SOME STORIES ARE BETTER WHEN IN A PICTURE...

JOHNNY MACRAE'S POETRY WORKSHOP

By Betty Bennett

On January 22, Rita Grimaldi and I joined a workshop at The Spill, sponsored by the Peterborough Youth Poetry Experience, featuring Johnny MacRae, a spoken word artist from BC. 

Johnny does a lot of work in BC high schools. His energy and manner invite a warm rapport with young or older workshop participants, and bridge the gap between what may be perceived as “old, boring” poetry and hip, youthful spoken word.

 

Johnny opened his workshop with a discussion about how he uses objects as a device to describe feelings that might otherwise be difficult to express or to hear.  The vase, the coat, the old boots become the narrator, creating a slightly easier distance between the poet/ the listener and the emotion.

He then led us through a set of exercises or play to loosen us up physically, release inhibitions or stress and make us more conscious observers of the other workshop participants. The warm-up was vocalizing a non-verbal sound accompanied by a physical gesture, small or exaggerated, and passing it around the circle.  

We moved on to “zooming”.  Making eye contact and “zooming” an imaginary ball across a circle to someone you don’t know. When another group is holding a meeting nearby in the same space, it certainly deals with any shyness you might feel about looking silly. 

The final part of the workshop was a partnered exercise in which we each described an object precious or special to us after gazing steadily into our partners eyes for a full minute.  Not easy to do, whether with someone you know or a stranger.  The eyes, it is said, are the windows of the soul, and this alone is a challenging piece of performance art.  

After we described our object, our partner took ten minutes to write their impressions of our object from our description of it.  

At the end of the exercise, we had the option of sharing our written piece with the group.  The impressions ranged from brief, evocative meditations to fully realized poems. 

It was an engaging workshop, led by a supportive, encouraging and generous artist.  Using an object as narrator is an idea that, I think, would lend itself not only to poetry, but to developing a different point of view for traditional or personal storytelling.

WRITING STORY AND POETRY

BY RITA GRIMALDI

The first poetry workshop teacher I encountered was Johnny MacRae.

He said that his kind of poetry was based on communicating emotion; that this emotion entered the audience so that the poem lodged in their own needs and in their own experiences.

After the workshop I wrote a poem that was all feeling.

The second poetry workshop teacher I encountered just gave what the poets call a word prompt. Her word was 'basement'.

Then my storyteller side came out.

She said, “Remember the time that there was a rat in the basement.”

I began to write the story of the rat in the basement.

Some how the story had music skating around its edges. This music made it poetry.

The words of Johnny MacRae were still with me.

The words that said that emotion was the driving energy of poetry.

So my heart began to beat for rat

I felt for rat

I had sympathy for rat

My hands wrote rat’s epilogue.

Here is Rat’s Poem.

The Basement                                                                                            

I am a small girl

I go down into our basement kitchen

A rat appears

Everyone is screaming

I have come down to have my mother check my reading

Everything stops.

The men, my father and his brothers get brooms

They begin to chase the rat

To hit the rat

To smash the rat

To clobber the rat

To defeat the rat

To massacre the rat

Finally it is dead

My father picks it up by the tail

Holding it by the tail, he carries it into the furnace room

The door to the coal-burning furnace has a small circle for a window

I see the flame

My father opens the door

A great rectangle of flames appears

The rat is thrown in

The rat disappears into the flames

The iron door closes.

What did the rat want?

Did it want food?

Did it want love?

Did it want attention?

Why did it risk running out in front of humans?

What was its intention?

As a child I observed what happened

I felt nothing

But now I feel for the rat

How difficult an end to be consumed in the rage of men

And burned to a crisp in a fire.

Postscript

What if storytellers were to speak their stories in poetry?

Then, oh then, they would have a whole other audience for their craft.

