HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT STORY SLAMS?

A Story Slam is a live storytelling event, often a competition, quite similar to poetry slams. Originally organized in 2001 by The Moth which is a non-profit literary society from New York City, the slam phenomenon has rapidly spread across North America. If you live in or near a reasonably sized city in Canada, the chances are good that there is a Story Slam event happening there.

While Story Slams don’t necessarily have to be a competition, there are some simple rules that govern how the slam experience unfolds. Each storyteller, called a ‘slammer’, has five minutes to tell a story. Usually it has to be a personal story that is true but more recently, some Slams have been allowing what they call ‘partly true’ stories to be told. You can’t read your story, you can’t use notes or cue cards to prompt you. Exceeding your five minutes is really discouraged and if you are in a Slam competition, you lose points for going over five minutes.

Competition Slams require judges and a score card. Often members of the audience are chosen from random volunteers to be judges. Or sometimes there are celebrities or professional storytellers who act like the judges on American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance.

As a relatively new storyteller myself, I am slowly becoming addicted to searching out and watching Story Slam videos on the internet. For the most part, many of tellers you see in these clips are not the pro tellers, just Jim and Jane, the couple next door. But gosh darn are some of these folks entertaining and their stories really grab you, body and soul.

A browser search of the internet while I was writing this post, revealed over 80 million hits for the words ‘Story Slam’. While some of these sites may not be the type of slam we are writing about here, many will be, so you can see the huge interest in this form of storytelling.

One of the most popular sites to check is The Moth (www.themoth.org). I started with this one but quickly checked out many other sites and their videos.

If you are thinking about getting into storytelling for fun or profit or both, start checking out the Story Slam sites. But be cautious. You just might be starting something that you can’t stop. And then you will find yourself seriously seeking out a local storytelling group to get your ‘fix’ as a teller or a listener or even better, as both. 

Who knows? I may see and hear you at our next storytelling meeting!

Get Slamming!

Author is Don Herald (member of Peterborough Storytellers) August, 2012

TELLING STORIES IN MASK (WITH PHOTOS)

By Rita Grimaldi

         

Since 1994 I have been performing stories in mask. These performances follow this pattern; first I drum a steady even heartbeat rhythm. Then I add voice to this rhythm telling the audience that we will enter another realm - the realm of the story. After this I stop drumming and lift the mask and put it on. Raising a small mirror I look through the eyeholes of the mask at my changed face. I lay the mirror down and begin to speak in the first person, not in my voice but in the voice of the story character. I am someone else. I tell the story with that person’s face and body and being. I have done this process many times - for small and large audiences - outdoors and inside. But I have never really understood it. Now I write to gain understanding.

Making the Mask

The process of mask making begins with my own face. Plastercine or clay is molded onto a plaster replica of my face. The eyes of the mask are molded over my eyes leaving a round hole at the pupil so I can see through the mask eyes. The mouth of the mask is over my mouth and when I talk the mask mouth moves as my mouth moves. At the moment I begin to tell the story the mask person and I form on being.

A Doorway of Faces

Coyote was my first story mask. It was beyond my sculpting skills to make coyote’s face but he flowed out from my hands onto the plasticine. The first story I performed in this mask was the story of Coyote’s love for a girl whose family rejected him. His voice was strong. I felt the power of his ability to bring her back to life after her death and the friction of his relationship to her human family. Many masks followed. Here is my litany of the masks I have made between 1992 and 2002: three bear masks, three bird masks, Granny Shelock. two young girls, Katrine from Beckets Mother Courage, Coyote, Monkey King, a native woman and a native man, two bone dwarves, a goat, fierce rose and a tree spirit I saw in a dream. All these faces are like doorways into someone else’s world. I enter this world not as myself but as the story character the mask represents. When performing in mask, the doorway and the mask identity bond into the story. The story becomes my life for the time I tell it.

Less and Less

In the last nine years I have only performed stories in mask three times and I have made no new masks. Why has my mask making and performing of stories in mask diminished so radically? If I examine my deeper story choices in the last nine years I see that I have become enamoured with words. I enjoy the words themselves rather than the experience of being the words. Somewhere I lost the bravery of becoming the story person. I lost the courage to take on the story person’s voice and physicality and feelings. It became easier to just tell the story. I don’t mean to say that during the mask period I did not tell stories out of mask. I did. But the most powerful experiences were telling in mask. And these experiences I have for the most part set aside.

A Child absorbs Rita’s Mask Storytelling.

In 1996 I told the story of Bone Dwarf in mask at the Peterborough Folk Festival. In 1997 I was again telling stories at the Peterborough Folk Festival and after the telling a little girl came up to me with her mother. She looked up at me and said, “You’re the one who told Windigo stories. I said yes. Then her mother told me that after hearing my stories the year before her daughter had had a great desire to hear more Windigo stories. So the mother had searched until she found a book containing these stories. The little girl cut in and kept asking me to come to her house to see this book. I was really touched. I could hardly believe that a four-year-old child could have such a bond with this story and the Bone Dwarf mask.

