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From: Dr Eric Miller
<eric@storytellinginstitute.org> (PhD in Folklore, MSc in
Psychology) Director, World Storytelling Institute, Chennai Storytelling
Festival, and "Storytelling by and for
Adults" Series. Website, www.storytellingandvideoconferencing.com Date: March 2021 Note: We are one year into the
pandemic, and into "storytelling via videoconferencing" in
earnest. There has been a great deal
of improvement by Storytellers regarding their storytelling, and their
teaching of storytelling, via videoconferencing. Let's keep up the great work! Storytelling via Videoconferencing
and In-person: Tips and Suggestions 1) Ways Storytelling is
different from Speech-making. 2) One might tell in a
relaxed, personal, and intimate manner. 3) Please do not recite
memorised words, or read words aloud from page or screen. 5) Let characters speak
for themselves, as much as possible. 6) Addressing listeners
as if they were story characters. 7) Finding -- or
creating -- stories. 9) Discussion and
role-play after storytellings. 10) The need for
lighting from in-front-of one. 11) If possible, please
use a computer, not a phone or tablet. 12) Email etiquette
request: Please address me by my first name, and please sign with your first
name. ___________________________________ 1) Ways Storytelling is
different from Speech-making. A
difference between speech-making and storytelling is: A speech
is made to give a message. A story
is told to activate the listener's imagination -- and to stimulate the
listener's thinking process. Especially
in the case of "Storytelling by and for adults," story listeners
are expected to "make sense of the story" on their own. Listeners could figure out messages for
themselves (and share them in post-telling discussions). *** There is
an emphatic style of speaking that suits a large stage, in a large room or
hall. But with videoconferencing, the
listener may be just inches away from one's image on a screen. The listener may be sitting at a table, or
lying in bed. In this
context, one might tone down one's emphatic-ness. This emphatic-ness may be too forceful for
videoconferencing. It may not be
gentle and personal enough. *** Storytelling
in this context means: One does not
explain the story to the listeners.
One does not advise the listeners what to do. Rather, one just presents the events of the
story, and lets the story speak for itself.
One invites the listeners to join one in the story's imaginary world. *** By the
way -- I do not refer to storytelling as a performance. Storytelling is too "real" to be
a performance. The person I learned
storytelling from, Laura Simms, often speaks of storytelling as a ritual -- a
process that can put one in touch with deep parts of oneself and others, as
well as with energies of the cosmos. ____________________ 2) One might tell in a
relaxed, personal, and intimate manner. In CSF 2021 and in the SBFA series, almost all of the
listeners would be adults. For
storytellers who are accustomed to telling to children, this would be a
different experience. *** I suggest: resist any temptation to speak in a lecturing,
instructing, declaring, or announcing tone of voice. Just talk like you are just sitting around
with some friends -- using a relaxed, informal, intimate tone. I call this the "candid" style of
storytelling. Notes on this style are here. Take your time. Do
not rush. Once in a while, pause and
let things sink in. Few
things in life are worse than rushed storytelling. Because when storytelling is rushed, the
storyteller cannot enact -- and listeners cannot see and hear -- each
character's unique ways of speaking and moving. We cannot get into the emotions of
characters, or consider the thinking processes behind characters' behaviors,
each step of the way. "Variety
is the spice of life." Alternate
between speaking: A) Loud / soft. B) High pitch / low pitch. C) Fast / slow. ____________________ 3) Please do not recite
memorised words, or read words aloud from page or screen. Please do
not memorize and recite all of the words of a story, and do not read the
words of a story aloud from page or screen. (Ideally, please do not even look
at notes.) Please do 1)
Memorise the events of the story. 2)
Visualise the story events as you are telling. 3)
Improvise the spoken words you use, to assist the listeners to also visualise
the story events. 4)
Interact with listeners as much as possible.
