Workshopping our storytelling technique

Aim of the Session

The aim of this session was to work further on developing our improvisational story technique.  Last weekend, our debut Story Tent performances at Doxey Day was a great success, everyone enjoyed the sessions and we had lots of children being very creative.  However it did get a bit chaotic at the end, and we are not a group to rest on our laurels.  

There will always be learning experiences, and we can always improve the way that we perform the stories, and facilitate the engagement and  of the audience.  We have much to learn in terms of how to modulate the energy levels in the tent.  In addition to this, we need to remind ourselves of the methods of telling stories in an engaging way, to be as entertaining as possible, without seeming forced or stressed.

Energy Ball

We started the session with the energy ball.  This is an exercise that I have devised that is designed to focus our awareness and energies.  It is loosely based on a sort of yoga or tai chi exercise, and has a similar effect.  We have done this as a group several times, and after a comment from a group member about its usefulness, I will do this at the beginning of each session.  The group is becoming more familiar with the exercise, and as this occurs, the potency of it to facilitate a focused energy and state of calm alertness. 

I led the energy ball part of the session slightly differently to usual, when I do the actions as well as instruct the group.  This time, I just instructed the group without doing the movements myself.  This worked well in that I was able to watch how people did the movements and remind them of certain elements of style, however it was surprisingly difficult, given how many times I’ve done the movements, to remember precisely what to do, including when to breathe in and out, without actually doing it.

Once the group had run through the sequence once in this way,  I then joined in with the movement, and each person did it in their own time, some of us closing our eyes.  I find it useful to close my eyes, as it increases my ability to really concentrate on the physical sensations and movements.  We don’t all move together, but rather, on this run-through, each person absorbs themselves in their own movements and breathing.  I tell them it doesn’t matter if they don’t do it exactly right, and they can make up things if they forget what to do.  After all, I just made it up in the first place.

At the end of this element of the session we stood in silence for some time.  I felt reluctant to speak and break the silence, it felt very peaceful. 

Physical warm up – co-ordination, complicite, focus

In the physical warm up, we passed juggling rings around the circle.  Everybody had a ring, and passed this to the person to their right, at the same time, so the circle of rings passed around, creating their own circle, each exactly in time with the other.  There were five people in the circle, and each person was told to watch and follow the person two places ahead of them, and because of this, each person in the group was linked to another, and the whole circle was linked to itself, and the timing of the passing of the rings was very tight.  We played with it, passing the rings at low and high levels, and passing them flat, or turning them during the passing.  

I love the way a simple action, such as passing a juggling ring from one person to another, can become complex and visually interesting, by developing it in relatively basic ways, such as adding more people doing the same movement, carrying out the moment at different levels, and so on

Voice and story warm up – improvisation.

The first game was basically the group telling a story in a circle, one word at a time.  This was difficult, and generally a long, senseless sentence was produced.  However this was difficult enough, and so I decided not to enforce a rule in which the story had a beginning, middle and end, and made sense, however, in future weeks, this will be the ultimate aim.

In the second game, each person made a statement, but didn’t complete it, requiring another person in the group to complete it.  This time, we didn’t go round the circle, but each person came in to the story as soon as they had thought of something.  At first this worked really well, and we were snatching the story from each other, so great was our enthusiasm and energy.  

However as the stories went on, we got tired, and this really showed in the telling of the story.  The plot dragged on; more and more characters and twists were added, and eventually we just seemed to run out of steam with it.  

Watching this video, of the storytelling, I am aware of good storytelling techniques that were present in the improvisation.  There was good use of vocal intonation, displays of empathic reflection and the story was passed between the tellers rather smoothly.  However, the tiredness of the group shows, and this affects two elements of the telling.  First, and importantly, there are times when it doesn't really feel that the tellers are interested in their own story.  Improvising stories is very difficult - not only must the story flow, and appear very natural and easy in the telling, but it must be interesting, to both the teller and the listener.  Part of the problems of engagement in this session was the fact that tellers would bring in a detail that had nothing to do with the initial themes that the story contained.  Doing this is destructive to the process - engagement is lost because the listener doesn't know what they are listening to, the spell is broken. Using technique to sound like the story is interesting, is pointless, the story may end up sounding strained.  Two important lessons are learned:

1. Keep the threads of the story simple, you don't need more than 2 or 3 themes.
2. Keep it interesting.  To yourself as a narrator, and to the particular audience.

Keeping interested in the story, and telling it in a relaxed yet engaging style, are of utmost importance, and 

Entertainingly Emotional

We ended up with a game of expressing emotions and empathy in story style, which involved playful exaggeration, and a lightness of expression.  If expressed in this way, even emotions such as sadness or boredom, can be engaging.  This is important, because we want the audience to engage with the emotion contained in the story, without being personally

affected by it.  So being tired, is played by large, loud yawns and stretching, and falling asleep always involves loud snoring noised and maybe a bit of lip smacking.  In the game, one person expressed an emotion (e.g., I feel naughty), and the rest of the group had to reflect the emotion, displaying both empathy and engagement, creating a conversation in which some part of a story is played out.  

While we are doing the stories, each person does not merely have to tell part of the story, but they also have to be very engaged in what everyone else is telling.

Closing Reflections

There is a sense of positivity following the success of the Story Tent at Doxey Day, however we acknowledge that we still have much to learn.  Continually reflecting on our performances and techniques, and practicing new and used methods, we will reduce the likelihood of performances going awry, and increase our competency, meaning that over time, we give better shows for our audiences.