TEACHING MASK

by Rita Grimaldi

Last month I was privileged to do a presentation on mask for the Indigenous Storytelling course at Trent University in Peterborough. My masks came with me as well as materials to demonstrate how I make masks.

v  The Body Follows The Face

After talking about the process of making masks, I began to show pictures of myself performing in mask. As I talked about how the body will follow the identity of the masked face. I said,

 “Here I am in a young girl mask. I am standing tall and straight in the stance of a young girl.”

“And here I am in the mask of an old woman, telling the story of Granny Shelock. See how I have the physicality of an old woman.”

"And finally, here I am telling a Billy goat story and kicking up my goat heels.”

I was fascinated to see these pictures. I was fascinated to see evidence that what I wanted to say to the students was really true. The body follows the face. And if a mask transforms the face, the body will align itself to the transformed face.

v  The Mask Storytelling

I performed two stories. The first is a coyote story that I have told so often that it is embedded in the history of my coyote mask.

Then, preparing to tell the story of Mother Bear and her adopted human boy cub, I read from our four-week blog. After that I told the story. My body filled with the energy of Mother Bear. And when the boy cub spoke, it was filled with his fear and courage.

v  What I Wanted To Share With The Students

Along with the practical instruction of mask making, I wanted to share the important message that working in mask is a form of storytelling. It allows the self to become another - another of any age, of any animal, of any degree of power and strength. I hope that some part of this message came to the students. One said to me as I left, “That was a very good presentation.”

v  Postscript - Seeing The Student’s Perform

Two weeks after my teaching session, I went to see the students perform in mask. I was so pleased to see that all students had made and decorated masks. The masks were painted to go with the stories they performed.

There was a blue rabbit mask to transform the wearer into a rabbit.

A gold mask with a spider web drawn on to it transformed a young man into a supernatural being.

Perhaps my favorite masked beings were the young women wearing simple deer masks. These masks were a simple beige colour and along with the masks, the performers wore wristlets and anklets of beige fake-fur. The deer movements were beautifully danced – so light on the feet – so light on the ground – that even without sound the movements told us that these were real dear going about the forest.

For me it was so fine to have contributed to the production of these masks and thereby to the experience of these 19 students transforming into other beings and animals.

January 14, 2015

Rita can be contacted at peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca

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FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

By Don Herald of Peterborough Storytellers

REASON 1: STORYTELLING EXPANDS MY COMFORT ZONE

Five years ago when I first began attending Peterborough Storytellers, I was no stranger to telling stories. I did it as part of my job. I did it with family and friends. And occasionally I would try out a quick story idea with the nice, but bored lady at my local Tim’s drive-through window. If you asked, my wife and kids would say that I rarely met a crowd or audience that I didn’t like and if you handed me a live microphone, well it was performance time!

At my first ever gathering of storytellers, I went along as the interested but curious guest of a relative. It was held in the auditorium of the local library and about ten or twelve other people were already there. Chairs were arranged in a semi-circle around another chair that was facing the circle. On a colourful swatch of fabric spread out in front of the chair was a ‘talking stick’. Tradition in storytelling circles is that the teller of the moment holds the stick as a symbol that they have been given the authority by the listeners to talk without interruption.

That evening several of the more experienced members of the group told tales they had adapted or taken directly from myths, folk lore or legends. I was impressed with how each of these women crafted their story, performing it with much energy and enthusiasm. Everyone, myself included, was drawn into the stories in powerful and often unexpected ways. I just had to be part of this night, so unexpectedly I found myself picking up the talking stick and sharing a personal story from my time as a social worker. I was hooked. From then until now, I have held the stick at just about every gathering.

My local tellers perform their stories not only with words but drum, flute, harp, song, masks and amazing character voices. I realized that if I was going to do well at this new activity, I had to get far more disciplined about my preparation and delivery. I had to invite both helpful and critical comments from my more experience group members. I should take a storytelling course or two. I must plan to attend other telling events with fresh tellers that I didn’t spend time with on a regular basis. Instead of reading only what my wife somewhat sarcastically calls ‘Who Shot The President’ type books, I must make room for books, articles and videos on the art of storytelling by some of the best author-tellers in the US and here in Canada. It was all going to be a new and I admit, strange and unfamiliar type of oral storytelling for me.