There is a
special feeling of wholeness and connectedness (within a teller, and between
a teller and listeners) when the words of a story are improvised (or
semi-improvised) -- that is, when a story is told without the words being
memorised, and without the words being read aloud. Before
and during your storytelling: visualise and feel the various story
situations, and let your words -- along with your tone of voice, facial
expressions, gestures, etc -- arise on their own, in improvised (or
semi-improvised) ways, to help your listeners also visualise and feel these
situations. ____________________ 4) The eye contact
dilemma: Whether to look into the camera, or at the image of the person one
is talking with? Alternate
between looking at viewers' images, and looking into the camera (which gives
your viewers the impression of eye contact with you). You might
set your Zoom window to "Gallery view" as you tell, or you might
"pin" one listener's image (magnifying it), so you could tell
especially to this person. The
listeners-viewers would be conducting their parts of the conversations
largely via their facial expressions. In a
videoconference: if the camera is above the screen -- when one looks at the
image of a person one is talking to, that person (and all of the other
participants in the videoconference) sees one looking downward. To give
videoconference listeners-viewers the sense that one is looking at them (that
is, the sense of eye-contact) -- one needs to look at the camera (not at the
images of the listeners-viewers). One thing
one could do is: Recent
versions of Zoom allow one to drag participants' rectangles around the
window, and place these rectangles where one wishes. When telling -- if one is looking at others
in the Gallery View (with numerous equal-size rectangles in the Zoom window)
-- one could drag the rectangle showing the image of a person one really
wants to tell to (that is, to talk with) to the top row, in the center. Then it
is as if that person is in the front row, center, of a physical
audience. Then, even if one looks at
the camera as one tells, one could occasionally and/or peripherally look down
slightly, to the top row center, to see the image of one's selected primary
listener. It might
also be a good idea to drag the rectangle showing one's own image to the
bottom row (the equivalent of the back row of a physical audience). ____________________ 5) Let characters speak
for themselves, as much as possible. Alternate
between speaking as the narrator, and speaking as characters. Please
avoid summarising, and reporting about, what characters said. Rather, please seek to act-out characters,
to speak and move as characters. That is,
as much as possible, let the characters speak for themselves. Use unique ways of speaking and moving for
each character, at each moment of the story. Listeners
tend to be much more interested to witness characters' behaviours directly,
to "meet" and (psychologically) interact with characters -- rather
than to have the characters and their behaviours be summarised, and be
reported about, by you. Having
characters speak for themselves is an excellent way to generate feelings
about story events -- in tellers and in listeners-viewers. Consider
the emotions that arise as you tell the story. What emotions do the characters feel? If you feel these emotions, your listeners
would also. *** Characters
may speak to other characters -- or they may speak to themselves. ____________________ 6) Addressing listeners
as if they were story characters. A secret
of storytelling is that when one plays a character who is addressing another
character, one puts one's listeners into the psychological (emotional and
intellectual) position of the character who is being addressed. If a
teller is aware of this phenomena, the teller can use it to truly enthrall
and entrance listeners. ____________________ 7) Finding -- or
creating -- a story. For CSF
2021 (Chennai Storytelling Festival 2021, in Feb 2021) the requested story
theme is Healing, Growing, and/or
Maturing. Some of my notes on "Healing stories" are here. For the
SBFA (Storytelling by and for Adults) series through August 2021 -- a
suggested story theme is, "An
Interesting Conversation." In both
cases -- Any kind
of story could be told (including Personal-experience stories, Historical
stories, Folktales including Fairytales, Original creative stories, etc). You might
consider telling about a theme-related incident, 1) In
your own life. 2) In the life of someone you know, or have heard about. 3) In the life of a character from a fairytale, history,
epic, legend, or myth. You might
start with a personal-experience story, and change aspects of it to create a
semi-fictional story. *** I coach people to create and develop stories. Three contexts in which story composition could be done
are, 1) Counselling/Therapy ("Healing stories"), 2) Life Coaching ("Transforming stories") and 3) Making Art (writing novels, screenplays, etc). *** Regarding
the theme of Healing, Growing, and/or
Maturing: If you
might like to read some fairytales -- or stories that are fairytale-ish -- I
would recommend the 12 stories that could be accessed here. Any of
these stories -- and fairytales in general -- could be considered to be
relating to Healing, Growing, and/or
Maturing. ____________________ 8) Preparing to tell a
story. There is
no substitute for being very familiar with the story one is going to tell,
for knowing the story inside and out.