Our Identity and the Identity of the Old Story Characters

Last week, thinking of writing on mask, I asked my partner Paul what it was like to hear me tell stories in mask. He answered, “It isn’t you who is telling the story. It is some one else”.

All of us have our habitual identity or gestalt of identities.

To give up being who we are even for a short time takes risk and courage.

The reward for doing this in mask is profound.

It allows the seeing of the world with other eyes.

And on top of the milk of seeing as someone else sees

Is the cream of seeing another reality through those eyes.

The reality of the story or myth the mask character lives in.

This is the old reality,

The reality before that of our modern world,

The reality that we dream in

And hope in

And die in.

                                                                      COYOTE MASK

                   

                                                   BONE DWARF MASK

August 22, 2012

Posted with the permission of Rita Grimaldi. Rita is a founding member of the Peterborough Storytellers and is an active, popular story teller in her community.

SUMMARY OF FIRST GATHERING OF STORYTELLING GROUPS IN ONTARIO

JUNE, 2012

GRAFTON, ONTARIO

Submitted by June Brown

                Ontario is a vast province with about 18 storytelling groups. The distance between groups, our winter weather, the time and date of storytelling meetings, (usually a week day or night) the cost of travel and motels, make visits between tellers almost impossible. The consequence of so many obstacles is that most storytellers have few opportunities, other than the internet, to share experiences and stories with tellers outside their geographic area. To address this problem of 'not knowing each other,' Brenda Byers and June Brown, as co-reps for 'Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada', decided to sponsor a gathering of Ontario tellers. The underlying goal was to make connections. Tellers who were emerging would have an opportunity to meet established tellers, formal guilds would meet with informal groups, eastern tellers would meet western tellers and northern tellers would meet southern tellers and SC-CC members would meet non-members. At the end of this gathering we hoped people would have stronger connections.

The campfire glowed red in the twilight as the lusty chants from the paddling voyageurs drifting over the tree tops. We were paddling down the most dangerous lake in Canada, Lake Winnipeg, under the direction of Zabe MacEachren a Kingston storyteller. This campfire and storytelling session was just one of the many enjoyable happenings that took place during the 'New Voices and Old Wisdom' gathering on June 8, 9 and 10th, 2012, near Grafton Ontario. It was an historic event for Ontario tellers. Never before had so many of them gathered for the sole purpose of connecting with each other.

                Planning is everything and we tried to cover every detail from food to travel. After many hours of work we had a varied program with lots of opportunities over three days to interact with other tellers, have fun and learn something new. On the morning of the opening day we arrived at the site with great enthusiasm. We had great weather, good attendance, a well-planned program and volunteer support from Anna and Connie. As we entered the house, Brenda and I breathed a sigh of relief. The hard part was over. All we had to do was run the program. This state of smugness lasted until we turned on the water. When a silky brown mud poured from the tap we knew we were in trouble. What was missed in our preparations was a contingency plan for a total pumping failure. Some fast thinking, bottled water, a port-a-potty and signs posted around the site saved the day. As people arrive we told them to pretend they were camping, and they did.

                Our first event was a wine and cheese, followed by a tell-around under the stars. We heard stories old and new and we discovered that the real Hermione in the Harry Potter stories was probably a storyteller from Peterborough!

                On Saturday there were meet-and-greet sessions, two excellent workshops led by Heather Whaley and Norm Perrin, a discussion about storytelling in Ontario led by Bruce Carmody, and opportunities for fellowship and fun with a mystery lunch, a pot luck supper, tell-arounds and a 'Trivial Pursuit' with a storytelling theme that took everyone through the woods. The trail wound its way beside and over a babbling stream, past century old trees, cedar groves and drifts of royal ferns. Storytelling questions dangled from the trees and bushes testing the group's memory and storytelling knowledge, e.g. ‘Can you name 3 stories that feature footwear?’. Long cedar benches were placed in two strategic spots and as the hikers sat they listened as storytelling giant, Bob Sherman and wood fairy, Deborah Dunleavy told them a tale. The hike was one of the highlights of the weekend.

                As the weekend unfolded, Brenda and I knew our goal of connecting tellers had been achieved. All around us we could see clusters of tellers who had never met before deep in conversation. We could hear laughter and people making plans to meet again. When the gathering ended forty tellers went home with new storytelling ties, a stronger connection to the art of storytelling and our province.

                In September, an Ontario 'travel and billeting program' will be launched to build on the connections made at the Gathering. This is good news for storytellers and Ontario communities. They will now be able to hear new storytelling voices and stories.

This article was posted with the permission of J. Brown and B. Myers