Stories such as "The Boy who cried 'Wolf!'" teach us valuable lessons about life. Ghost stories delight and scare us. Our families' stories give us a sense of belonging and teach us who we are.
To listen to some of these stories, go to
http://www.youtube.com/
and search for storytellers festival
Or you can go to www.thisamericanlife.org and listen to something there. However, this is an hour long radio program. You don't need to listen for the entire hour, but most of the shows are composed of multiple stories centered around a theme. So you can pick and choose as you like.
Find a story that interests you, then come back and tell us about it.
- Who told the story?
- What was it about?
- What devices did the teller use? (music, rhythm, visuals...etc.)
- How well did the teller engage your attention?
Enjoy :)
I watched a story from Sarsoza. The teller is a young asiatic woman.
ReplyDeleteShe told about the sets of teeth of humans and animals. She explained that all the animals don't have the same kind of teeth, nor the same number. There are some differences because animals don't have the same lifestyle. For example, she said that a giraffe doesn't need strong teeth because she eats just plants, or a sea lion has just 2 big teeth. For human people, she explained, we have 2 kinds of teeth, first baby teeth and later grown up teeth.
To tell her story, the teller uses just a book with pictures to illustrate her comments.
To engage your attention, she gives lots of examples and uses the pictures of the book. Her story seems to be for kids because it's really childish, but playful.
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ReplyDeleteI watched " Scaring Crows" by Donna Washington. The story characters are animals: there is a smart rabbit that gets caught in a trap and then tries to find a way to get free. To do that, he tries to involve a bear telling him that he can make 5 dollars scaring crows. So the bear removes the trap from the rabbit's leg and puts it on his own leg. The lesson of the story is that you have always to use your brain, because if you use your brain, no one can deceive you.
ReplyDeleteThe storyteller didn't use devices like music or special effects. Instead, the scene was very simple: there was only a red courtain behind her. She fills the scene with herself, she's very expressive and funny. She speaks loud and her mouth is very large. She moves her arms and her hands and try to show the scene.
I heard the story of Danielle Matterson and she told the story "The black ribbon".
ReplyDeleteThis story deals about a man who marry a very beautiful women. She always wears nice clothes and like that very much. The only thing that the man don't like at her was that she is always wearing a black ribbon at her neck. When he ask her, why are you wearing this she always say to him that he will be sorry when she does not wear it.
After a time the man is annoy about this ribbon so he cut the ribbon off while his wife is sleeping. At that moment the head of the wife fall down at the ground and the wife is only saying :" I told you ,you would be sorry".
The teller didn't use any advises.
She engaged my attention ,because her english was very easy to understand for me,so I understand everything what she said.
I listened to a story about African languages. The story teller was an African American woman. She told the story with dance and rhythm of drums.
ReplyDeleteThe story began with the traveling of the creator from the sky. He had a pot which contained so many unique languages inside. During the journey, he spread one language to each place. But when he arrived at Africa, he loved it there so much and decided to stay there. The problem was there were still many languages inside his pot. So, he spread the rest of his languages all over the Africa. As a result, Africa has so many languages that they don't understand each other. Confused African people decided to remember only one word in common. That was "ujima" which stands for “responsibility" in Swahili.
And the story teller asked her audience to help her spread "ujima" all over the world from a pot. The woman pretended to throw something to the sky with a big gesture and said "we made it!" That made me pay attention to the climax of the story.
The host speaks about what’s happened on the air carrier USS John C. Stennis. He is speaking with some soldiers about their life and their jobs on this huge carrier.
ReplyDeleteThe host speaks with the employees why they are on board this ship and why they have decided to go to Military. The reasons why the most Soldiers are on board, they need support from the Navy to study on the University. The another reason is, some guys changed his mind about military because of the September 11, 2001 since than they are more patriotic and they think they have to give her country something that they have gotten before.
While he speaks with the different people you can hear that he is on board this ship and you have the feeling that he is really interested on story from the soldiers. Every time if you hear music you know he is finished with the interview with one person and he changes to the next.
The host use to get the attention with interest info’s about the air carrier and some statistics. He speaks not only with the pilots from the aircrafts, he speaks more with other employees with a not so famous job on board this carriers.
The story I listened to is named "switched at birth". It deals with a two female babies who were born in the same place and at the same time and they were accidentally switched by their parents. So both babies grew up with the wrong families, but one of the two mothers realized the mistake because one day her child came to her to ask if she was adopted because she really didn't look like her parents. The mother didn't say anything until the 40th birthday of the switched girls.
ReplyDeleteThe two families met each other but this meeting didn't change previous relationships, in fact it's not important who is the biological family, the real important one is that one who loves you.
I watched a story about Adam and Eve.The storyteteller was an African-American woman named Diane Farlatte and she used the expressiveness of her face and her body to tell the story. The name of the story was "Keys of the Kingdom" and began with the creation of the Heaven and the Planet. On Friday or Saturday (the storyteller didn't remember) God created Adam and Eve and gave them a gift, a little garden and a nice house to spend the rest of their lives. Eve was enthusiastic but Adam wasn't and he said, "I don't have the money to pay the rent!!!" God answered, "It doesn't matter, it's a free gift!" Anyway Adam and Eve went to the confortable house, but that's when the problems began.
ReplyDeleteEve asked to Adam to put up the stove but Adam didn't do it. So Eve looked for somone to help her and Adam said to Eve,"it's impossible! We don't have neighbours yet!!" In the end Adam didn't put up the stove and was angry with Eve.
The storyteller didn't use any devics but she engaged my attention and also the audience's attention with her gestures,movements of the arms, head and eyes and ecspecially with her funny face!
The story I heard is about vote for black people. The storyteller, Mshai Mwangola, ia a charismatic woman who has a great talent in catching the attention. She uses her voice to engage the attention of the audience, speaking aluod and then almost whispering. She has great gestuality, movements and facial expressions to underline the words. She also make a lot of pauses after or before an important concept. She started her story singing, then she introduced the protagonist, a 8 years old little girl. A day, while she was going to school she saw a lot of people in front of a church. She decided to find out what was happening, so she went there and she enter the church. In front of her there was a man, Mr. Jose' Williams, who began to talk and he said that if people don't vote they are nothing more than a slave. Those words changed her life, she faced all the situations, like her sister's imprisonment, in a different way, she became stronger and she didn't stop believing in a better world. She knew that there were a lot of obstacles to reach the total right to vote for black people but she never stopped believing in it and fighting for it.
ReplyDeleteThe Bobby Dunbar' story is a real mystery. A boy went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Some years later was found a boy very similar in Mississippi. There was a big trial between the two families, the Dunbars and the Andersons. But the first one was more influent than the other, so when they went in the justice court the Dunbars obtained the boy. Almost a century after, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter received a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings from the period from her father. So she started a research to find out what actually happenned. The DNA test revealed that Bobby wasn't biologically connected to the Dunbars: it was a shock for them becouse he has always been treated as one of the family. So nobody knows what happenned to the real Dunbar' son and the kidnappers weren't the Andersons.
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