I have been at it now for five years. I’m a reasonably good teller but I know I could become even better with more focused learning and practice. Yes, I sometimes feel awkward within my new storytelling comfort zone, but I think that’s as it should be.

REASON 2: STORYTELLERS ARE INTERESTING PEOPLE

People have always fascinated me. Everyone has a story to tell and over the years as a social worker and consultant I’ve heard many. All the way from the totally weird, gross and disgusting to exhilarating, marvelous and inspiring tales from folks I don’t really know at all to the intimate sharing with my family and friends.

I think that being a collector of stories about the human condition is one of the reasons I became a counsellor, educator and consultant. I worked hard at it for over forty-three years. When my kids were teenagers, they often warned their friends who would meet me for the first time, “Watch out when you meet my Dad. The next thing you know, you’ll be telling him stuff that you’d never tell anyone else!”  

Being a good listener, someone who listens with both head and heart, just seems to come naturally for me. I treasure many of the personal life stories that were freely shared with me over the years. It’s from that vast storehouse of shared stories that I create most of the ones that I now tell at storytelling gatherings.

As a listener and a teller, attending these events has introduced me to many others who share a passionate interest in the art of storytelling. Through the shared experience of listening to a well told story by a person I have never met before, I’m openly invited into their private world of experiences, thoughts and opinions. Tragic stuff. Totally funny stuff. Odd stuff. Deeply felt experiences that are often unfamiliar to me personally. But through what they choose to share in the story, I begin to gain a new appreciation or helpful understanding that I would likely have never had if not for this special moment with them.

In my limited but growing experience, the men and women who enjoy telling tales in front of public audiences, equally enjoy talking about their own journeys of self-discovery through telling and listening. While each story is unique, they all share the qualities of passion and excitement, sometimes wonder and often a burning desire to have meaningful, unspoken conversations with those that listen to their stories.

Several summers ago, I spent a leisurely afternoon in the cool shade of an aging barn, sharing favourite tales with tellers from slightly afar, most of whom I had never met before. As often happens, each teller preceded his or her story with an interesting anecdote about the story’s origins and usually what this story means to them personally. During dinner, I moved from person to person, asking about their story or telling them how their tale had connected with me. Even though I was the most inexperienced of the dozen or so tellers at this gathering, some enthusiastically offered encouragement and helpful insights about my stories and performance.

In October of 2012, I spent three days immersing myself in the many varied telling events at the 40th anniversary celebration of the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Unbelievably, twelve thousand enthusiastic storytelling fans made their annual pilgrimage from all over the continent to listen to well told tales from all genres performed by some of North America’s best and beloved tellers.

But it was the listeners from whom I leaned the most. Before or after presentations, spontaneous conversations would begin among strangers. Usually it started with an opinion about the story, the performance or the artist but then quickly moved into the sharing of personal experiences of telling and listening.

I remember talking with a recently retired locomotive driver who had been a cop before that. He had stopped me in the street outside a performance tent about an experience he had as a cop in the mid-west. In a personal story that I had told in a Slam competition earlier, a cop character triggered a memory he wanted to share with me. 

With noticeable emotion, he told me of growing up in a Home for Boys from an early age. But since retiring a year ago, he was now avidly pursuing storytelling as a retirement activity that he hoped someday to turn into his third career. He shared some incredible stories of the men and women with whom he worked on the railroad and a few of the perils facing crews. I think he will make a compelling and passionate teller.

Or how about my conversation with an elderly woman sitting behind me in a huge tent where two thousand fans had gathered for a performance? Like me, she was waiting for the next performance to begin. She was in a flamboyant, granola-girl meets Bette Midler style dress with striking jewelry accessories.

