Storytelling week 1

Storytelling week 1

 

Tuesday: I found Tuesday a very interesting and productive day it was my introduction to the unit as I had missed Monday. By telling different stories in groups it allowed me to be involved in and watch different ways of storytelling. The things I found most interesting were when the performers would surprise me with a way of telling their story and the delivery of lines. For example I felt victors group assaulted the senses very well with different sound affects stomping and the use of the fan were really effective and helped picture the scenes they were explaining this was aided by taking our (the audience) sight away which really helped make the performance unique. I was also really impressed with the way Cody’s group told the story from the unlikely source of the view from some goats I felt this meant they could play around with the story in a really creative way allowing the audience to hear the story in a really different way from what I have previously experienced. One of the most useful exercises for me was when we decided to break down the stories into its main themes and discuss why we find these themes interesting and how they can link together to create a story. For me this helped me understand when creating a performance its important to look at the themes and how they can possibly link for example betrayal and revenge would link very well and help you create the Skelton of the story straight away.

From Tuesday I felt that I learnt that’s important to look at different creative ways to tell a story to really grip an audience and it’s also good to explore the atmosphere set and the placement of the audience not just the delivery of the story.

Wednesday: we started Wednesday by having a workshop in gamelan music this was really fun and interesting to play the music our class had to work in unison which helped prove how important being in sync is and how it improves the overall performance. What I also found hugely interesting was the atmosphere the music created and felt that it was perfect way for setting the mood for a storyteller to tell a story over. This got me thinking about how powerful music is at setting a mood and that it’s the perfect platform for any storyteller letting the music dictate the pace and flow of the performance. An instrumental which I felt would be perfect to use in a dark performance that keeps building up would be Intro from DMX’s album its dark and hell is hot it was in fact used by mike Tyson as his entrance into the ring because it was so menacing I feel this would be great for a platform to story tell over.

In the afternoon we told a folk tale and a personal story each this was incredibly looking at the different styles of delivery of performances and how people changed when it came from switching story’s from folk tales to personal stories. The difference in technique did not take anything away from anyone’s performances but instead just gave a different experience in each performance. For example victor’s high energy explosive and visual performance of his first story grabbed my attention immediately and was very enjoyable but so was Jakkos but his style was much more minimalist without so much movement but this added to his performance as it made me really picture and concentrate on what he was saying and made me work as an audience member. Both these styles worked really well and showed how diverse you can be in storytelling and that you can explore millions of ways of telling the same story. One thing I found interesting was exploring how to tell a story in a different way I decided to tell my personal story in a metaphorical way making many of the metaphors obvious but making some more up to the audience to interpret as they like for example in my story I mention a dark forest and a pack or snarling wolves but it’s up to the audience to interpret as they want does the dark forest represent a rough part of town or does it represent depression? It’s completely up to the audience. I hoped this technique worked from the general feedback I think it did but next week I plan to ask the class what they thought of it to get an overall assessment of it.

I learned how powerful combining music with storytelling could be and that there are many different ways to enhance a storytelling performance. I also learnt many different ways of telling a story and that it could be as explosive or as minimalistic as you want it to be.

Thursday: on Thursday we focused heavily on the story of Beowulf and different techniques to tell parts of the story for example shadow puppetry or only using one isolated part of the body to tell the story. I found this a great use of inspiration for coming up with ideas and really helped me with thinking outside the box when creating performances. By trying so many different techniques we all managed to come up with some really interesting performances some I felt that worked really well was the use of powerful music (our Viking inspired instrumental) use of lights (spot lights) working with paper to isolate parts of the body or the use of it for shadow puppetry.

This whole day was one big creative explosion I felt that I learnt so many new ways of performing and it really helped me become more creative with ideas of delivering a performance.

Some key ideas I liked from the week:

 Reaction of audience affects the energy and pace of the performance

Music can be very powerful as a mood setter

Try doing each performance in several ways

Each style of storytelling work it’s just about perfecting the way of telling it through that style.