Shout Out: Storyteller Mark Goldman's Advice from the Experts

Storyteller Mark Goldman may be relatively new to the storytelling community, but one thing he's been doing recently is asking professional storytellers for advice to share with everyone. Thanks to Mark's iPod (with a built-in video camera) and YouTube, you can see the results in one-minute video bites. And Mark's recent trip to the National Storytelling Network's 2010 Conference means he's got a bumper crop of new videos.

Check out Mark's "Experts" page: http://www.storytellermark.com/Experts.asp

Which Would You Rather Hear?

Great story or great storyteller: which do you prefer?



(hat tip to Sean, who reminded me that this question was first put into my noggin by Priscilla Howe, who asked the question on her Storytelling Notes blog early in 2009: link)

Shout Out: Fireside Storytelling (San Francisco)

I've been so wrapped up in watching storytelling online lately, that I had to take a breather tonight and head out to see some real, live storytelling.

So I headed across the bridge to the Climate Theatre, a cozy 50-seat black box in San Francisco, to see Fireside Storytelling, a new monthly series of personal storytelling.

I had a great time--despite the fact that, as you longtime readers will recall--I don't even particularly like personal storytelling as a genre.

Six storytellers plus a story from the emcee. A theme, tonight's was "I faked it," which was interpreted in a variety of ways by the tellers.

Why did I enjoy the show so much?

The enthusiasm of the producers. The cozy feeling of gathering in a small room to hear stories on a rainy night. An aesthetic of "sitting up late at the kitchen table with really interesting people." A lack of polish (but not a lack of confidence). A chance to see storytelling in its natural habitat... okay, it was on a stage, under theatrical lighting... but from people who hadn't crafted the story as part of an eight week class, or a day-long workshop... just people who the producers knew were good at telling stories from their lives.

Overall, the evening had a decidedly different feel for personal storytelling from the carefully polished sentiment and nostalgia that graces so many of the storytelling community's stages. Neither did it have the alcohol-fueled agitation of other established personal storytelling nights.

I suspect this series, just three months old, could well become a beloved institution in San Francisco.

What does storytelling look like?

Find more photos like this on Professional Storyteller


This question, "What does storytelling look like?" came up as I was re-designing a website for a local storytelling organization. I was having trouble porting over the organization's website header to the new template, and so I wondered if I could create a new one, using a combination of the organization's logo and an image that captured the essence of storytelling.

It's hard to capture that moment in a photograph.

You'll notice that a lot of professional storytellers have head shots (de rigeur for business)> Many have publicity photos of themselves in a dynamic pose. The pictures are attractive, even engaging, but they don't show the act of storytelling: they hint at it.

I visited some stock photo sites, but the few images that turned up were too staged, and often featured a parent reading a book. Google images wasn't much better.

And the wisdom of crowds doesn't help (looking for "storyteller" or "storytelling" on Flickr and Picasa doesn't yield any evocative images.)

I ended up abandoning my attempt to create a new logo, but the question came up again when I noticed that over at the National Storytelling Network, the front page had added a slideshow. The questions of "what does storytelling look like?" came up again.

A picture of a storyteller on a stage documents a performance. It shows that storytellers so-and-so were at such-and-such a place for this-or-that event. It might even be a dynamic shot. But if I don't know who that performer is, or that it's a storytelling event, would I think "storytelling" just from the photo?

Does the audience need to be in the photo? And how would you distinguish a photo of someone giving a speech from that of someone telling a story?

I don't have an answer. Have you seen a picture that captures the essence of storytelling? Post in the comments.

For now, I'll leave you with some pictures to explore:

Selections from The Ray Hunold Photography Collection (19,000 photos of storytellers, housed at UC Davis) Scroll down to see some B&W photos of West Coast tellers from two decades ago.

The National Storytelling Festival Photo Gallery (photos taken by Tom Raymond of Fresh Air Photo)

Slideshow of 2008 Ojai Storytelling Festival (photos by Dean Zatkowsky)

The Invisible Storytellers of the San Francisco Bay Area

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, described succintly by the New York Times, "9 counties, 8 bridges, 7 million people." With San Francisco as an international city and cultural hub, it's no surprise that the region has a large population of performing artists, and that includes storytellers. There are some amazing storytellers in the Bay Area, many of whom I've had the privilege to hear, to learn from, to be coached and mentored by, and to work alongside.

