Drama: Story Telling

In the art of storytelling, the story teller is unconstrained by the narrative text of the book and free to speak directly and spontaneously with the audience and watch for their response (Ewing & Simons, 2004, p.72). Effective oral story telling is reliant on expressive use of voice (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.65).  The non-verbal aspects of storytelling (gesture, facial expression and body language) are also essential for breathing life into a story (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.66).

In the story telling workshop, as a warm up activity we did vocal tennis in pairs where we played with our voice-its tone (angry, cheerful etc.) ,pitch(high ,low), volume(loud, soft) by throwing whatever name of the fruits, vegetables, names of boys and names of girls at our partners that came to our mind. This warm up activity encourage the students to explore the nuances of volume, pitch and tone (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.65). A teacher can structure this activity by giving students categories to choose from and the vocal quality that need to be experimented with.

Image of a selkie

After this we started to experiment with the process of linear story telling (7 parts-orientation or setting which outlines the problem/suggested solution for the problem/what happens next/unexpected scenario/tension(critical moment)/climax/resolution) by developing the story of selkie between the pairs by following the two basic commands ‘advance’ and ‘detail’. One person would start off with the story, and with advance command would go forward  or proceed with the story, but with detail command  would pause with the story and describe whatever was asked to describe like the skin, selkie, their dancing, chest, house, fisherman etc.(eg, fisher man- What did he look like? What was his hair/eye/skin colour? What kind of skin/face/hands did he have? Was he tall/kind faced/bald/handsome/old/young? etc.). By thinking about details, (colour, shape, size, sounds, smells, taste, touch, emotional qualities of a character, atmosphere mood etc) we make our own personal connections with the story.

We made up our own endings for the story. My ending to the story was that the selkie returns to the sea on finding the skin, but comes back to her mortal family with her husband’s apology and promise to never again interfere with her decision to return to the sea to visit with her sisters whenever she felt like it. Victoria recalled some of the story endings that the children came up with in her workshops. One ending I really liked was of the one where the selkie hangs up the skin alongside the jackets and announcing it was going to stay there to use whenever the she felt like it. Another ending I found thought provoking was the one in which the children would find their food all set out on the table like it used to be when they came back from the school every day and find the bed turned down before sleep every night even though they couldn’t see their mother.  Victoria made a remark that in these endings we could see a glimpse of the children’s experiences and I found that to be true. Anything that we express out there in the form of art always reveals a portion of ourselves.

Victoria talked about the importance of developing the oracy skills of children as a means to express themselves rather than bottling their feelings and thoughts which may end up being expressed in a physical manner later on. The development of oracy skills has the potential to be converted to excellent writing skills. This kind of use of drama in the class room exposes the children to different points of view which expands their thinking and imagination.

Tandem story telling

Here we had to recall an anecdote from our childhood and tell it to our partners, who would then own the story by adding/subtracting his/ her own elements to the story. Then we had to get up in front of the class and take turns in retelling the story to the audience convincingly. The audience would then guess whose anecdote it was by filtering the performance through a set of criteria like

• voice-tone/pitch/volume
• gesture
• facial expression
• senses evoked through the portrayal of story by invoking in the audience the images, smell, touch, taste, emotions, responses etc.
• pauses
• development of a relationship between storyteller and listener
• eye contact

To get the children engaged and develop their literacy skills I can see the art of storytelling as a valuable tool in my arsenal. Victoria suggested keeping a file of these named personal stories to use in the lessons in a future term which has the added advantage of capturing the immediate interest of the children and making them feel valued. Combined with still images, sculpting, readers theatre, improvisation etc. this is another strategy we can use to develop the outcomes of various KLA’s.

Ideas for teaching

Story telling can be used as a tool to explore important themes and issues. Various drama strategies can be used to facilitate critical thinking, problem solving and literacy development (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.69). Oral storytelling and subsequent discussions helps the participants to explore their thoughts, perspectives and perceptions through interaction, questioning and interpretation of different perspectives.

References

Ewing,R. & Simons, J.(2004). Beyond the Script-drama in the class room.PETA:Newtown,Australia.
Gibson, R., & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Palgrave MacMillan: Melbourne
Selkie image from Google images