queen bee lingers on the honeyed lips of the youngest princess she seems to be identifying the new queen, whose eggs have been gathered and who will now awaken to marry our hero and, we assume, generate future queens.  The enchantment is broken.  Those who have been turned to stone regain their living form. Life and balance, and the possibility of growth and a future, have been restored.  There is something of an ecological and environmental parable here.

There is a psychic parallel as well. The story is filled with images of the unconscious – the forest in which the pearls have been lost, the lake in which the key has been lost, the underground tunnels of the ants (which we don’t see but which are part of what we understand about ants), the collective hive of the bees, the enchanted castle.  When Simpleton gives up his conscious effort, he opens himself to the unconscious and to the creative forces of the spirit that emerge to heal the wounded mind.  This healing is not something that cleverness can accomplish by itself.  It needs power beyond our control.  In the end, the repressed content has been freed, balance is restored, we are healed and a new creative energy, a new king and queen, assumes the throne.

This tale, like all fairy tales, is less a narrative than a series of connected images, a series of metaphors, as it were, telling us a story about ourselves that is universal in content and much more complex than the words would suggest.

As Joseph Campbell wrote:  “The folktale is the primer of the picture language of the soul.”

              

              

Illustrations by Walter Crane (top) and Arthur Rackham