But recently I got a call from a potential client in a town nearby, just 12 miles away from me. She told me that although she found my contact information, she had a very difficult time finding any other Bay Area storytellers online. The other performer she contacted lived in Santa Cruz county, a hundred miles away. This surprised me, as I can think of at least 6 world class storytellers who live within a 15 minute drive of my house. 5 of those 6 have a website. But to a potential client, who didn't know their names, she couldn't find them.

I didn't ask how she phrased her query, but I did my own search, seeking "storyteller" and adding modifiers like "Berkeley" or "San Francisco."

Sure enough, my name came up. Of those other 6 talents... none. (Actually, just did the search again, 2 of them appeared under results for the query "San Francisco storyteller". Either they've finally updated their web site or Google once again adjusted their search algorithm or else Google is adjusting its search results based on my past search history or all of the above)

Other folks have written about this phenomenon before. And I've know about this issue for years. Back in the 1990s, I was an editor for the Open Directory Project--a massively collaborative online attempt to catalog the Web using human editorial judgement-- and I volunteered to catalog every storytelling website I could find. And I noticed that a significant portion, maybe 30-40% of websites for a single individual-- neglected to put any geographical reference point in their website's copy. So it might have several pages about programs offered, rave reviews, and even copy so compelling that were I in the market to hire a storyteller I'd definitely want this person-- but it had no information about where in the world this person worked. Sometimes, I could deduce the region based on the area code of the contact number, but other times there was no clue.

But the era of AOL and Yahoo! is ten years behind us. We've all learned to live with the Web. Not everyone jumps on the latest thing, like Twitter, but I thought that Google has become indispensable. (Ten years ago I was working for a competing search engine, and the writing was on the wall then: we knew (months before we went bankrupt) that the big G was a game-changer). I recognize that living so close to Silicon Valley, my social milieu is (supposedly) more tech savvy then the average person. (And my experience working in the industry, however briefly, makes me more attuned to the ins and outs of online marketing w/r/t search engine optimization.

But this recent reminder of how invisible storytellers are online, even now, surprised me.

If you're a storyteller-- can you find yourself on Google?

Tougher question: can you find yourself without typing in your name?

If you're someone looking for a storyteller, let me know how you search-- do you search by geography? Or do you search by content (e.g. "ghost stories," "Irish stories," etc.)

Festival: Sigana International Storytelling Festival 3rd - 5th July '09

(via Kenyanpoet)

This sounds like fun: the first Sigana International Storytelling Festival in Nairobi, at the Alliance Francaise coming up July 3, 4, and 5. Eight storytellers, from across Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

Zamaleo ACT, the host of the Festival, as Kenya's premiere storytelling troupe, is a key player in the African storytelling revival, so expect a high quality lineup.

What's that you say? You don't feel up to speed on the state of the African storytelling revival?

Well, here's a quick peek at a recent storytelling festival in Nairobi: (link),
and here's a link to Ntshengedzeni Collins Rananga's 2008 PhD Thesis, "Professionalising Storytelling in African Languages with Special Reference to Venda" (PDF, 1.1 MB). Note: it's really thorough... and really good food for thought, no matter what country you're in. This 430 page tome is going to provide lots of fodder for this blog. Includes lots of interviews with African storytellers (sadly, though, names are redacted).

If you're going to attend the Festival, leave a comment below.

Now that's "Uncalled For": the Tour

Three storytellers (Kim Weitcamp, Bil Lepp, and Andy Irwin) with a common comic sensibility have put together their own concert and organized their own tour. Six cities in two months.

Such promotions are not uncommon in music, or in standup comedy. But in storytelling? I've never heard of such an enterprise.

I'd love to see this succeed as a new model of producing. Whether they succeed or fail, I suspect this is the only self-organized tour we'll see in the next three years, simply from inertia (doing the same old thing, producing wise, that's been done the past 30 years).

Tour opens in Idaho next week. Keep up with the tour on its blog.

Is it too much to hope for YouTube videos from the side of the road as the tour van breaks down?

Shout Out: massmouth

(yet another post in which I editorialize on a storytelling project thousands of miles away from me which I have not seen)

Cheers to Nora Dooley, Doria Hughes, and all those Massachusetts tellers involved in massmouth, a new project to produce and promote storytelling events in central Massachusetts.

Keep up with them at their blog, their Ning site, and their YouTube Channel.

My editorial comments: great idea, keep up the good work. Can't wait to see where this leads.

YouTube Storytellers

Looking for storytellers on YouTube?

