The Secret Art of the Storyteller
If you’re an emerging performance storyteller, or a new voice, or someone who has been working with traditional narratives for some time, but want to up your game – then this is for you. Use these insights wisely and they may prove to be gold-dust.
The amazing force of nature that is our Artistic Director, Ben Haggarty, is known for his generosity as a teacher and mentor. In that spirit, Ben has given us extracts from his curriculum, The Secret Art of the Storyteller, to share with you, for free!
Filmed at home during lockdown, these short films cover all manner of things – from gesture and stance, to language and composition. They contain ideas, observations, suggestions and ‘secrets’ to help storytellers bring clarity, economy, and life to their work.
View them in sequence, or dip into the ones that sound most useful to you. Some are long, some are short, some include exercises, some include rainstorms, and inevitably there’s some repetition. This is not a complete training package by any means – think of each extract as the tip of an iceberg…or the foothill of a mountain!
EXTRACTS from the secret art of the storyteller
Extract 1
THE ROLE OF IMAGINATION IN ORAL STORYTELLING
The magical possibilities of orality. What does a storyteller do? The polysensual imagination. Completion in the verbal arts. The migration and translocation of stories. Differing styles and tones of imagination. The translation of storyworlds into words. Neutralising imagination to make the story clear. Cultural identifiers. (22:19)
Extract 2
WORKING WITH WONDERTALES
PART I
Freeing a story from the page. Step One: Stripping a story to the Bone. Getting Practical with a Wondertale. Step Two: Taking the story for a walk. Step Three: Making an Eagle’s Eye Map. (11:14)
Extract 3
THE STORYTELLER’S GRAMMAR
The Storyteller’s Grammar. Four main components – Action, Description, Feeling and Commentary. Help with the Language of Action. Help with the Language of Description. Direct and Indirect (reported) Speech. The Mind’s Eye and the Subjective Camera. Tense. The Commentator. Clarifying the Term ‘Improvisation’. (21:02)
Extract 4
WORKING WITH FOLK TALES
What are Folktales and why are they valuable? The Engineering of a Story; Exploring by Sharing; Mapping by Enacting; Rearranging the Furniture; The Value of Broad Brush Strokes; A Gift from the Ancestors. (10:34)
Extract 5
THE BODY SPEAKS PART I
[Includes practical exercises] Body of the Narrator/ Body of the Character. A Centre of Gravity. Shifting the Centre of Gravity. Gesture Levels. Building Characters by Combining Gesture Levels and Centres of Gravity. A Cautionary note about over-creating characters. A Tip about mime. Putting it together to find a voice. (20:28)
Extract 6
WORKING WITH WONDERTALES
PART II
Visualisation. Story Mapping 2 (Graph). Emotional Life of a Story. Provoking Questions. Mapping the Dynamic of the Energy in a Story. More on Translocation. (20:31)
Extract 7
INTRODUCING RASA
What is Rasa? The 8 Rasas. The Erotic. The Comedic. The Sympathetic. The Raging. The Heroic. The Terrific. The Odious. The Mysterious. Applying Rasa. Rasa and Responsibility in Storytelling. (19:35)
Extract 8
ORALITY AND THE NATURE OF THE SPOKEN WORD
Rhythm and Pattern. Qualities Specific to Orality. What the Body Brings to Words. Pattern in Language, Pattern in Image. (15:16)
Extract 9
WORKING WITH WONDERTALES
PART III
Psychology, Playfulness and Healing: The Healing Pattern of Wondertales. Points of Playfulness in Pattern. Compositional Devices. Reveals and Reincorporation. (13:32)
Extract 10
THE BODY SPEAKS PART II – EXERCISES
Relating Energy Limb to Limb. Contra-movement. The Physical Management of Dialogue. Face to the Wind. (7:46)
Extract 11
THE BODY SPEAKS PART III
Aspects of the Narrator’s Physicality. Persuadio. Creating the World of the Story. Moving between Narrator and Character. Borrowing Energy. Persuadio and Commentary. (6:48)
Extract 12
WORKING WITH EPICS PART I
What are Epics? Why should they be told? Epic Tellers and Singers. Working with Epic. Where Does the Story Start? Managing the Narrative. Pandvani – An Epic Tradition from India. Dividing Epics into Episodes. Epic is Epic! (22:31)
Extract 13
WORKING WITH EPICS PART II – SINGERS OF TALES
Improvisation in Epic. The Role of Song in Epic. Epics of Life and Death. (5:55)
Extract 14
WORKING WITH EPICS PART III
The Poetry of Rasa. Finding Humour in Epic. Developing Research, Resources and Self Expression. Pandvani and the Ragi. Developing an Inner Ragi. Mantic Storytelling: Exploring Storyworlds, Exploring Self. The Epic Heroes. (16:38)
Extract 15
EPILOGUE
The Voice of the Past in the Present (2:37)
IN-PERSON TRAINING
Discover your innate inner storyteller, explore the emotional life of narrative and dive deep into composition. We are very excited to return to some live, in-person training with Artistic Director, Ben Haggarty.
The secret art seminars
Join Ben Haggarty via Zoom for a chance to ask questions, clarify confusions and explore some of the ideas and techniques revealed in the Secret Art Extracts.