We struck up a conversation and I quickly learned that she herself had been a teller at the Festival for many years but now she came just as a listener. She appeared to be in precarious health and so I cautiously asked her if she was still telling stories. “Why, my oh yes, young man. In fact next month I am doing a one woman show that I wrote to celebrate my time as a teller and growing up as a woman in the mountains.” 

With these words, her entire presence seemed to take on a glow of energy.  She sat taller and her blue eyes sparkled with the pleasure and anticipation of it all. A snippet of a marvellous life story only hinted there in a tent. And it had all started with a casual encounter!

Looking at me intently, she asked how long I had been coming to Jonesborough. I replied that this was my first time and in fact I was telling a story in the Slam competition later in the day. With this news, she smiled and offered me helpful words of encouragement while wishing me well in future storytelling projects. Her kind, supportive words made me feel as if now I was really part of a much larger community of storytellers that reached well beyond my local group in Ontario. We shook hands warmly just as the performance began. It was only months later that I learned this woman was one of the true legends of oral storytelling in all of America. I regret that I didn’t talk with her more.

So, the next time you attend a storytelling event, look around you. Find someone who you would like to know more about. Then go over, introduce yourself and ask. I guarantee that you will indeed meet an interesting person. And better still, you will both be richer for the conversation.

REASON 3: STORYTELLING AWAKENS MY CREATIVE SIDE

The stories that I like to tell are not usually from myths, legends or folk tales. I prefer stories about the human condition that are drawn from my personal and work experiences. As a social worker for many years, I have been privy to situations that often show people at their very worst, in periods of great emotional stress, living with the consequences of decisions that usually have not worked out too well for them. At the other end of the scale, I been privileged to witness instances of great joy, triumph and love which provided me with reassuring evidence of the strength of the human heart, spirit and intellect.  

All of these experiences provide what master teller and author Jay O’Callahan calls ‘nuggets of pure gold’. It’s these very nuggets that through my stories, I try to hold up for the examination and personal reflection by my listeners.

As I said earlier, I always enjoy telling stories. My stories have made people laugh, cry, gasp in surprise, nod their heads in recognition, pause and reflect. Oftentimes they would say to me,  “You know that reminds me of a story…”. While I also like to write about such things, most of the time I am more comfortable telling than writing about it. But over the years I never thought of myself as a true ‘teller of tales’.

Until I discovered Peterborough Storytellers. Ever since my very first, unrehearsed, spontaneously told anecdote, awkwardly holding the talking stick, my relationship to stories told and listened to has changed forever.

Now I find myself listening much more carefully in conversations with family, friends and co-workers. I catch myself trying to listen in on the chatter going on around me in restaurants, the movie theatre, gym, barber shop, service centre rest room or on the street. I am always hunting for an interesting anecdote or fragment of whispered gossip, a unique phrase or word, a voice tone or body gesture that I can turn into a story. Some days I fear that I am becoming a tidbit junkie, deliberately hanging out in places where I just might get my ultimate fix for a potentially great told or written story.

Since I retired several years ago, I have more time now to examine my ‘story collection’. I can decide what anecdote goes on display to the public through my telling or writing or what will remain hidden away on either my computer’s hard drive or in my memory. But my recent experience with storytellers is that some of the hidden tales will be re-discovered later, polished up and brought out front for everyone to experience in their own way.

Performing and telling stories that are based in real life events has forced me to start writing them down before I tell them. I write short stories several times a week about life events that I think others would enjoy reading about. So far, almost a hundred tales have made it onto a personal story blog that I created several years ago. I enjoyed writing these tales so much that I volunteered to curate a Tales and Tips blog for the Peterborough Storytellers where most likely you are now reading this essay. The more I write, re-write and then tweak a story just one more time, the more I am learning how to be a better craftsman of structure, situation, character and story lines. I know this would never have happened if I had not discovered storytelling.