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UPDATE February 13, 2011: YouTube discontinued Groups as of December 1, 2010.

Many, although not all, of the videos that were posted to the Ancient Art of Storytelling Group can be found on my YouTube playlists:

World Storytelling


World Storytelling 2

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The way to find storytellers on YouTube is not via the search box (which, despite an update by Google, still isn't helpful)*, is via The Ancient Art of Storytelling group.

For the past two years, this group has been a repository for YouTube videos featuring stories told by amateurs and professionals alike.

You can find storytellers like Lethan Candlish, Sean Buvala, Yvonne Healy, Ruth Halpern, Mike Lockett, Joe Hayes, Dale Jarvis, Margaret Read MacDonald, Priscilla Howe, Alton Chung, Michael McCarty, Clare Muireann Murphy, John Row, Kate Dudding, Ellouise Schoettler, Martha Escudero, U. Utah Phillips, Diane Ferlatte, Nancy Donoval, Antonio Rocha, Norah Dooley, Gene Tagaban, Gale Portman, and the Gypsy Moon Tellers to name a few. (The tandem team of April Uhrin and Robin Rundquest, the Gypsy Moon Tellers, were the first performance storytellers to post video of their work on YouTube, beginning in June 2006).

The Ancient Art of Storytelling also has video from sessions of The Moth, stories from Toastmasters, kids, and English language learners, as well as campfire tales, Rakugo, Kamishibai, slumber parties, kitchen tables, and living rooms.

There are stories told in at least eight languages.

BTW, anyone can join the group, anyone can post a video, but it is moderated to keep it focused on storytelling.

* The fault is not the technology underlying the search box. Viacom's cable music channel, VH1 has been running a series called "Storytellers" since 1996. There are hundreds of (unauthorized) clips from this show currently on YouTube (lawsuit, anyone? yes!) There is more demand for Viacom's storytellers than "traditional" storytellers on YouTube, so until such time as demand changes (or supply shifts, say, should Viacom's lawsuit result in YouTube removing all Viacom content from its site), searching for "storytellers" is going to be useless.

Elitist Storytelling Reported in Oklahoma! (The State, not the Musical)

Over at OKLAHOMA TELLERS, Marilyn Hudson calls out "storytelling elitism." She notes that this beast has two faces, one which hires and one which tells.

One side is elitist because it sees only one type of storytelling as "true storytelling" (theatrics vs. traditional, for example). Such storytelling must be defined with terms such as "artistic", "meaningful","educational", and "professional". The folksy stylings of a country teller would never be acceptable. The telling for the sheer joy of telling a saucy or funny tale would be frowned on. The less than perfect delivery, style, or presentation of a newbie would never be heard or seen.

In her full post, it seems she's directing this at those who hire storytellers. I suspect she has one or two specific producers in mind (but I don't know the Oklahoma scene well enough to say for sure), and I'm assuming she thinking of storytelling event producers.

But a producer who doesn't want an untried teller on their stage is no different than a movie theatre booking a Hollywood film over the neighbor kid's low-budget summer film project. To exclude novice storytellers from the stage at performance events where people have paid admission isn't elitist, it's good business sense.

Telling stories for the sheer joy of telling stories is great. I'm in favor of that too. It has its place at family gatherings, around campfires, and even, in the context of performance events, at open mics or story swaps.

The other side of the face is the storyteller who has come to believe that abstract artistry is superior to heartfelt communication. They have come to believe the rhetoric of the need for lighting, props, makeup, and a "brand". They have allowed storytelling to be defined by large stage theater instead of standing on its own -and very -unique feet.

I don't know any storyteller that believes that abstract artistry is superior to heartfelt communication. (Neither do I know any that insist on lighting, props, and makeup... but then, I'm not familiar with the Oklahoma storytelling landscape.) I do know solo performers who are accomplished storytellers who do prefer to tell in theatres, use a script, but they don't call it storytelling. They insist on calling it theatre.

In an effort to parse what Marilyn might be reacting to, I found this entry of hers on a different blog:

In recent years, more and more touches of theatrics have been added to be "crowd pleasers" under the assumption that "today's child or audience" needs action and variety....
I have also seen a lot of meaningless shouting, audience participation, and over the top acting in some storytellers that was fun to watch but was a lot like eating spun sugar....it left you feeling a little empty......it was junk food that left nothing for the mind or the heart to think on and discover days later....

