Making It Personal

by Julie Pasqual

When asked if I tell personal stories, my standard reply is: “NO!  My life is REALLY not interesting enough for that!!”  I usually accompany that with knocking on wood, for I find that stories, like movies based on real life, tend to lean towards the tragic, and, frankly, I want none of that.

         Of course, I am joking a bit, as I do have some interesting misadventures, and the story of how I met my husband is a quite cute, and I do talk about my beloved Nanny – my grandmother on my mother’s side, as a preface to one story.  But, generally, my thinking is – how could my life compare to the wonders found in folktales???  I mean, my getting a stranger to help me start my car in a not so great neighborhood in Newark, NJ, is not going to stack up besides the tale of a prince being born out of a rose, and then ending a war that had been fought so long no one even remembered what it was about!!   So, no I say with conviction, I do NOT tell personal tales.

          So, imagine my surprise when, having been asked to speak to a group of high school students about what makes a story good to tell, the first thing that I thought of was – it’s got to be personal.  Yes, soon after came the standard things one looks for in a tale – beginning, middle, and end, a nice balance of description and dialogue, and, for a new teller, not TOO long, or SO many characters.  But, in my heart, I kept coming back to the personal connection to EVERY story – long, short, or in between, I have with the stories in my repertoire. 

           For me, picking which tale to work on is sort of like falling in love.  Yes, there is the check list – narrative, length, appropriate for the audience and occasion I am catering to, but then, just like the way I found it so beguiling the way my husband walks down a hallway – there is something else.  The spark, the hook, the thing that the story articulates that even if it is in no way even remotely associated with my life in this century – is the thing that feels the most “me”.

           A lot of the times, it’s the mystery, it’s the thing that is not at all logical, practical, or every day, that most draws me to it – for, I have to admit, I LOVE the unknown, I ADORE that there are things I cannot understand or comprehend, and never, ever will.  To quote an older woman I met once, “There are some things that aren’t ours to know!”  LOVE THAT!!!!!

        And, other times, it’s the underlying message in the tale that gets me – the principles I wish I could really LIVE, and not just admire, and hope for.  Then there’s the MAGIC – big M magic – when things come to life or transform, wishes are granted, and our loved ones come back to us in some way.  The world of elves, fairies, and wizards is a place I feel VERY at home at, and can be more real to me than a ride on the subway.

         So, I guess what I have discovered is: do I tell tales about things that actually happened to me?  No, I do not (and again, I will knock on that good wood). But, do I tell personal stories??  I would have to say, I do.

            

In Praise of the Oral Tradition

by Maria LoBiondo

The word “storytelling” is bandied about so often these days, in so many different contexts, that I’m not totally surprised when people don’t understand what I’ll be doing with them as a storyteller. Some, I’m sure, expect me to open a version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales to read or appear in a character costume, maybe as a kindly grandmother fresh from the farm.

They must be surprised when they see me without a book or costume.

Now I’m all for reading books—reading is one of my greatest pleasures, both alone curled up in my favorite chair, and aloud, as I did with my kids when they were younger, especially at bedtime. It’s now part of our family lore how my daughter enjoyed extended bath times while my son and I sat together on the floor enrapt with the first Harry Potter novel. 

But as a storyteller, and especially as a Storytelling Arts storyteller, I’m interested in the oral tradition—an emphasis on the spoken word rather than the written one.

To find the stories I tell I read a lot of books, and when a tale strikes me—like Cupid’s arrow—I look for as many versions as possible, from as many different cultures as possible, before I set about learning it. I don’t memorize it; I picture the characters and the sequence as if it’s happening just as I’m telling it (for me it is!) and the words flow.

Recently I was taken by what author Julius Lester had to say about storytelling. Lester, whose Br’er Rabbit adventures are classics, wrote in 1985: “The page preserves a particular telling of a tale, but not the tale itself. The tale is merely the theme on which the storyteller improvises, revitalizing the tale and making it ever new. The tale can never be what is on the printed page because what can not be printed are the movement of the arms, the body motions, the gestures of the hands, which are as important and integral to the tales as the words. Stories are told in equal parts by the voice and the body.”

I’ve been a theater-lover for ages, admiring how actors transform themselves chameleon-like into new selves. I have fond memories of my brief stint before the footlights as “Mei Li” in a high school rendition of the musical “Flower Drum Song,” and in the Greek chorus of a college staging of “Iphigenia in Aulis.”

But in the oral tradition there is no “fourth wall,” the imaginary space between the audience and the actor on stage. For storytellers in the oral tradition and our listeners there are no walls at all. We’re all part of the experience as it happens at that particular moment.

Here’s what I say at the opening of many sessions so that we all understand what storytelling in the oral tradition means in the same way:

• Do you see a book in my hands? No? That’s because the stories are here—and I point to my head—and here—and I put my hand over my heart.
• We’re going to make the story come alive together. If I tell a story with no one listening, it would just be a bunch words. But when I tell the story with you, we’ll imagine what is happening in our mind’s eye, each in our own way, and all together at the same time. You are needed to make the story live.

Storytelling in the oral tradition offers an individual and a community experience. It allows each person present to take what he or she needs from the tale at that moment in time. And if we are fortunate to hear the story again—maybe from the same teller, maybe from a different one—the plot may be familiar but the tale will be new and we’ll be enriched by it again. 

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"