Taking a written story and re-shaping it into a version suitable for telling has given me more focus and discipline as a teller. Watching and learning from a live audience reacting to my stories has led to unexpected insights into elements of the plot that listeners are connecting with which in turn sends me back to the written version to tweak it some more. Once done, I bring it back again to another audience and the shaping process starts again.

For me, another benefit of storytelling is that the very act of telling feeds the hidden actor in my nature. Many years ago, impulsively acting on a whim, I auditioned for a part in a community theatre production. To my surprise, I got a good part in the play. But I significantly under estimated how hard it would be for me to learn the lines exactly as the author wrote them. I was truly terrible at learning lines! It was three months of maximum stress. I am certain my obvious struggling gave the Director and his crew many sleepless nights! It all worked out well in the end but I took a solemn vow after our last show that I would never again go on the stage.

But now with storytelling, I find myself back on a stage of sorts. Skilled tellers are also performers, assuming the roles and personalities, voice and gestures of their story’s characters. Watching and listening to them, gives me an aspirational goal to work toward. My creative side is getting a work out and once again I am back on the stage. That’s a cool thing for me.

Most everyone has their special, creative moments that sustain them from week to week, month to month, year to year. Right now, it’s the art of storytelling and listening that does it for me. What about you? What about giving storytelling a try to set free your creative Self?

REASON 4: STORYTELLING IS A LOT OF FUN

Can you imagine two thousand fans sitting under a big top tent listening to a professional storyteller sharing imaginative stories of turning his old Jeep into a sailboat cruising down the highway or three boys at Halloween scaring themselves silly while lost in a cornfield maze? All of this delivered in a down home, ‘aw shucks’ country style delivery while wearing a baseball cap at a jaunty angle, looking just like your neighbour or the fellah you buy apples from at his farmyard stand every fall!

I was in the tent that morning and joined in the rolling waves of laughter that went on and on for a full hour. When it was all over, there was a standing ovation that lasted as long as your average tv commercial. I haven’t had so much fun at a storytelling gathering in a long time.

Later the same day, two professional tellers, reunited after many years as solo performers, tell a wonderful collection of their own stories and others they have adapted from folk lore, a children’s book and real tales told to them by strangers and friends. Many years ago, these two women pooled their life savings, bought a beat up, old yellow Datsun camper and hit the road for many years, stopping in small towns all across America telling their stories, sharpening their craft and in the process collecting material for future stories from folks they met along the way.

In their reunion performance, it was magical to see the story characters taking shape before our eyes, each with a unique voice sharing their stories of life, love won and lost, domestic abuse, difficult parents and a child’s primal fear of the monster under his bed. Once again, it was an audience of many hundreds of fans held spellbound by the women’s stories and performances. Each of us connected in some unique way with the poignant moments being shared on the stage while marveling at the chemistry that still exists many years later between these two tellers. A different kind of telling to be sure but just as much fun to be engaged in as it was with the fellow in the ball cap.

A local woman enjoys a folk tale so much, she decides to make a Coyote mask out of paper mache, cloth and yarn. She learns the story and then sits down in mask and performs a story so absorbing in content and theatre, you find yourself imagining trotting alongside Coyote and sharing in his adventures. Thirty minutes later, when she removes the mask, it takes several racing heartbeats to shake yourself free from Coyote, return to the telling circle and realize you have just experienced a master teller at her best. If your definition of having fun is being caught up in the power of a story well told and performed, you realize you have just experienced it at its finest.

Or how about the time that I was telling a real life story of an elderly man, recently widowed and grieving mightily, who turns to what has always given him deep pleasure and calms his troubled spirit… re-building a rock wall, stone by stone, day after day, dawn until dark. His teenage grandson, drawn to the aura of loneliness, silently joins the old man on the wall and they work quietly together. Hushed conversation sometimes passes between them and it is obvious to the distant observer that each is getting from the other as much as what each is giving to the other.