Every storyteller has a different style. And each teller may be at a different place along their learning curve (so that, for example, they haven't mastered the use of "meaningless shouting" in their stories... er, or rather, the appropriate use of volume and physical energy). And we all have our preferences. But I don't meet many storytellers who push their style as better than others.

But, if Oklahoma is somehow fomenting a cadre of uppity storytellers dedicated to the notion that storytelling should be defined by loud and eye-catching shenanigans performed without regard to the needs of the audience, I'm with you Marilyn, let's send those elitists back to the vaudeville circuit where they belong.

Shout Out: YouTube's Canal Narradores

Congrats to Martha Escudero and her fellow storytellers over in Barcelona. Her YouTube Channel just made the midday news in Barcelona (you can skip ahead to 1:15 in the clip, from Televisió de Catalunya) as a must-see online destination.

Since Canal Narradores (that's "Storyteller Channel" in English) came onto YouTube 9 months ago, it has set the standard for quality production for traditional storytelling on YouTube. Even if you don't speak Catalan or Spanish, check out some of the storytelling videos. Not knowing the words, you'll actually learn a lot about gesture, voice, inflection, and pauses... and what works on the small screen. You can also see how quality sound, lighting, and camerawork enhances the performance.

And if you're going to be in Barcelona, don't miss Martha's storytelling series for adults, Contes i Cuentos, at the Harlem Jazz Club.

(Learn more about Spanish and Catalan storytelling at the ANIN, (Associació de Narradores i Narradors) website, which includes a directory, links to storytelling festivals and groups, and articles from their past newsletters.)

Creative Loafing Atlanta: Spotlight on Storytelling

Journalist Curt Holman has the arts section cover story this week in Atlanta's alternative weekly, Creative Loafing, where he profiles local storytellers Carmen Deedy, Andy Offutt Irwin, Rob Cleveland, and Audrey Galex. The article juxtaposes the ancient art form against the latest technology... and leads with a story about Deedy at the TED conference. The brief article also manages to highlight other issues, such as the generation gap:

Professional storytellers are a diverse bunch, from Irish-style balladeers to African griots to tall-tale swappers. But one demographic consistently underrepresented is young people.

"I'm 52 years old," Cleveland quips, "or, as they call me in storytelling circles, 'The Kid.'"

Andy Offutt Irwin, a perpetually boyish singer/storyteller from Covington, notes that, "the good thing about storytelling is that it doesn't matter how old you are. The longer you live, the more you know.

"But there needs to be more young storytellers," he says. "My cousin who's 28 came to see me in Oklahoma City and afterward said, 'Andy, you're a rock star!' And I said, 'Yeah, but everyone's 55.'"

Thought Leadership in Practice: Storyteller.net

Sean Buvala recently asserted Storyteller.net has been around on the Web longer than Google. (To confirm that, I checked via the Internet Archive. Yup, by more than a year!)

Since the very beginning, Storyteller.net has aimed to be a clearinghouse on the Web, a "one stop shopping site" for information about storytelling. But rather than a top-down, "we know best" approach, from the very beginning, the site invited members of the storytelling community to contribute content, share tips, share stories, and spread the word about what they offer. Storyteller.net understands the collaborative nature of the Web, and has since the beginning.

The model works.

You can find more on-the-ground, in-the-field, helpful tips on the storytelling art and business aggregated here than on any other web site, period.

From the beginning, copyright of content submitted by contributors (articles, stories, audio) has remained with the contributor.

From the beginning, Storyteller.net has offered storytellers a web page, so that even the non-tech savvy teller could hang their shingle on the Web. (With a brilliant model for building the site: a storyteller could upgrade their listing on storyteller.net for a modest sum ($25/year) OR by contributing content. I don't know if the economics are working out, but that's a surefire way to build your site content).

They've hosted audio files so that people could hear stories online, and they've done it since 1997! Now, in 2007, that doesn't seem so "different," BUT in the storytelling world, it's far from common. (Whereas it's a no-brainer that any band in the 21st century wanting to have a go in the music industry has their music online so that potential audiences can hear it, the number of storytellers that even attempt this is ridiculously small).

You can quibble with the quality of the advice posted there (same as you can with any user-generated content site), but hey, if you don't like the advice in an article, write your own, and submit it. Odds are Storyteller.net will publish it.

The content on Storyteller.net may not be cutting edge-- it's meant to be more practical than philosophical, more personal than political. But in the storytelling realm, the mere existence of Storyteller.net is cutting edge. Hats off to Sean Buvala for thought leadership in practice.