In addition to practicing telling the story to friends and family
members, you could: A) Draw
the events of the story, in the format of your choice. One could draw a map of the story events. B) Write
out the story. (You would not be doing
this to create a perfect, final text that would be memorised or read
aloud. You would be doing it just to get
everything out, and down on paper, so you could observe the whole in a cool,
detached manner -- and plan your improvised telling accordingly. You might note when the narrator would be
speaking, and when characters would be speaking.) *** Editing
a storytelling (reducing its duration) One way
to edit a storytelling is: 1) Become
very clear regarding the series of events in a story. 2)
Consider what the story is especially "about" to you. 3) Spend
most of the telling time at places in the story where things are "really
coming out," where decisions are being debated and made, etc. Please do justice to these places in the
story by giving the step-by-step dialogue, and by communicating the step-by-step
thinking processes of characters, in these places. 4) Spend
less time in the places building up to these transitional and transformative
places. *** Think
about: What sets
the story into motion? What disturbs a
situation that had been stationary?
Tell this part of the story especially clearly and crisply. What are
key "meanings," "points," and "turning points"
of the story for you? Build your
performance around these elements. ____________________ 9) Discussion and
role-play after storytellings. In both
the Chennai Storytelling Festival and the SBFA (Storytelling by and for
Adults) series: One is
requested to tell one's story in approximately 10 minutes. Immediately after this, there would be
approximately 10 minutes of (appreciative) discussion about the story and the
way one had told it, and possibly some role-playing with story characters The
role-playing may involve me, you, and/or others (imaginatively, and very
respectfully) speaking to and as characters in the story that has just been
told. We do this to further immerse
ourselves in the stories. This
activity often leads to interesting discoveries about the stories and our
reactions to them. ____________________ 10) The need for
lighting from in-front-of one. For
photography/film/video/videoconferencing, a light source in front of one --
shining on one from in-front-of one -- is needed. A
practical way to do this may be: get a desk lamp and place it in front of
you, directed towards you. Or, use a
lamp to bounce the light against the wall that is in front of you. Also --
please do your best to eliminate or reduce light that is coming from behind
you (such as windows with no curtains).
Light coming from behind you tends to make the image of you darker. ____________________ 11) If possible, please
use a computer, not a phone or tablet. With the
larger screen of a computer -- one could see the faces of listeners much
better, and one could choose between more options for screen configuration. If one must use a phone,
please do not hold the phone as you tell. If one is holding the phone, 1) That hand and arm cannot be used to help tell the
story. 2) The camera moves with every move one makes. This can be highly distracting. So if using a phone, please seek to stablise it on a table
or desk, perhaps using a stack of books or boxes to bring the phone's camera
to one's eye level. ____________________ 12) Email etiquette
request: Please address me by my first name, and please sign with your first
name. If one addresses a person by the person's first name, and signs
with both of one's names, one is showing more respect and formality to
oneself than one is showing to the person to whom one is writing. When one addresses someone by the person's first name, it seems
to me that it is optimally polite to also sign one's email with one's first
name -- followed, if one might like, by one's first and second name (and
optionally, one's title), a line or two below. Such as, > Best regards, > > - Eric > > Dr. Eric Miller ___________________________________ "Chennai Storytelling
Festival 2021 -- The Healing Power of Story, Storytelling, and
Story-enacting," 108 hours
of (FREE) Zoom Storytelling Performances and Workshops, 6th-7th /
13th-14th / 20th-21st / 27th-28th Feb 2021 "Storytelling by and
for Adults" (FREE)
Open-mic Storytelling series on the
first Monday of each month (via Zoom), World Storytelling Institute
(based in Chennai, India) Offering
Storytelling-related Workshops, Courses, Life
Coaching, and Psychological Counselling (using a
Storytelling Therapy method). We
provide training / coaching / counselling AND also train trainers / coaches /
counsellors. *** "Exploring Stories
through Drama: Storytelling Therapy and Psychodrama." A 40-hour Course, co-presented by the WSI
and the Indian Institute of Psychodrama.
Starting Wed 13th Jan 2021. On
Wednesdays and Fridays, 5pm-8pm. |
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