When I tell that story, I can see and feel that the listeners are connecting with it. Some smile at the images the story is painting while others turn inward, perhaps to revive a personal memory long buried but now re-awakened. Many wonder who the elderly man and his grandson really are. Are they only a creation of my imagination? The unspoken question remains unanswered as I set the talking stick back into its waiting place and quietly move back to my chair in the circle. My fun is  that magical moment of sharing a poignant moment in the lives of two individuals while experiencing my listeners hearing and seeing the story unfold so movingly in their imagination.

Moments like these four vignettes are many in storytelling. At the end of such performances I find myself thinking that this is what storytelling at its best is all about. Fun can wear many faces it seems.

REASON 5: STORYTELLING IGNITES MY IMAGINATION

Writing this essay has helped focus my thoughts about what, for me, are the key elements that combine to make storytelling and listening such an exciting and challenging hobby. Without much effort, I teased out and wrote about the first four reasons. But number five was not coming easily. I decided to just let everything slosh around unorganized in my consciousness for a few weeks. From previous experience, I knew that a valuable insight that I could share would eventually float to the surface.

In March 2012, I facilitated an ‘Awakening Our Imagination’ mini-workshop at Peterborough Storytellers. As part of the program, I projected randomly themed photographs onto a large screen that I hoped most members of the audience could relate to in some way. With each picture I asked this simple question: What’s the story you would tell about this picture?

The responses were immediate as folks excitedly volunteered their perceived ‘story’ as they imagined it being represented in the picture. Every photo elicited several quite different story lines. There was a high octane flow of creative energy let loose in our group that was enjoyable and stimulating. We were all having a good time, telling spontaneous stories filled with humour, sensitivity and best of all, the products of very rich and even, some would say, ‘overactive’ imaginations!

Recalling that evening, I knew what my fifth reason just had to be. Imagination. Not just the plain old, every day, garden variety kind of imagination but imagination that is ignited in our souls and burns hot with energy, brilliance and creativity. Fostered by the nudging of the slide images, I not only saw imagination bursting forth but I felt it deeply too. So many of us that night were emotionally moved at the demonstrated power of individual and collective imagination ignited by both the visual and told stories.

Told stories don’t usually come with a You Tube video playing silently in the background. Yes, sometimes there is music and movement, changing voices and moods in the story, but for the most part, it’s just a told story performed well with just enough detail of plot, location, character and take away messages, that our imagination gets a full workout. Imagination has a wonderful way of filling in the details unbidden.

I was listening to a well told story recently. Unexpectedly, I had a mental image that all the teller was really doing was just putting random dots on a blank page for me and encouraging me to connect them in any way that I felt made sense to me. And just for fun, the teller would sneak in a few more dots on the page when I wasn’t looking, creating even more possibilities for the story picture I was drawing in my mind!

Often popular told stories are about cultures, characters, countries, traditions and beliefs that I am unfamiliar with. My imagination adds the details, the colour and the subtle meanings into the story line whenever my mind sees the message ‘insert imagination here’.

What I love about telling stories is that I get the opportunity each and every time to set my imagination free and put my own vocal brush strokes of colour, form and feelings to it. As I said before, my imagination gets ignited by telling stories and I experience great delight in it all.

What I love about listening to told stories, is discovering how my unfettered imagination always enriches a story, sharpens the performance, and flirts with my gut reaction to the total experience.

On August 7, 2012, I posted a short reflection about Imagination on our Tales and Tips blog. I’d like to end this essay with some lines from it because they still sum up my continuing relationship with imagination through storytelling.

‘Imagination is part of the software that is always running in the back of our daily lives. Without it, our lives would be mostly black and white images. Our dreams are playgrounds for our imagination.’

December 6, 2014

This essay is a revised version of a series of posts to Tales And Tips in November of 2012.

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